godthoughts.net

Recently Time Magazine had an article on ideas that are changing the world.  Alex McManus puts in his 2 cents worth on his four ideas.  You agree with either list? Part of them?

Weddings are expensive.  That is a given truism.  Some are more, or less, expensive than others, but each wedding costs some money.  Here are some numbers to give you an idea of how much money is being spend on weddings in this country (and other wedding tidbits)…be prepared!  Source is Fast Company June, 2009 issue, pg 26.

$28,704 - cost of average American wedding.  $36K in New Jersey, $18.5K in Mississippi.

2,190,363 - number of couples wedded in the US in 2008.

85 years - anniversary of Zelmyra and Herbert Fisher, of North Carolina, this month.

37 seconds - How long it took shoppers at Filene’s Basement’s “Running of the Brides” event to clear 3,000 wedding dresses off the racks.

$60 million - How much steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal spent on the wedding of his daughter, Vanisha. It includes a 1,000-person engagement party at Versailles, France.

$707,051,028 - The value of wedding cake and fondant frosting consumed last year in the US.

How did/does your wedding stack up?  We printed our own invitations and programs, borrowed a friend’s condo for the honeymoon, and got a discount on the chapel because we were still students.  We were the frugal wedding couple.

Charles Jacobs has written a book, Management Rewired:  Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Surprising Lessons From the Latest Brain Science (Portfolio, May, 2009).

Among other things, he dispels the notion of objective decision-making.  We think if we just take emotions out of it, then we can be “objective” and make a cold hard decision, like laying off workers, for instance.  This is bunk, according to brain science.  Jacobs is quoted in the latest issue of Inc, May, 2009:

“Objective decision making is a myth. When the area of the brain responsible for logical thinking is activated, it also receives input from the are responsible for emotion.  Without input from your feelings, you can’t think long term. You don’t learn from experience; you can’t empathize.  The more complex the problem, the more of the brain should come into play.”

Notice he said that it is More OF the brain, not more brain.  Being objective basically would mean that a person making such a decision is only short-sighted and not viewing the situation long term.  Leaders look at a balance sheet or an offering total and think only of what that means for now or the next few weeks, even couple of months.  They don’t process through what laying off employees or getting rid of staff will mean in an emotional impact and loss of service or ministry.  Companies led by such leaders tend to layoff employees again and again…no long term, no learning from experience, no empathy.

This is tremendous insight from Mr. Jacobs and has all kinds of spin off applications to it.  What do you think/feel about it?

Father and son, or long-lost siblings?

John Maxwell          Troy Aikman

The big quote from Flow:  The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Flow is the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

His focus is on the business world, but if you simply change your perspective from which you view this quote, it could easily be applied to worship in church, or even more specifically, to those who are “worship junkies”–those who keep bouncing around to where they can “experience the best worship.”

So, given the title of his book, it begs the question of whether we engage in, plan for, an optimal experience of worship in which we “flow.”???

Searching for the Yeti gives you a peek at the worst wedding dress ever…depending on your perception

Josh Brown is back in the blogging world with his usual challenging insight and opinion.

JD Walt and Farmstrong offer some levity with monks.

Erika at The Margins on defining the Good News in 500 words or less.

Enjoy!