Category: Life Musings

Giving Thanks

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“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
— Thornton Wilder

As we approach another Thanksgiving—dining room tables heaped high with the obligatory turkey, taters, and trimmings, it’s difficult to ignore the struggle and challenge so many of us have faced this year. Alas, it’s been a year of more slicing and dicing of budgets and jobs than of crudités. So many have lost so much.

That’s why it is more important than ever that we focus on gratitude—the active process of paying attention to the blessings in our lives and expressing thanks. Granted, this may require a little more creativity and resourcefulness than usual, but it is so important. How powerful it is that seek the silver lining in our most difficult situations and feel genuinely grateful for the opportunities to learn and grow.

Admittedly, that sounds a little pop-psychological. You may be thinking, “Yea, Elaine, easier said than done.” And, I agree to an extent. My year has provided many “learning opportunities.” With an unexpected “professional reinvention,” the vicissitudes of life as a single mom with two teenage boys, a failed relationship, and critically ill family members—2009 has been no picnic.

But I am grateful for so much. The road to self-awareness can be arduous, disruptive, and painful, but it reaps generous rewards. I have excavated buried treasure (and some trash for immediate disposal) from the depths of my own psyche. And, I am grateful to be making new discoveries daily about what I really want and what I possess that I can express to make the world a better place. Wow, with almost a half a century under my belt, I’m finally starting to figure some of “it” out. As treacherous as the road has been, it’s been productive, indeed.

My remarkable boys, faithful friends, family, and church home are all on my gratitude list. I also appreciate you and your interest in my writing. This blog is my passion and my pleasure. It is astonishing. The unpredictable Circle of Life has truly spun me in an exhilarating, new direction this year. And I am convinced that gratitude has helped me. The challenge is allowing ourselves to see it amidst the noise, clutter, and confusion of our lives—to be fully present and consciously aware. It pays to practice gratitude; it can:

Improve relationships. Think about those people who let you know they appreciate you. Doesn’t their appreciation improve your relationships? Be grateful for people, and make sure you let them know how you feel.

Reduce negativity. It is hard to be negative about your situation when you are thinking about the positive aspects. One of the fastest ways to improve your mood or outlook is to count your blessings.

Improve problem-solving skills. When we think about a problem from the perspective of gratefulness, we open our minds up to new possibilities and connections. We enter a problem-solving situation with an attitude of opportunity rather than challenge or defeat.

Help us learn. Most dark clouds have a silver lining. Every problem can give birth to opportunity. Being grateful for your situation, even if you don’t like it, allows you to be thankful for the opportunity to learn something new.

Alleviate depression. Try writing five things you are grateful for each night before you go to sleep. You may just start to see a ray of light piercing through those gray clouds. Developing an attitude of gratitude is one of the most important things that you can do for attracting and manifesting the things that you desire into your life.

Life is a series of choices. It is a combination of proportion and perception, and we must be deliberate about consciously choosing gratitude. I surrender my feelings of negativity and despair. I embrace the viability of hope. I actively look for humor, abundance, and joy, and I allow others to reach out to me with their gifts of love, laughter, and healing. I signal the world that I am open, engaged, and committed to fostering the greater good—today and in the years ahead.

Blessings to you and your loved ones this Thanksgiving,

Elaine

Does “Unfriend” Really Have Lex-Appeal?

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This morning, Rex Petrasko, my savvy, smart, sincere executive vice president, closed our daily meeting with the announcement that the New Oxford American Dictionary had proclaimed the Word of the Year for 2009 to be “unfriend.” I smiled at him knowingly from across the room, because I had heard the confounding announcement hours earlier on NPR as I brushed my teeth.

When I heard the brief news byte, I paused for a moment, swallowed hard and considered the irony. First of all, how interesting that the Word of the Year would be a social media—even Facebook word. And “unfriend,” no less. How perplexing that the Oxford folk embraced the negative version of the verb-ized noun “friend.”

Unfriend: (verb) To remove someone as a “friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook. As in, “I decided to unfriend my boyfriend on Facebook after we had a fight.”

