Incentives, motivation and inertia

I was in Columbus today to make grant allocation decisions for affordable green housing developments in Ohio. We had significantly more projects "going green" and requesting funds than we had funds available.

It is inspiring that so many developers of affordable housing around the state are making a commitment to build their housing to be green, healthy and respectful of natural resources. The diversity of developments includes urban and rural; non-profit and for-profit; new construction and rehab; senior housing, family housing and housing for homeless.

This experience shows that incentives can encourage well-meaning businesses to jump in and do the right thing. The incentives jump start the process, they do not pay for the new endeavor in full, they do enable motivation, instead of inertia, to be determine the future. Amen.

My Hopes

I am down here in Dallas participating in developing a five year strategic plan for our Dallas market team. Yesterday we were asked what some of our hopes were. My answers:

One hope I have for the world: Understanding among all people.

One hope I have for my family: Abounding happiness.

One hope I have for myself: Be fearless.

Yeah Baby!

Give a loose to your soul

In the poem, Two Tramps in Mud Time, Robert Frost writes,

"The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood."



While reading the poem today I fell in love with that line, "giving a loose to my soul." The protagonist moved beyond his life of work, of attainment, of self-control, even though done for the common good, and gave himself permission to just chop wood; the chopping really no less important, and no more, than his other work.


Where is the opportunity in your life today to give a loose to your soul?

I vote for that

How do these political candidates do it? Are they all playing Dr. Faustus, even as they think that in the end it will be for the benefit of the country? I think so.

Then who are we? If we respond with cynicism we are just cynics, no matter how right we think we are in response to their bull. Let's respond with another choice. Compassion for the folks we meet today. Belief in our true nature as all connected and all already enlightened. I vote for that.

What is Grace?

What is Grace but unwrapping the gift of being human?

from Meister Eckhart

God is not attained by a process of addition to anything in the soul, but by a process of subtraction.- Meister Eckhart

How beautiful. Take away my protection and make me vulnerable and then I can receive the gifts of love and grace and be grateful.

From brother Jack Ricchiuto

#35 from "Conscious Becoming" (Jack's latest book - a modern Tao Te Ching)

Whether we like it or not,
whether we approve of it or not,
Whether it makes sense to us or not,
things are the way they are,
because they have become fully possible.

And if in the process, we realize
that what we do right now
makes something else more fully possible,
we discover our power,
and dwell in a calm sense of possibility.