Why Do They Get What I Want? Envy and the Eyes That Matter | Desiring God
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Monday, January 24, 2022
January 2022 "The No Bull Newsletter"
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Saturday, January 22, 2022
Thursday, January 20, 2022
Are You Platonically Tone Deaf? (These Are Concentrated Relationships Herein.) Be Aware Of That.
Friendships have a cadence. A flow. Therefore, "sight reading" can be vitally important if you're just getting started (with a new Samson guy or otherwise). It's paramount that you at least pick up on the tempo. Otherwise, you'll likely fall flat fairly quickly.
Many years ago, I befriended a younger man (this was my first foray), and he admitted to "not knowing how to do friendship". This admission was quite unexpected as he had an immense amount of personal and professional confidence / ambition. Whilst looking back on that multi-year friendship, I believe his failed platonic track record had a whole lot to do with his generational wiring (this guy was much younger than I was).
Relating to people takes being able to read people well enough to react personally (keyword) respectful.
Never not having the Internet to distract seems to make for some less than stellar - patiently listening / observing - people readers. And not because that generation isn't capable. No, I believe it has more to do with either refusing to be distractable, or easily / by default consistently being distracted. As such, the former attribute is readily perceived as a cop out whereas the latter exemplifies laziness. No matter, however it's perceived, distraction away from your friend isn't doing your friendship any favors.
All and all (overarching truth), observing people takes an immense amount of curiosity if the observation is to be genuinely charitable.
And curiosity must be structured as a long game. Weeks, months, years.
On a similar note, but quite different overall, is novelty which is momentary. Hours, minutes, seconds. Our culture is built on novelty. It is child's play. (Watching TV, playing video games.) Grown ass men need not apply.
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Great friendships are built on you depositing the necessary service - expected of your friend - for he / she to then value your own personal needs. Now, that sentence is referring to a GREAT friendship, not just a friendship. And ideally, both sides of the steadily growing, anticipated GREAT friendship take this same approach, but I've only been party to a relationship as such - once in my lifetime.
The only way to do this serving, with the proper care, is to listen well both in the moment and long term. For timing is everything when it comes to relationships. Hence, you must be present - at all times.
Curiosity, for me, comes into play relative to no particular rhyme or reason. It's just there or it isn't. For Rob, the word curiosity can be substituted with attraction.
Without curiosity (attraction), both regarding your friend as well as regarding the potential longevity / outcome of the friendship, there's no other way to go the distance needed relative to service required.
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Before Christmas, I handed my business card to a guy at the Y who coached my middle daughter in Upward Basketball many years prior. I'd re-introduced myself to him a few months prior to this, assuming he remembered me (especially with my daughter there with me in the gym working out alongside). Whilst handing off the card, I asked him to contact me to schedule a lunch after the holidays, and he feigned genuinely intrigued.
When my daughter was under his Upward Basketball (head)coaching guise, my father was also in the picture as this man's Assistant Coach. From what I remember, I'd asked my dad if he'd be interested in filling that role (Upward Basketball is a volunteer youth basketball program that utilizes church gymnasiums for practices / games), and he obliged. How I actually logistically orchestrated that detail, I've no idea.
All of this Upward Basketballing was going on just a few years after we'd returned here from Cleveland, therefore it was around 2015. Nonetheless, I distinctly remember this very respectful guy who served as the head coach of my daughter's team. Hence, when he and I bumped into each other at the Y, I felt compelled to speak up.
But I didn't want to.
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As an introvert, it is so hard, if not impossible, to motivate myself to pursue. Knowing how much energy will be needed to do so.
But let me tell you this. It's worth every drop.
Relating to other men is the very best means to demonstrate our Christ-likeness. Jesus actively related to those around him. And he did this through humility and a deep-seated desire to serve. Physically, Jesus was all human. Therefore, he too was either an intro or extravert or somewhere in between. And, in spite of his relatively young age, there were physical and emotional limits he was faced with.
Allow God's spirit to motivate you to pursue. To be intensely curious. And to observe with laser focus. From there, you'll find your voice as a GREAT friend within Samson Society or otherwise from which a GREAT friendship may emerge.
