The Hope of Improvisation

This brief post was actually a section that didn't make it to my recent piece on the Science for the Church's blog, "Grateful for Gratitude." 

So, I thought I'd put it here.

I’m a jazz musician, and I’ve brought improvisation not just to music, but to all of my life. In the process, I’ve realized that improv is an act of hope. And this hope emerges from confidence in two key things: the other musicians and your own skills (as I wrote in chapter 6 of Say Yes to No). 

The bottom line: in improv, we don't know what's going to happen yet--it's not scripted--and yet we have hope it's going to be good.

This leads then to the question. How can we be open to improvising our life, that is walking by faith? I find it's fairly simple: first, being grateful for what God has already done. 

Gratitude therefore is the basis of improvisation. It allows us to move forward with the ability to create a life without scripting everything before it happens. Gratitude indeed leads to improvisational hope.

(Because trying to script the future doesn’t really work, does it?)

20 Tips on Saying Yes to No

Last night I came across a list of twenty tips on how to say yes to no (which, of course, is form the book of the same name). 
I thought it was worth posting...

1. Always say No mindful of a clearer Yes 
2. Say No with compassion
3. Say No with conviction
4. When someone asks for a task you can't do, say No and find a substitute for yourself
5. Remember Nos sometimes take courage to carry out
6. True success means being on the right path and saying No to the wrong ones
7. Recall that No = focus
8. The art of negation: For Michelangelo to sculpt the David he had to chisel away at the raw marble. We need to chisel away with Nos to find the hidden masterpiece 
9. Keep your Nos in front of you
10. Keep Nos strategic
11. Be open when life says No
12. Use the power of No to restrict technology's reach
13. Say No to work and obligations 30 minutes/day and one day a week (breakouts or mini-Sabbaths)
14. Say No to control (or pray "let it be")
15. No who you are: live with integrity
16. Say yes to No lies to yourself or anyone else
17. Say yes to No toxic relationships
18. In order to know your spouse you've got to say No to infidelity
19. Keep in mind you're always saying No to something
20. Beyond saying the right Nos lies God's Yes for you 

An Exercise in Personal Branding

How do you know what to say yes to? I offer this exercise in Personal Branding that's found in my book Say Yes to No. This exercise is based on the guideline from the world of branding that a good brand must be described in three words. It applies this principle to our personal lives. 

Begin by brainstorming. Write our every adjective, verb, or noun you’d use to represent you or how others actually describe you. (I’m stretching the rules of branding that call only for how others portray you.) What are those words? Intelligent. Self-starter. Stubborn. Funny. Spiritual. Caring. Winsome. Dynamic. Energetic.

Then chart those on the top half with words that you’d like to describe you and on the bottom half with words others use. Take a moment to observe what you’ve written. What does this say about your aspirations for yourself? How do the two lists line up?

            I’m assuming you have about twenty to thirty words. So now comes the hard part. You start saying no. Remember that branding can only use three descriptors. Take a first whack at the list. Reduce your list to about ten words. Take time: Hang with those for a few minutes. Then let them sit, and come back to them later. Maybe even tomorrow. When you do, then prioritize them. Look not only for descriptors that apply today, but also for your preferred future. What you want to become. Let the priorities determine the remaining three. Now write out those three essential, goal-defining words.

Two pieces of advice: Use a pencil so you can revise and keep the entire first list. That way you can let yourself review and revise your list. Secondly, allow yourself to lament the descriptors you’re not going to concentrate on. It’s a hard truth that some dreams will in fact never be realized.

            Read those three finalists. Meditate on them. Go back in a day or a week. You may want to make some changes. How does that “brand identity” really fit you? What will you do to deepen those characteristics? Do you need to make changes? What nos need to be stated now in order to realize these three yeses? What are the big yeses that you will work on each day? At this point, I like to recall the saying, "Some dream of success. Others wake up and do something about it." See how this branding identity defines what you do each day.