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford ’s US dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year. Most “un-” prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar “un-” verbs (uncap, unpack), but “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

Christine, I think I beg to differ. “Unfriend” has a limited appeal, if at all, and it is particularly disconcerting in this age when people are desperate to connect on some level—electronic or otherwise. Friend, blog, text, comment, post, and tweet are all new inhabitants of the morphed communication lexicon. They are all terms for a new mode of behaving—a new way of being—not so much communicating.

I commented on my Facebook page status today that the Word of the Year might be indicative of the dark underbelly of social media. Merridith Branscombe, a Facebook pal and spirited, sassy woman from my Northwestern sorority days, commented, “It is fairly strange that friend somehow transformed to a verb; and that ‘unfriend’ is Word of the Year? I guess it’s not on the underbelly anymore, but in plain sight.

She is absolutely correct. It is in plain sight. We are connecting and disconnecting in plain sight—in front of God and everyone, and “there’s the rub,” as Hamlet said. Social media is less about communicating and more about behaving. At one point, my ex-boyfriend seemed more disturbed about my “unfriending” him on Facebook than about the actual breakup of the relationship. It gives me pause. Are we all more concerned about the virtual ramifications of relationships than the realities? Something to ponder—especially when we are all so hungry for valuable, real, authentic connection, and online experiences that are truly worth our time and attention in this choatic, often superficial world.

More and more, we are defining ourselves by how we interact, as opposed to what we say. The way we describe ourselves is really irrelevant. We are—how we are, as opposed to who we are. Same goes for businesses. Our customers are defining our brands—not vice versa.

“Unfriend” means that we no longer wish the “offending” person to be part of our online inner circles—our intimate online world, our defined universe. Our walls and tweet streams are sacred ground in many ways. They document our inner most thoughts and our profoundest dreams—our vulnerability and our humanity. As I have mentioned in other posts, “ambient intimacy” has come to describe the visceral nature of social media. Considering that an old boyfriend still might be lurking around as a so-called friend feels invasive, almost voyeuristic. But, how incongruent this seems in a word of open-source and “shareware.” It’s a paradox, indeed.

As the social web continues to explode with opportunities for connection and synergy, conversely, the need to maintain personal autonomy and control somehow intensifies. What do you think?

No more waiting in the weeds: Make time to grow your social media garden

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ElaineGantzWright’s blog is for people interested in using the Web and online marketing to drive social change. Elaine covers social media for nonprofits, philanthropy trends, online giving, cause marketing, random life musings, and more. Find her at SocialFuse.

gardenI recently read Josh Catone’s Mashable post on the “5 Essential Tips for Promoting Your Charity Using Social Media.” I applaud Josh’s concise synthesis of the basic-level concepts defining social media. But I really think it’s time to help organizations get specific and tactical. We need to move from musing to mastering. Many of the organizations I advise are still befuddled and overwhelmed by social media. They seem to view social media as some separate, daunting frontier they need to confront and invade. However, in many ways, social media is really just a new, better way of helping nonprofits do what they do best – engage. It’s made for us! We need to move the conversation from “Why should we?” to “How should we?” It’s now more of a functional shift than a philosophical one. Josh’s recommendations are well-taken and commonly held. Yet, here are some additional thoughts to ponder to take your strategy to the next level:

Build a Plan and Work It.
Josh instructs that you’ll get a much better return on your investment in social media if you take the time to actually engage your followers, friends, and constituents. He warns that we should not just broadcast information. We should consume it, as well. Indeed, this is the way social media works, but the question is – How do we work this? To foster relationships, organizations need to officially delegate responsibility for regular care, feeding, and cultivation of online communities to staff, trained volunteers, or perhaps, an outside agency or consultant. Simply creating a Facebook fan page or Twitter profile will not produce results. Start by assessing the following:

• Your Goals – SEO, PR, traffic (to drive awareness? advertising click-thrus? conversions?)
• Your Audience – Where do your constituents/stakeholders live? What do you want them to do?
• Your Resources – You, interns, staff, agency, consultant? Budget? Communication tools?