Thursday, January 13, 2022
The Bible Belt Samson Guy. Rob's Update On His Virtual Samson Society Meeting Experience.
I've been attending the "Make Thursdays Great Again" (7 PM CST) virtual Samson Society group for close to two months now, and I feel guilty about it.
There is such a huge chunk of my midlife that's been measured weekly by Jackson Mississippi Samson Society meetings. It all started in August of 2014 with the Wednesday night face-to-face meeting at First Baptist Jackson. From there, I began attending the Sunday night face-to-face meeting at Grace Crossing Church in Gluckstadt. Then finally, I began to facilitate my own face-to-face group at Lakeside Presbyterian Church in Brandon (which I did for four years). Too, I've attended face-to-face meetings at Truitt Baptist Church in Pearl along with a handful at Crossgates.
I vividly recall attending my first National Samson Society retreat a number of years ago and hearing Mr. Nate Larkin pitch the virtual meeting push. And this was well before anyone was even remotely thinking about pandemics. Immediately I discounted it as "Samson lite", feeling almost disrespected by the notion of this conceivably inequivalent web-based facsimile.
But this snap judgement was all rooted in my genuine coziness with the face-to-face paradigm. For it's what I was reared on.
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When I began working for the State of MS back in 2006, my expertise & interest in facilitating small meetings served me well as a Staff Architect. Bringing together architects and engineers alongside using agency reps was simply my thing. It was a proven methodology for moving projects through the planning phase. During my six-year tenure there, I must have participated in 1,000 meetings, if I attended one. Similarly, during my one-year jaunt at Delta State University, this meeting trend furthered until it all came to an abrupt halt in September of 2013 due to my termination (for breaking the institution's IT policy).
I immediately lost +/-14 pounds and could no longer sleep more than four hours a night. The emotional trauma due to the job loss took its toll immediately on my psyche combined with my physiology.
I've repeatedly described the job loss like being thrown off a cliff face. Yet, a sizable portion of breaking my freefall was my introduction to that First Baptist Church face-to-face Samson Society meeting two years later.
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My Silas and I talk once a week. He's an old friend who's known me intimately throughout some of the most difficult (whilst living in MS) seasons of his life. As such, he's sensitive enough to my vocal inflections to question my state of mind on the fly. Today (during our weekly chat) was no different. Hence, my opportunity to lament my state of mind thanks to his respectful prod.
I have so much aforementioned history / experience / "training" related to face-to-face meetings. Plus, I simply feel as if, by now going virtual, I've insipidly sold out to an idea that I initially scoffed at.
Yet, what I love about the virtual meeting format is how emotionally streamlined it is. Everything's contained (my Silas' descriptor) so effectively versus the face-to-face paradigm. A paradigm which elicits an awful lot of spillover, at least for me. The virtual meetings don't leave me with heady emotional fallout that demands (of Rob) much, if any, follow-up processing. Instead, I can just move on to the next thing with aplomb.
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Another circumstantial question that's been creeping into my brain as of late is regarding the notion of being a tenured (gray haired) Samson guy who's simply outgrown his regularly scheduled programming (face-to-face setup). And this is probably the most audacious factor for me to wrestle with. For I do not want to identify as such when I don't feel this way internally. Combined with that, I default towards the Samson Society meeting experience as one that really shouldn't have any chronological narrative attached to it. Every meeting is, in many ways, your first meeting, or at least it should be. Whether face-to-face or virtual. But that's simply not a true statement, even though it does, to some degree, feel that way (for me).
In closing, I know a number of guys who've not transitioned as I have from the face-to-face meeting format to virtual. Many have simply let go of Samson Society entirely once the face-to-face offerings became unavailable or they grew fatigued / found difficulty in maintaining the pace. Had it not been for my aforementioned early (& continued) exposure towards the explosive growth of the virtual paradigm via the National Samson Society retreats, I would have likely done the same.
Thanks be to God for this guilt. It justifiable, humbling, and not unlike that same freefall I experienced back in 2013. And this time, in a rebellious sort of mindset, I kind of like it.
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
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