Becoming Quiet Enough to Hear

One more entry on the way to a book, now called The Time for Yes.

"God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer."

Mother Teresa

Can God get our attention?

In Say Yes to No, I offered some guidelines for the practice of finding a groove, but here I’d like to go further. Much of this process has to do with detaching from our techie toys—our cell phones, iPads, laptops, that kind of thing. When we tune out, we can tune in and hear God's deep yeses for us. 

I will take each of these ten steps and update them for finding our yeses in life.

1.     Realize that technology can obscure the view of the stars. By this I meant, alongside the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, that we lose track of what’s around us in the natural world. When we have too much to distract us, we easily lose track of the awe and wonder of the natural world, where we are often ready to hear the Author and Creator of nature.

2.     Recognize that ours is an age of distraction. Since Say Yes to No came out, there have been numerous studies that indicate if we are wired to respond to immediate stimulus—it even gives us an extra shot of that hormone of happiness, dopamine. The problem is that, if we’re checking our email while we’re on the phone with our sister and we’re texting and we’re watching a DVD, we’re conditioning our brains never to concentrate on any one thing for very long. But to hear that deeper Voice, we need to be able to concentrate and not seek distraction.

3.     Use the Power of No to restrict technology’s reach. This one builds on the last. It’s ok to say no to those devices that distract us.

4.     Turn off the TV most of the time. Our TVs are on too much and suck away our time. As Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi wrote in his insightful book, Flow; watching TV rarely puts us in “optimal experience.” And my contention and experience is that it’s in optimal experience that we hear the yeses for us.

5.     Do things you love to do. And so we come to the point to say yes to what we love to do. Is that scrapbooking? Is it playing the violin? Those are the places where we “come to ourselves” and there we become quiet.

6.     Center on the center. When we do what we love, we find ourselves at a deep Center where we can encounter God in our lives. At the Center, we hear a tailor-made yes. I know no better description than Psalm 63: “You, God, are my God,/ earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,/  my whole being longs for you,/ 
in a dry and parched land/ where there is no water.”

7.     Open the gift of solitude. It’s going to be hard to listen to God’s voice if there’re always other voices around us. Not that those are bad, but I’m afraid that we haven’t learned to take in the way that being alone can be entirely renewing.

8.     Begin each day by listening. That’s key to this chapter. If we start each day, going away from the insistence demands of the day toward the deepest values we hold dear, that will make a difference. “The moment you wake up each morning,” writes the brilliant writer, C. S. Lewis, “all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life coming flowing in.”

9.     Learn to “let it be.” So much of finding the yes is not creating a yes, but letting God lead what we’re doing. We are created to respond to a Yes that comes from beyond us, and yet resonates within. When we lay down our desire to control and micromanage our lives, in that place, we can be begin to listen.

10.  Groove with the spirituality of samba. I contend that the samba, that mesmerizing Brazilian rhythm, is the perfect symbol of what it means to groove with the right rhythms. It’s not all notes (yeses), it’s not all spaces (no), nor can it truly be programmed through a computer. It’s a human rhythm of yeses and nos.

Is there one or two of these you need to start practicing right now? Create a table with one column marked “One Step to Hearing Yes” and a second “How I Will Take this Step.” (For example, “I will begin each day by quieting myself in my living room for 10 minutes.”) Commit yourself to this practice. Practice it for 40 days. (That’s biblical and remarkably close to what scientists have learned is the time we need to form a habit.) Say yes to it. And be sure you tell someone who will ask you in a week or two about whether you’re doing it. Get ready to hear God's yeses.

When Life Says No

Consider the work of God; who can make straight what he has made crooked? Ecclesiastes 7:14 

(In the Lenten devotional I put together--look to the right of this post for a link--I snipped out a piece from my book Say Yes to No. Below is the entire except. Let me know how you respond when Life says No.)

