Meaning and Calling
Items on the purpose and meaning of life
Lives of Adventure, Fulfillment, and Service
Thu 28 Aug 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek
Some people don’t just live a life, they lead a life. They don’t sit around waiting for a lucky break. They create opportunities for themselves. They go after their dreams and bring them to life. Rather than bending to the status quo, they change it. As with any great effort, their work is never done but ever-evolving, and it is often inspiring to those around them.
Welcome to the territory of life entrepreneurs.
Facing Up to Differences
Mon 14 Jul 2008 by Fred Harburg
The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It, by Os Guinness (HarperOne, 2008), cloth, 224 pages, $23.95.
Os Guinness opens his richly packed book, The Case for Civility, with the bleak assessment that “It would be a safe but sad bet that someone, somewhere in the world, is killing someone else at this very moment in the name of religion or ideology.”
In 1949, as the 7-year-old son of an Irish missionary in Nanking, China, Os received his first, and life-changing, lesson on the politics of “civility”—or the lack thereof—when his family was caught up in the Maoist Revolution. (Although Os was spirited out of the country by fellow missionaries, his parents were not allowed to flee until three years later.) In this experience he learned what it means to be “different” in a very personal way. Building on this experience, he writes, “How we live with our deepest differences is a question that lives at the heart of American freedom, and soon it may be a matter of survival for the planet” (19).
McClay at the White House
Tue 06 May 2008 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Wilfred M. McClay recently spoke at a reception in the East Room of the White House honoring the 265th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson. You can read a transcript of his talk here, courtesy of the Ethics & Public Policy Center.
So let it be for his ideas that we honor Jefferson, above all else. And for the cause of human freedom and human dignity that he so eloquently championed. His failings may weigh against the man, but not against the cause for which he labored so heroically. That should be a lesson to us today. Like Jefferson, we all are carriers of purposes far larger than we know. Purposes whose full realization cannot be achieved in our lifetime, or even be fully understood by us, but which we are called to carry forward as faithfully as we can—as charges to keep.
Whatsoever Things Are True
Fri 07 Mar 2008 • Responses: 3 • by Wilfred M. McClay
A Few Thoughts on Education in Modern America
Senior Fellow Wilfred M. McClay suggests that we may have reached a point where the most radical and liberal people in society are those who pursue old-fashioned wholesomeness. He suggests a model of education that is equally radical, because we take on the shape of the things we study. So what things are exemplary? What things are worth imitating? Perhaps humanity is not just something we are, it is something we achieve.
A Respectful Approach to Leadership Development
Thu 21 Feb 2008 by Fred Harburg
Designed for Life by Arthur F. Miller. Life (n) Media, LLC, 2007, 328pp., $25.
With the precision of a surgeon and the tenacity of a trial lawyer, befitting his origins, Arthur Miller builds the case for a unifying theory of persons in his provocative book, Designed for Life. This book provides a wake-up call to all who are involved in any human resource job and, more importantly, to leaders who make daily decisions regarding the hiring, placement, and career moves of people. Miller’s reverence for the dignity of each human life and for the Creator of the miraculous panoply of gifts and talents resident in humankind provides a stirring call to arms for leveraging diversity in the most profound sense of the word.
The prevailing wisdom with respect to selection in most organizations is the fundamentally flawed idea that people can be molded and “developed” by an organization to be whatever the organization needs them to be. This position represents extreme organizational hubris, defies practical observation of the nature of human beings, and is enormously disrespectful of the uniquely valuable people who make up an organization’s workforce.
Making a Difference
Fri 21 Dec 2007 • Responses: 6 • by Donald M. Bishop
‘Young Altruists’ Need a Broader View of Doing Good
Donald Bishop, a senior U.S. Foreign Service officer, looks at the difficulties faced by some young adults who want to use their careers to make the world a better place. He argues that they leave unexplored real possibilities to do good. It’s time to question the conventional wisdom and consider the possibilities of business, the military, and long-term overseas service as means to help the poor and suffering.
The Elusive Goal of Mastery
Tue 11 Dec 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Wilfred M. McClay
The Shadow Side of Technological Control
Senior Fellow Wilfred M. McClay recently had a friend die of cancer. It got him to pondering again about the implications of our ever-expanding control of our bodies and our world. In this essay, originally presented at an October meeting of the Trinity Forum’s Senior Fellows, he looks at the inescapable ironies of our quest for control. Progress is good, right? Longer lives and less suffering is good, right? Sure. But all treatments have side effects and every advance has unintended consequences.
What Fear Does
Fri 28 Sep 2007 by Jo Kadlecek
an excerpt from Fear: A Spiritual Navigation
Jo Kadlecek takes a look at what fear does to us—and what we can learn from it.
Who Are We Today?
Wed 12 Sep 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Wilfred M. McClay
The Mystery of Personal—and National—Character
Senior Fellow Bill McClay reflects on the American national character, both historically and at the present moment. We can guess at, but we cannot really know, a person’s—or a nation’s—character until it is put to a real test. What will emerge may surprise us.
The World of Total Work
Thu 06 Sep 2007 by Dan Russ
Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper, Translated by Gerard Malsbary with an introduction by Roger Scruton (St. Augustine’s Press [1948] 1998), $12.
Work is consuming our lives and—Josef Pieper would say—our humanity. I have recently observed cases of two disturbing instances of what Pieper calls the “world of total work.” The first is among friends and colleagues who are wired for vacations. By this I mean that they either choose or are expected to take their cell phones and laptops with them on vacations. They do so either because they are concerned about what their superiors or colleagues would think if they ignored the demands of the office, or because they fear missing something or someone that might be crucial to their professional lives. Indeed, a friend recently observed that as she and her husband take their annual pilgrimage to the shore, each year the beaches and coffee shops are increasingly filled with people on cell phones and laptops, doing business.