Social media is organic – much like a garden which must be regularly tended and even weeded. It’s all about activity and careful attention. Here are some specific tasks to help your garden take root and thrive:

• Create and update blogs and tags at least once a week.
• Respond to all blog comments within 24 hours.
• Pose questions in and respond to queries in relevant Linked In discussion groups.
• Tweet at least once daily and retweet (RT@) content relevant to your mission.
• Respond to Facebook comments promptly, and update Facebook status at least daily.
• Post high-value content, such as videos, articles, and blogs across key social media platforms.
• Identify the A-List blogs and cultivate positive relationships with as many as possible to persuade them to blog about your issue. Or guest blog for them.
• Drop html links with target anchor text related to a specific call to action, relevant product, or web resource for an additional SEO lift and traffic increase.
• Start and update a custom, branded community such as Ning to drive engagement and enhance SEO on your own site.

Create a Human Persona.
Social media is your opportunity to put a face on your organization and to humanize interaction. Those who are immersed in social media are not really looking for a press release or canned “mission statement.” They are hungry for intimate, behind-the-scenes, authentic access. Think about ways to make the private public. This is the messaging that will attract and embrace.

Create Valuable Content.
Josh recommends sharing only the highest quality content. This is key. I was speaking with a friend just today about the challenge of being inundated with information. With so much competition for the attention of constituents, you need to make sure the content you publish and share is relevant and real. So, be sure to consider the context and the medium. Perhaps, consider experimenting with videos on your website – feature video testimonials from donors and/or recipients. Social media is about storytelling – truth that touches the heart.

Create Community Instantly
Social media gives you the power to spread information quickly. Using social media platforms to issue a call to action online can trigger viral campaigns rapidly, economically, and effectively – enabling you to reach new audiences. Plus, using tools, such as #hashtags on Twitter, can help you create improvised communities around issues on the fly. Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, but you add them directly to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag. Read more about them on Beth Kanter’s blog.

Create a Social Media Culture.
Just as everyone in a healthy organization is a salesperson, everyone in your organization should help cultivate your social media presence. As Josh says, if everyone at your charity is connecting with people on Twitter and Facebook, you’ll be able to engage many more people than if just a couple of folks are tasked with using social media tools. But, in the realm of the tactical, you should not expect this to “just happen magically.” Create a social media policy – even if it consists of a simple public relations calendar of messages, events, or campaigns to discuss organization-wide. Include your staff, donors, and even recipients. And don’t forget your board of directors. Nonprofits are constantly seeking ways to engage boards in resource building, and social media is a great way to involve boards of directors – especially when it comes to tapping into their potentially powerful spheres of influence.

“That is well said,” replied Candide, “but we must cultivate our garden.”
-Voltaire

How are you cultivating your social media garden? What’s helping you thrive? Let me know if you need help planting the seeds. Find me at SocialFuse.

Finding Faith in Social Media

elaine gantz wright4 Comments
Mo Ranch 2009
Mo Ranch 2009

Theoretically, I know that church is much more than a building or a weekly activity on the to-do list. But no other experience proves that more clearly than my annual trip to Mo Ranch outside of Kerrville, Texas in the pristine splendor of the Texas Hill Country. Though I consider myself an inveterate urban gal, there is something so ethereal, so transformational about the majestic beauty of the grand, sweeping vistas of the Presbyterian Mo Ranch retreat. Just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes—even as I type this.

Leaving behind responsibilities, have-tos, and the clanging of electronic gadgets is actually no easy task (particularly challenging for my teenagers). No Internet, no cell phones, no WiFi—but, oh, some amazing connections—of the human kind. I relished the hours of talking and listening, of singing and laughing, of weeping and praying. One of my fellow retreaters suggested this environment gives God the space to utter, “Can you hear me now?”

The stillness reminds us of the clutter and clatter we muddle through every day—increasing in density and volume with every new Tweet, Ringtone, and Poke.

But, it’s our reality—and our opportunity, really. Just as there is a time and place for sharing the view of a thousand glittering diamonds strewn across the deep dark blanket of a Texas night sky, there is also a place for connecting in new, unexpected ways through the mysteries of new media.