What happens when you say Yes to pursuing a dream, but life says No, right back in your face? Maybe it’s important to remind ourselves that we don’t control all the dials. Often the circumstances of life take over, and so we have to admit we no longer maintain control of our lives’ directions and the means of reaching our goals. Still what we can direct is not those circumstances, but our response. More importantly, I’ve found that these Nos can present an exciting option: Are you ready for something you hadn’t planned?

I begin with an inspiring example of using life’s No to bring about a new, totally serendipitous direction.

It’s 1990. Joanne, age twenty-five, is commuting by train between Manchester and London, England. She’s held various secretarial positions for the past six years, but secretly dreams of working as a novelist. Constantly imagining these stories does not help her job performance. In fact, in her own words, she’s one of the most pathetic secretaries imaginable. Later she offered reasons why:

Whatever job I had, I was always writing like crazy. All I ever liked about offices was being able to type up stories on the computer when no one was looking. I was never paying much attention in meetings because I was usually scribbling bits of my latest stories in the margins of the pad or thinking up names for my characters. This is a problem when you’re supposed to be taking the minutes of a meeting.

During today’s long railway commute, characteristically she’s reading, and encounters her first problem: The train experiences a mechanical failure, and Joanne hears the announcement that it’ll require four hours to fix. Problem B: Today she doesn’t feel like reading. What should she do? She looks through the window and begins to focus on some cows grazing in a meadow in front of her. During those hours, the want-to-be author begins to imagine a whole new universe. Those bovine companions are the catalyst.

I was sitting on the train, just staring out the window at some cows. It was not the most inspiring subject. When all of a sudden the idea for Harry just appeared in my mind’s eye. I can’t you why or what triggered it. But I saw the idea of Harry and the wizard school very plainly. I suddenly had this basic idea of a boy who didn’t know what he was.

At that moment, Joanne wants a pen and paper to sketch out some notes. Problem C: she has neither. Right then she could have stopped and spent the afternoon in aggravation (which is what I would have done). Instead she finds the best solution. Using her only available tool, imagination, she sketches out the characters and plot of her novel in her mind. And, by the time the train stopped at Knight’s Cross Station in London, she’s conceived the basic premise for Harry Potter’s “Philosopher Stone.” By the way, it didn’t resemble the final product (or its actual title), but so what? She was on her way.

Nevertheless, Joanne’s dream took several more years to realize. Her first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, appeared in 1998. Joanne, aka J.K. Rowling, subsequently won the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Whitbread Award for Best Children's Book, a special commendation for the Anne Spencer Lindbergh Prize, and a special certificate for being a three-year winner of the Smarties Prize. (I’m not even sure what that is). The Harry Potter series has sold over 100 million copies and have been translated into over fifty languages. Wow. All from four extra hours on a stinky train and a few stupid cows in a field.

This story leads to a what if. What if J.K. Rowling had decided that her life’s No was the word of defeat. What if she heard those cows murmuring, “Forget about your fantasy. Forget about writing. Just sit in this train and wait… frustrated.” (Actually, if she heard the cows speaking, that would have been a different kind of problem.) Nevertheless, what if her life’s No had presented an unanswerable dead-end?

Or to phrase this concern differently: “Great, Greg, you’ve told me all about No and how it leads to a truly successful life, one filled with integrity, with health. It sounds to me like blah, blah, blah. You’ve got to realize that it’s not always possible to say No to the demands of life. Sometimes life says No to you.”

I know. In my life, I slowly realized that I couldn’t triumph over the simple, daily demands of caring for small children in No-resistant New York City with a pressure-cooked job. Sometimes life engulfs your Nos. For you it may be illness, someone else’s decision (as in unrequited love), physical limitations, and other commitments, to name a few. But my discovery is life’s Nos led me to reflect on this topic and change my life. Thus I wrote this book, which I hope will help others in realizing the kind of life they truly desire.

