Our activities influence the networking our brain creates. Critical thinking is a skill and is surely influenced by our constant visual processing of information on the web. Nicolas Carr in “The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our Brains” argues that we are distracting ourselves to our detriment.
Mark Egan reviews Carr’s work.
Ok, it was breathtaking! When Detroit’s Zetterberg shouldered his way from the boards to the front of the net to zip one in past Luongo with .3 seconds on the clock in overtime, it was beautiful. Yes I’m a Canucks fan, but this time we didn’t pull off the come-from-behind-win. It was the second time in days that I found myself painfully admiring a winning goal in the closing seconds. Norway defeated Canada in sledge hockey with an arcing shot from Eskel Hagan with just 3.6 seconds on the clock. With our thoughts headed towards overtime and the possibilities for the next period, it was a shocker!
And therein is the leadership lesson for me. While there is still time on the clock, there is still “a game” to be won or lost. The minutes of our lives count and while we still have time, living for the glory of God still matters. When we are tied or behind by one, urgency, passion, pursuit of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom must be nurtured. When there is time on the clock there is still time to shape the story. No one else will do this for me.
No one else will seek strength of character formed through a persistent gaze at Jesus and His Gospel for me. No one else will prioritize my life, days, and hours with Christ for me. No one else will put in the behind the scenes effort and learning for me. No one else will say “no” or “yes” for me. No one else will push through the inertia to engage in the most rewarding but hard ways of Kingdom living for me. I regularly pray with the Psalmist, “Lord, teach us to number our days aright, that we might gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12)
These guys on the ice push through difficulty and pain to the last second for a number of reasons. But what vision is compelling, shaping, and energizing me? You?
Thanks to Dustin Neeley for this interview with Steve Timmis.
New York Times soccer blog lists out the trademark moves named after players.
Happy Thanksgiving America.
Apparently, the first Pilgrims on the Mayflower were both devout and tolerant. Great characteristics to possess and from which flow genuine liberty.
The Pilgrims – unlike British Puritans who wanted to turn Massachusetts into a theocracy – sharply advocated church-state separation. They heretically believed that women should be allowed to speak in church. They were far more tolerant of other faiths and open to the idea that their theology, like all human dogma, might contain errors.
Pilgrim experiences “in the cosmopolitan Netherlands are a reason they are less rigid or dogmatic in their views about what people must and must not do,” argues Jeremy Bangs, curator of the American Pilgrim Museum in Leiden and author of “Saints and Pilgrims,” a 900-page reappraisal published this year on the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival in Leiden.
“The pilgrims didn’t have witchcraft hysteria, they didn’t kill Quakers. These are big differences!” notes Mr. Bangs, a former curator of Plimoth Plantation whose work draws heavily from untapped Dutch and New England archives. “Pilgrim leaders were less prone to persecute…. The possibility that others may be right and they may be wrong is something influenced by their time living in an extraordinary community of other exiles in Holland.”
Read the whole article in the Christian Science Monitor.
urbanfoot 