This is now my 4th year in following Chris Brogan's "3 Words for the Year" model. The exercise has been fruitful and rewarding. The words, well thought out and conceived will bring clarity and focus in the foggy times and will be the wind in your sails during those productive gusts of innovation and creativity that lead to completing initiatives and to the execution and  achieving of visionary objectives. And, mostly it's about, "what he said" - "words that will become and serve as your directional lighthouses throughout the year to come."

I went with a "R's" theme this year. That's mostly because of a recent conversation that I had with a close confident - who speaks into my life, and because "R's" are easy to remember (insert FB smiley face symbol here).

So here we go! Leap time! My 3 Words for 2013:
My 3 Words for 2013:

• re·solved 

Firmly determined to do something. Firm in purpose or intent.
determined - resolute - decided - firm - set - purpose

"The resolved mind hath no cares." -George Herbert

This word is about being settled in certainty and decisiveness. Included in the concept is moving beyond desire to purposeful action. Resolved to be active, to take action: an attribute of the development of a system over a period of time. And, moving beyond passionate activity to productive development. One who is resolved is resolute to move forward, to conquer challenges and conflict, to be driven with passion while being ruddered by the peace of the resolve.

As I firm my dream focuses, goals, objectives, and plans for 2013... I will include a statement of resolve for each item.

"I am resolved to realize the accomplishment of... in 2013."

• re·source·ful

Having the ability to find clever ways to overcome difficulties.
ingenious - inventive - adroit - clever

"Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful." -Jeff Bezos

People are always the best resources. The likeminded in purpose are one's best allies.
We is powerful... we enables us to be resourceful. I have gifts. You have gifts. We can draw on each other as resources and means for support, encouragement, the combining and collaboration of the best uses of talents and skills toward productive ends. Being ingenious involves the best cooperation of a combined effort of clever, original, and inventive.

Genius means “endowed with good natural capacity, gifted with genius.”

• re·cep·tive
  Able or willing to receive something, esp. signals or stimuli.
  Willing to consider or accept new suggestions and ideas.
  susceptible - responsive - recipient

"What helps me go forward is that I stay receptive. I feel that anything can happen." -Anouk Aimee
"The world is but a canvas to the imagination." -Henry David Thoreau

Life is a continuous journey of learning. We must remain "open" to what experiences will teach us and to where the divine might lead us. My good friend Amy Gillespie calls it radical receiving. That receptivity "includes love, life, abundance, health... all of it -- RR (radical receiving) all the way!!!"

Author Julia Cameron says, "The creative process is a process of surrender, not control."

Love... Peace... Joy...

“Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new...” -Paul of Tarsus

“Love is not an affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” ―C.S. Lewis

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." -Isa

"Where there is faith, there is love;
Where there is love, there is peace;
Where there is peace, there is God;
And where there is God; there is no need." -Leo Tolstoy

"Who, although being essentially one with God and in the form of God, possessing the fullness of the attributes which make God God, did not think this equality with God was a thing to be eagerly grasped or retained, but stripped Himself of all privileges and rightful dignity, so as to assume the guise of a servant, in that He became like men and was born a human being." -Paul of Tarsus

"Where there is faith, there is love;
Where there is love, there is peace;
Where there is peace, there is God;
And where there is God; there is no need."
-Leo Tolstoy

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." -James the Apostle

I recently ran across this photo, taken just before the turn of the century (around 1999) of me and my band, The Evinrudes. This photo was taken by a photographer named Yoshi whose rate was about $10,000 a day, no kidding, in front of a fake tree at an entrance to the Central Park Zoo.

At the time, I was more than pleased to wear a snake-skin vest, biker boots and other accoutrement to look the part, I do enjoy a good costume now and then. These days, I wear an embroidered robe and a stole, usually the ones of the Guatemalan variety, but only on Sundays and for weddings. Some would say it places me in a different category, but I’m a bit uncomfortable with the ease of identity shift.

Last night, I was at a birthday party at a very trendy local bar/eatery and I was introduced to someone as the “former lead singer for the Evinrudes now turned pastor but still doing her music.” She turned to me and said, “I’ll let you explain what it is.” I stumbled for words, I don’t know how to explain it other than what I said, “it’s just the same music I’ve always made, this time I just wrote about women from ancient biblical texts” The man said, “So, you once did rock and roll and now you do religion?” To which I replied, “I never left either one.”

I thought that was a truthful answer. I had also read a comment on a youtube video someone had posted of my band, something indicated that I used to be a rock star and then I found Jesus and now I’m a Methodist minister.  I’m not sure you have to leave one to find the other and that’s part of the problem. Sure, I found plenty of things to run from in the rock star life. Drugs, alcohol, manipulation and greed rank among the top issues that I encountered. I also found human frailty, vulnerability, love and compassion.  I soon learned in the pastorate that one does not escape these issues in the church, these are just human issues and human struggles. We cannot escape any world inside of any church no more than we can hermetically seal ourselves off from relationships with one another. One does not become a part of a church to escape, one comes to be a part of a faith community to truly live.