Thinking about Nos that way does in fact change these mere problems into something more. I’ve gradually realized that just beyond life’s Nos, there often lies some new path. Now don’t get me wrong. I hate when life says No. I’ve read my self-help books. I’ve learned to “seek my dreams” and “never give up.” I’ve learned to have faith that life Nos are often better than what I would choose. Nevertheless, there’s nothing I can do about the roadblocks in these situations, and so I’ve learned to take these experiences as a call to stop and reorient.

So life has limitations, but even within those bounds, we can still experience dreams and the freedom to experience the fullness of life. Consider the sonnet. It’s a poem with one of two rhyming structures and only fourteen lines. No more, no less. Yet, as the masterful 18^th century English poet, William Wordsworth once presented, the sonnet possesses unusual potential that he named “the paradoxically liberating power of restriction.” Wordsworth argued that, within those precious lines, we are offered an amazing power of freedom—freedom to tackle issues of life and death, of love and loss. Within those few lines, poets grapple with all the major issues of life. Those constraints provide channels for creativity and freedom to flow. And sometimes life is a sonnet. If offers far fewer hours, skills, and dollars than we had expected. But within those precious few resources, we can still grasp what’s truly important.

Contentment and the Gift of Solitude

(I'm working on my message for Sunday, "Contentment," and this is an excerpt from my book Say Yes to No that ties together contentment, technology, and solitude.)

The reason we're so often discontent and distracted is not just the lure of technology’s buzz; it’s the impossibility of concentration when we’re connected to the Internet 24/7 or glued to the Tube. As the contemporary rock band, Switchfoot cries out:

I'm a nervous wreck but I'll bet

that that TV set

tells us what we want to hear. 

We need to disconnect from our techie toys and spend time alone. The psalmist writes with obvious contentment, “I have calmed and quieted my soul.” But who does this? Henri Nouwen, a natural extrovert, learned the value of solitude. And yet time alone is not all easy. He employed a striking image to describe this difficulty: “As soon as I decide to stay in solitude, confusing ideas, disturbing images, wild fantasies, and weird associations jump about in my mind like monkeys in a banana tree.” In fact, he formulated this frustration into a moving prayer:

Why, O Lord, is it so hard for me to keep my heart directed toward you? Do I keep wondering, in the center of my being, whether you will give me all I need if I just keep my eyes on you?

Please accept my distractions, my fatigue, my irritations, and my faithless wanderings.  You know me more deeply and fully than I know myself.  You love me with a greater love than I can love myself.  You even offer me more than I desire.  Look at me, see me in all my misery and inner confusion, and let me sense your presence in the midst of my turmoil.

So what does this tell us about the power of no? Technology, which promised free time and peace, has torn us apart, and we have lost integration. We have forgotten to listen to the rhythm of our bodies and souls. We have taken on the incessant roar of the machines that surround us. Instead of living with healthy rhythms, we only have what the popular, Grammy-winning pop duo, Steely Dan, described with utter succinctness, “I hear my insides, the mechanized hum of another world.”


When we disconnect in order to seek solitude, we are on the way to finding contentment.

Peanut Butter Manifesto

I will begin by simply reporting what my recent New Yorker recorded. The topic was whether Google was becoming too diffuse, spreading itself too thin. Ken Auletta drew on an apparently well-discussed 2006 memo from a Yahoo senior vice-president, which has become known as the Peanut Butter Manifesto. It reads:

We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be everything--to everyone.... I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.

Now you know I'm going to ring some changes on saying yes and no here. If Yahoo specifically, and Silicon Valley generally, have found that saying too many yeses is a bad practice that leads to nothing and nowhere in particular, we might also have something to learn. Although I love peanut butter, it seems to me that the reason this memo became famous (or infamous) is that it resonates. In organizations trying to compete in a wildly diversified market, it's become increasingly clear that we have to do a few things well rather than a number of things badly.

I'm working on my class tonight, "Getting Closer to God through Simplicity," and this Peanut Butter Manifesto probably needs to be applied to our spiritual lives as well. We spread ourselves too thin, running around from one task to the next, and find little room for our spiritual Center. Or at least I too often do.... My task tonight is to remind us that, in order to renovate our lives--and now to change the metaphor--we have to "edit what we have," as the famous designer John Wheatman wrote. (That brown vinyl lamp may need to find its way to the Salvation Army before the living room remolded can start.) Once we make some room in our lives, we find that God has been there all along.