I have been thinking a great deal about using social media to enhance my church community and perhaps the lives of other congregations. I see it as a natural way to build the community of God with bold, new voices— beyond Sunday morning and the bricks and mortar of the tangible place called church. In her article, “The Church on Facebook” in The Christian Century, Lenora Rand makes a compelling argument on behalf of virtual community for churches. As she points out, “Church isn’t where you meet. Church isn’t a building. Church is what you do. Church is who you are.”

Church is carrying out the work of God in our lives, homes, and communities. I am so proud of the work of First Presbyterian Church of Dallas—serving about 1,500 meals a day through The Stewpot in conjunction with The Bridge to those in desperate need, as well as sponsoring other youth and adult-driven community service projects around the city, the country, and the world.

On Sunday morning each week, we meet with others of like mind and beliefs to worship; however, social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter can provide a valuable, even profound extension of our community-building opportunities. In our hectic world, we can look to Facebook, Twitter, or other online communities to provide a safe place for revealing our truths, sharing our frustrations, supporting each other in sorrow and joy, and even praying for one another in specific ways. We are hungry for a place to share our burdens and offer shoulders.

Often, the authenticity and truth of much of the communication on Facebook and Twitter astounds me. Admissions can range from cries of hopelessness after a layoff, to the anguish of life upheaval after divorce, to the utter joy of a child’s first steps. It’s a way to connect, engage, and soothe frayed emotions, weakened bodies, and aching hearts—woven into the fabric of our over-scheduled days and sleepless nights.

Last week, I wrote about the concept associated with Twitter called “ambient intimacy.” Commenting on my blog post, one of my readers clarified that blogger Leisa Reichelt originally coined the term. Reichelt says, “Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.”

Some may say—who cares?

But she contents, “There are a lot of us, though, who find great value in this ongoing noise. It helps us get to know people who would otherwise be just acquaintances. It makes us feel closer to people we care for but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like. Knowing these details creates intimacy. (It also saves a lot of time when you finally do get to catch up with these people in real life!) It’s not so much about meaning, it’s just about being in touch.”

Social media a powerful, intimate way to share the human experience—and perhaps even the Holy Spirit as we reach out to touch souls in an evolving, increasingly complicated world.

There are so many contradictions
In all these messages we send
(We keep asking)
How do I get out of here
Where do I fit in?
Though the world is torn and shaken
Even if your heart is breakin’
It’s waiting for you to awaken
And someday you will-
Learn to be still
Learn to be still

from “Learn to Be Still,” The Eagles

How are you holding on — in the meantime?

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The Rollins Philanthropy & Leadership Center recently released the findings of its 2009 Nonprofit Compensation and Benefits Report. The report compiled data on more than 8,300 individual salaries and categorized into 121 job titles for 145 nonprofit organizations in Central Florida and found that male CEOs/executive directors of nonprofit organizations earn significantly higher pay than their female counterparts on average. According to the report, the average annual compensation for male CEOs/executive directors was $110,962 versus $80,987 per year for females. “While more of the surveyed CEOs/executive directors are women, there are more males in the CEO/executive director positions at the largest organizations,” said Margaret Linanne, executive director of the Philanthropy Center. Margaret added that these numbers lined up with recent nationwide data released by a similar study conducted by The Nonprofit Times.

I hung up the phone after speaking with Margaret and thought, “How grim.” I consider myself a glass-half-full, optimistic person most days, but I’ve been having trouble mustering the good cheer. This story makes me think of my own situation—in transition once again—personally and professionally. I am a seasoned career professional and a woman with many blessings. I have invented programs, raised millions, and changes lives, but my path has encountered many challenges lately. The social media start-up business I felt was my calling recently faced difficult choices—a layoff of the core team due to budget cuts. The pain of a vision, derailed.

Ordinarily, such circumstances would not thwart my resolve, but the uncertain economic environment is disturbing in new, pervasive ways. I can think of more than a dozen bright, intelligent, accomplished women in their forties and fifties who have been relieved of their significant responsibilities in the past six months—in for-profit and nonprofit environments. Margaret surmised that the male bias still lingers in private sector and nonprofit board rooms across the country that—”women don’t have to work,” because their husbands are the making big salaries or because they are raising the children. But I am here to tell you that the women are typically doing both jobs these days. Where do we find the energy?