The title of my latest album “Sunland,” is from a poem by Jewish poet and writer, Edmond Jabes, It begins, “A country where the billboards have claws, not just anyone can enter.” The women of the biblical text, the Old Testament as it were, whose stories I poeticized about in song, are all outsiders in this sort of religious country  where the dominant religious culture sharpens its claws on those who dare to challenge it. In the album, “Sunland,” it’s generally females who become challenging due to the roles they must play in a male-dominant religion. The key element in their stories that they all share is that their actions or words or presence moved beyond the official space sanctioned by religious culture. They broke away from the predatorial space of religious culture and even through the divide of the secular/religious to a whole other plane, the spiritual, where they ranged with the wild God and gained a voice, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose. In our present day religious culture, we’ve often overlooked their voices or somehow sanitized them, as we have done with much of our biblical text, so that they don’t threaten the status quo as they did so long ago. The point is, the narrators of the text let them speak and so should we if we hope to have an authentic understanding of our roots and the whole entire framework of faith we call the Bible.

I am probably going to re-name the album along the lines of “Strange, Exotic and Un-tamed Women of the Bible,” just so everyone will get the point. Or maybe I’ll just preach in my snake-skin vest, some would argue this is what I was doing all along.

A Holiday Win- Win!
Do you know someone in need of hope?
Someone who needs to be reminded that they belong?
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Thank you for Spreading Joy and Hope and Light in the World!

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Connected: 101 Ways to Be of Service and Create Community
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Connected is the start to seeing and being a different kind of human being. One in which we take conscious actions, contribute to humanity on a soul level-without the need for anything in return-to be of service and unite people merely for the sake of bringing people together and doing good. It is about stepping away from a "me-focused" agenda and shifting towards a "we-focused" world.

What if we lived in a world where every single person mattered? What if we all knew and felt that WE BELONG, that NONE of us ARE SEPARATE or disconnected and that we all have a beautiful, MEANINGFUL PLACE IN OUR SOCIETY and the world? What if...

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"Mary: Mother & Janitor" by Sherry Cothran Woolsey
Wednesday morning and I’m sitting in my home office trying to pull together this Sunday’s sermon, getting some inspiration by playing through one of my all time favorite Patti Griffin songs, a beautiful rendition of her performing it with Emmy Lou: “Mary.” I’m gonna combine this song with Mary’s song in Luke chapter one to construct a homily that probably sounds a bit more Catholic than Methodist, but I can’t help the fact that Mary is so inspiring to me. Her story is one of ultimate hope and complete loss. She is the character that stays the same while mystery moves through her, while her son saves the world and completely breaks her heart. She stays the same, consistent, trusting, hopeful, prophetic, while others move in and out of her story. She is mother and janitor. Sometimes being a pastor is a bit like being Mary. Birthing hope and newness in an atmosphere of anxiety and institutional deathliness while cleaning up after a hundred meals for the homeless and disenfranchised, feeling my heart break one more time as they return to their tents underneath the interstate or disappear to some abandoned porch for the night; feeling helpless; dusting the cobwebs from the corners of the sanctuary; picking up the trash and beer cans from the urban church yard.  Reorienting, pointing towards a greater truth than the one that shouts the loudest in the marketplace. Remaining calm in the midst of great change, my arm wrapped tightly around the arm of God. Staying behind as others move forward, move away to greater opportunity, remaining neutral, waiting for God to fill that hole in my heart that they leave behind. Welcoming the new faces, encouraging their newfound sense of belonging… staying, remaining. Loving. Still, as I allow these deep grooves to be formed in my heart, I sense a unique bond between my spirit and God’s spirit, I think it feels like strength and resolve and a bit of longing, an enormous amount of letting go. At the same time, I realize something is letting go of me. Mary teaches us how to let go and at the same time to realize that something is letting go of us. The darkness, the mundane, the future without a hope, it’s all letting go of us now as we allow the light of the world to be born in us. The way ahead may be uncertain and the cagey, wild holy spirit might be somewhat unpredictable at times, but the arm of God is always there, stabilizing us, there to hold on to, to hide under, to escort us into new experiences, new ways of being as the old ways let go. This Christmas, it is Mary who is helping me to remain.

Sherry Cothran is the pastor of West Nashville United Methodist Church in Nashville, TN and a writer/recording artist. For more on Sherry's work, check out her website at www.sherrycothran.com or her blog at http://sherrycothran.wordpress.com

a giving spirit is Christmas...

"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol



Who is St. Nicholas?
December 6th ~ St. Nicholas Day December 19th on the Julian Calendar.
"The true story of Santa Claus begins with Nicholas, who was born during the third century in the village of Patara. At the time the area was Greek and is now on the southern coast of Turkey. His wealthy parents, who raised him to be a devout Christian, died in an epidemic while Nicholas was still young. Obeying Jesus' words to "sell what you own and give the money to the poor," Nicholas used his whole inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering. He dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. Bishop Nicholas became known throughout the land for his generosity to the those in need, his love for children, and his concern for sailors and ships." -St. Nichols Center

Published on Nov 25, 2012 by MrColoradovideos
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