It's a good topic. Maybe I'll bring peanut butter and invite some Yahoo executives....

The Difficulty of Writing in the Vernacular, Henri Nouwen, Amazon.com comments, & Say Yes to No

This entry is a bit of a miscellany (as you can tell from the title)....

I've been pondering an Amazon.com comment on Say Yes to No, primarily because I wrote the book as a way to connect with those outside the church. It appears that, at least for one reader, I failed. Listen to what Christy Pinhero offered:

The review is only two stars because, in it's [sic] description, this book is portrayed more as a book that will help you arrange your priorities. We are told that the author was a pastor, but nothing more. The publisher should have been more honest and revealed that this is Christian non-fiction. God is mentioned on every page, every story has a moral message. While I don't think this is necessarily a problem, I DO think that someone who is looking for something like, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" is going to be sorely disappointed. I was really expecting this to be a non-fiction book on time management, but this book has a clear religious bent that would render it unreadable to many. 

Mainly, I want to take in the difficulty of writing for those outside the church, or in the vernacular of everyday culture. I simply attempted to talk about work life balance and time management as a Christian without assuming my reader was spiritually identified. (I would note that Stephen Covey, whom she presents as a contrast and who wrote "Seven Habits," is Mormon.) There honestly aren't references to God on "every page" (as she asserts) of Say Yes to No--she admits to reading just the first three chapters--but still there are too many for her. And that only underlines the challenge.

I've also been pondering it because I'm teaching tonight on the great 20th century spiritual writer Henri Nouwen and the amazing accessibility of his writing. Nouwen once wrote a book for his secular friend, Fred. When the book was completed, Fred declared the book a failure, at least from the perspective of reaching those outside the church. Life of the Beloved left open some fundamental questions, Fred said, such as

Who is God? Who am I? Why am I here? How can I give my life meaning? How do I get faith?

I suppose the consolation is that, if someone of the stature of Henri Nouwen had difficulty, writing from a Christian commitment to those who don't share it, is in fact difficult. I do note, however, that others who commented on Amazon.com did not share this conclusion.

What do you think? Is it possible for someone with strong convictions--in my case religious ones--to speak to those who don't share them? How do you do it?

Yes and the Difficulty of Writing Well

I'm doing some work right now on the next book, the one to follow Say Yes to No. What's my theme? Yes. (How obvious was that?) It seems to me that when we learn the right yeses, we discover a life of beauty, excellence, and joy. (I'm not even going to mention here what happens when we get those yeses wrong.)

Why? I've discovered that, when I discussed the power of no with various readers, many would ask me, "Greg, I think I understand about no. What about saying yes?" So I began to ponder the other side of the ledger as it were, the yes that's surrounded by strategic nos. The next book answers that question with three yeses in three areas: personal life, work, and relationships. (That's a total of nine yeses.)

But here's the thing that struck me right between the eyes: When I say "yes" to writing, writing doesn't always nicely say "yes" back to me. I wish I could say that fairies whispered the right words in my ears as I joyfully typed on my PowerBook. I wish I could say that each sentence emerges full-formed and beautiful from my fingers.

But I'm not gonna lie. It doesn't happen that way. On any number of days, composing the next book can be tough going, slogging through mud on the way to my destination. I sometimes find comfort in remembering that Flaubert would work a whole day on one sentence. I just hope at some point, after all the detours, sore feet, and breaks along the way, I find I've created something beautiful, or at least as beautiful as I can create.

Summer Reading

In articles spun off by Say Yes to No, I've been surprised to find myself engaging with business publications, like BusinessWeek, CNBC, American Management's MWorld, and with publications that apply business concepts to church, such as Church Solutions. (You can find links to some of the pieces that have been published to your right.)