And many reports say that males are feeling the brunt of the economic downturn. A July 16, 2009 Wall Street Journal article reports, “The 2.3 percentage-point gap between men’s June unemployment rate of 10.6% and women’s 8.3% rate is near the highest it’s ever been since records started being kept in 1948. The gap first hit two percentage points in March this year, and the 2.5 percentage-point gap in May was the highest ever. The overall unemployment rate rose to 9.5% in June, from 9.4% in May. The economy lost a higher-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June.”

As the single mother of two teenage boys, the reality of waning male productivity is as disconcerting as the abhorrent gender compensation gap. About two out of three men I encounter seem to be chronically unemployed, underemployed, or nursing a sense of entitled malaise. Not sure what in the heck is going on in our culture, but I suspect we are on the verge a course correction of unprecedented magnitude and disruption.

Seeking solace, I revisited one of my favorite books recently—In the Meantime, by Iyanla Vanzant. It is an intimate, touching book about transition of the heart—the process of moving from one period in your life to the next—managing monumental changes in love, life . . . everything.

Iyanla writes: “The presence of love is a healing power. The effects of this healing are what we are all born to discover and experience in every aspect of our lives. It is sometimes difficult to realize this, because in the meantime, we are not getting the love we want in the way we want it. The meantime is often a time of vagueness. You are experiencing a vague anxiety that you cannot quite pinpoint. It’s in your head. No, your chest. No, your heart. Sometimes that something is sadness. You are walking on a tightrope, about to fall. You are trying to hold on, to stay grounded, but slowly, bit by bit, you realize that you or your job or your relationship is falling apart. In the meantime, just when things look like they are falling apart, they are actually falling into place—the divine place for everyone involved. When you are in the meantime, you are in a time of healing preparation. You are being prepared for the grandest experience of your life—unconditional love and light. In the meantime, you must be willing to endure the process of felling vague confusion and helplessness. Remember, however, the meantime is not permanent. It is a healing process.”

I find Iyanla’s words comforting right now—at a time we all need to examine the truth in our hearts as we reinvent our expectations and our lives. We all need to find a way to hold on—in the meantime.

Anne Lamott, another one of my favorite writers, says, “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”

What are your thoughts about keeping your balance?

Tweet Surrender: The Truth about Twitter

elaine gantz wright6 Comments

tweet_twoThe decibel level of Twitter buzz only continues to crescendo. Harvard Business School is even studying the complexities of Tweet-ology. A Harvard MBA student examined the activity of a random sample of 300,000 Twitter users in May of this year—to try to understand the phenomenon that is Twitter. We hear it referenced almost daily—and more and more, you can follow just about anyone or anything on Twitter, but what’s really going on? And this begs the question—just how do we make it work for us?

Continuing along my own journey of social media comprehension, I have to admit I was startled by this recent data—especially in comparison to what I know about other popular social media sites, such as Facebook. The researchers discovered that 80% of those sampled were “followed by” or “followed” at least one user. By comparison, only 60 to 65% of other online social media site members have at least one friend (measuring these stats for sites at similar levels of development). This suggests that entrenched, active users really do understand exactly how Twitter works. (Unlike much of the non-Web 2.0 world.) The initiated get it — not really too much of a revelation, methinks.

However, it’s the metrics around gender behavior that particularly intrigue me. Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women. And, men also have more reciprocated relationships, in which two users follow each other. This “follower split” suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or perhaps they have more stringent criteria for reciprocating relationships. This seems somehow counter-intuitive, though—especially given that females hold a slight majority on Twitter—45% are men, and 55% are women.

Even more enlightening is— who follows whom:
• A man is two times more likely to follow another man than a woman.
• A woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman.
• A man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman.

This cannot be explained by different tweeting activity, either, because both men and women tweet at the same rate. These results are remarkable in light of previous social media research. On other social networks, most of the activity is focused around women. Men seem to follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they know.

Generally, men receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women. The researchers conjectured that perhaps men and women find the content produced by other men on Twitter more compelling than on other social networks. And maybe, men find the content produced by women less compelling because of the lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc. After all, men are visual creatures.

Or could the cryptic nature of the 140-character-post limit and truncated URLs inhibit more meaningful sharing—that women often prefer? It’s a thought-provoking question.

Overall, Twitter’s usage patterns are also very different from a typical online social network. On Twitter, there is a small, very active user group. Specifically, the top 10% of Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. Oh, there’s that old 90/10 rule again! Fundraising 101, indeed. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for only about 30% of all production.

From this perspective, Twitter is actually more of a one-way, asynchronous communication vehicle than a two-way, peer-to-peer network. Perhaps nonprofits can harness the platform for a new way of crowd fundraising? Worth considering. The leaders initiate and the followers acquiesce. Hmmm . . . a whole new way to think about the social web? Perhaps a new social science. I wonder.

What do you think? @ellagantz

From the Bazaar to the Cathedral

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Social media = the bazaar
Social media = the bazaar

I had an energizing partnering conversation with a dynamic nonprofit consultant this week. It’s one of the things I love most about my work—networking and brainstorming with passionate, bright professionals about maximizing support of nonprofit organizations. Carlo Cuesta is part of a firm based in Minneapolis called Creation in Common. Love the notion. And, I love the Twin Cities, because I spent my salad days (in addition to most of my snow days) there working for the glorious Guthrie Theater—one of the foundational forces of our nation’s regional theater movement. In its vision statement, CIC states, “Engaged collaboration is the ultimate method in which to create vibrant communities working in harmony toward a shared vision. Knowledge is in constant motion and is formed through playful interaction, the active exchange of ideas and concepts, and the testing of solutions that lead to enlightening truths and courageous failure.”

This is a perfect description of social media.

There is much lively banter and conversation across the various Web 2.0 groups I frequent about nonprofit engagement in social media. Do nonprofits get it? How should they do it? Are they really ahead of the private sector curve? Does anyone know how to measure ROI? Why should they spend the time? How do they integrate into my communication plan?

All of these are valid questions—and worth answering as soon as possible. But one post I read definitely sums up my feelings. Richard Lewis, a new media pro, says, “The most important consideration for the use of social networking is that if you choose not to participate, you are still part of the discussion, but you just do not have a voice.” It’s all about finding your own, distinctive, effective voice in the sometimes overwhelming cacophony.

Actually, many analogies are emerging around social media— “the cocktail party,” “circus,” etc. But, I really liked Carlo’s concept – “the bazaar.” Marketing has been carried out to date more “cathedral style.” Organizations traditionally deliver messages as if we were speaking to a focused, almost sedentary audience—their congregations, if you will. The social media landscape really is a more like a flea market or a bazaar. It’s a free-for-all of experiences and ideas with the incessant, media-driven competition for attention and interaction. It’s about distraction and short attention spans. Carlo contends that our task as marketers is create that bridge or portico—that provides a path into the organization’s “cathedral.”

What a useful image! Yes, we do need to lead friends into our figurative cathedrals. Perhaps we can do that more effectively by offering opportunities to engage and converse on our very own web sites. Through our own hosted, customized communities?

But, we also need to meet the fish where they swim. Such as:

• Twitter — micro-blogging
• Flickr, Picasa — photo-sharing
• LinkedIn, Facebook — social networking
• YouTube, Vimeo – video-sharing
• WordPress, Blogger, Typepad – blogging
• Slideshare, YELP – Info-sharing

The context has changed—and to succeed, our tactics must be decentralized, as well. We are communicating and responding in real time—on the fly and with a whole new mojo (as my teenage son would say).

So, it seems our goal in the long run is to cultivate and empower these various communities of affinity—whether they emerge in our own cathedrals—or in the hearts of those we serve in the remotest corners of the vast virtual universe.

What are your thoughts?

Are you listening to your life?

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buechnerI have an amazing gift — my church, Dallas First Presbyterian Church and Pastor Joe Clifford. I do not consider myself a proselytizer. In fact, I see myself on an inclusive, open spiritual journey. And Joe has an extraordinary capacity to inform and enrich my path in ways that are difficult to articulate. Today was an excellent example. He talked about the celebration of Easter wearing off as we entered a week punctuated by the bleakness of tax day, difficult professional challenges — real life, etc. Then, he said a “friend” forwarded him the Susan Boyle link on Wed — the astonishing performance of the unassuming 47-year-old on Britain’s Got Talent, who has captured the world’s imagination. He says he does not have time for all the forwarded email he receives, but he opened this one.

He said he wept — and he asked the congregation how many of us had seen it and wept. Most of those present raised their hands. He went on to describe theologian Frederick Buechner’s take on the origin of these tears. I now cannot get enough Buechner. He ponders:

“How do you listen to your life? How do you get into the habit of doing it? How do you keep ears cocked and your eye peeled for the presence of God or the presence of anything else? One thing I have said, which I think is true, is to pay attention to any of those moments in your life when unexpected tears come in your eyes. You never know when that may happen, what may trigger them. Very often I think if you pay attention to those moments, you realize that something deep beneath the surface of who you are, something deep beneath the surface of the world, is trying to speak to you about who you are.

You never know what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you’ve never seen before. A pair of somebody’s old shoes can do it. Almost any movie before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention.

They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are. More often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and to summoning you to where you should go to next.

And I wondered why. I think I know why. I think what happened was that we were remembering Eden. This marvelous dance of humans and beasts and joy and freedom – and God was certainly present there this joy and freedom from so many things that plague us. It is where we all started from, I think, in some fashion, some odd way. It is where, by God’s good grace, we are all headed. Just this glimpse of it was more poignant than grief and something I’ve always remembered. That is an example of what I mean by listening to your life. It would be an example of the best advice I can give you. If anyone wants to start listening in a new way, keep track of those moments when something brings those tears to your eyes.”

I thought about some tears that have caught me off guard in my life:
1. The full crescendo of brass while singing “He is Risen” last weekend. Gets me EVERY year — no matter what’s going on in my life.
2. The song “One Day More” — also from Les Miserables. (And many other songs.)
3. Many of Joe’s sermons.
4. Some moments of triumph in movies or plays. Ian, my son, always asks, “Are you really crying, mom?” I always answer, “Happy tears.”
5. A passionate kiss.
6. The laughter of my sons.
7. Looking out across the meadow at Mo Ranch on Sunday morning.
8. The kind words of a friend.
9. My father’s tears when he heard my mom was going to be OK.
10. The embrace of my sons.

Joe said we have a profound, spiritual reaction to joy — to God. And it’s not enough to experience the moment — we must use it as a way to discover our own life’s calling — what God has called to do and be.
Are you listening to your life — and your tears?

The meaning of social media for nonprofits and the wisdom of Sidney Poitier.

elaine gantz wrightLeave a comment

Every day at http://www.YourCause.com, I set out to make the world a better place by empowering nonprofit organizations. It’s an exciting, new landscape of trial and error; ups and downs; fits and starts — well, more fits than starts, particularly in the wacky world of a Web 2.0 start-up. Every once in while, I have the opportunity to be truly inspired, even electrified. I live for those moments. I had such an experience at the AFP International conference in New Orleans last week. Amidst the chaos and cacophony of more than 3000 “jazzed” fundraisers in the Big Easy, I witnessed communication at its finest, clearest, and most meaningful. Mr. Sidney Poitier, one our finest actors, commanded a room of thousands — with the clarity of his purpose and the weight of his presence.  His gravitas was magnetic–elegant, yet with an ease that comes with years of experience as a master communicator. This is a man comfortable in his own skin — and in his own head.  I could have listened to him speak for hours — riveted, in tears many times. The poignant authenticity and intimacy of his delivery were sheer magic — mesmerizing. He focused on those who had most impacted  his own life philanthropically — not through sweeping gestures and grand campaigns,  but through private, selfless, personal acts of kindness and consideration. And he overflowed with the gratitude that resulted from their sincere acknowledgment. Wow! What a privilege. “Philanthropy is the profound manifestation of the best in all of us.”  “Sometimes we need to take an honest look a how steady we are at the wheel of our existence.” – Sidney Poitier