I've been taking some time recently to move forward with reading, especially business literature. One of the easiest for me to bring to church work is a book by the professor of psychologist and management, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

Csikszentmihalyi's (pronounced something like "Chick Sent Me High--ee") key idea is that at various points throughout the week, we find ourselves in “flow,” where we experience deep enjoyment, challenge matched by our skills, creativity, and sense that time is moving in a different, and fuller way. I believe that "flow" pretty much describes human flourishing, which I think is God's deep intention for our lives. Csikszentmihalyi’s research adds one surprise for many in the U.S.: that human beings more often experience flow when they are working than when they are at leisure.

Here's my takeaway: Goal-setting, striving for excellence, and clear guidelines are critical to work enjoyment and to life. In fact, even though I'm on vacation, I may be happier when I return to work.... Hmmm, I'll have to think about that one

Michael Jackson and the Beauty of Life

When I use the words "the beauty of life," I mean happiness. I mean that wherever we find beauty, we find life as its quintessence. And there we find human flourishing. Thus beauty and happiness--at least in my vocabulary--are seriously inter-related, if not almost coterminous.

Like so many around the globe in the last 24 hours, I've been taking in the death of the pop superstar, Michael Jackson. I'm not usually given over to this type of activity, but I watched the news shows the night of his death. They reviewed this young phenomenon who appeared on stage, flanked by his brothers in the Jackson Five and who later made an even bigger splash with "Off The Wall" and then the unprecedented, and never surpassed, sales of "Thriller." I've heard estimates of 50 to 100 million in sales of that record alone. They also noted his last decades where his artistry was overshadowed by scandalous and erratic behavior. The news reports reminded me that, after his peak at just about the midpoint in his 50 years, his fame markedly diminished.

I figured here, in this life, with all the resources of money, fame, and talent at its disposal, I'd find beauty. And, yes, beauty did play a role in MJ's life--I find his signature Moonwalk a stunning, beautiful choreographic event. Almost every one of his party anthems possess a beauty of rhythm, of energy. (And here I have to give props to his producer, Quincy Jones, who has no equal.)

But as I heard various interviews with the King of Pop, I didn't see ultimate beauty in these years of life and fame. I heard of someone whose tender years were ripped away by ceaseless performing and who had to create his private Neverland in his adulthood, who apparently cuddled young boys in order to recover a childhood he never had. I heard of someone dogged by the press, but more so, who simultaneously needed the press (and fans) to stoke his incessant desire for fame.

In the end, it's the lack of beauty in Michael Jackson's life that gives me the greatest pause. Perhaps now, that the striving in this life has ceased, he can rest in peace. May we learn how much sooner to say yes to what truly matters and there find the beauty of life.

Sometimes You Just Can't Help But be Thankful

I was looking over some material related to my book, and I came again across this quote from the noted management guru, Ken Blanchard:

If you feel overwhelmed and overcommitted, Say Yes to No will help you shake up your priorities on the job and at home. Greg Cootsona shows how finding the proper balance of work and rest—‘the rhythm of No’—can lead to a more relaxed and rewarding life. In our busy, busy world, everyone needs to read this book.

First of all, he gets the book and summarizes it expertly. So that's cool. Secondly, it's fabulous that someone of his stature would decide to lend an hand, through an endorsement, to a lesser-known author. When I re-read the quote, I just found myself thankful at that fact.... And spurred on to do likewise when the opportunity arises.

I'd like to be more profound (and I presume, verbose), but sometimes gratitude is rather concise.

After Three Weeks...

I certainly knew that there would be no front-page story in the New York Times or parade through the streets of Chico when my book, Say Yes to No, came out three weeks ago. I knew that the most important response would be the personal—emails, Facebook messages, gifts of wine and champagne (keep those coming!). Say Yes to No hasn’t set the world on fire, I haven’t become a millionaire—or even a thousanaire—but I'm thankful that it’s already touched some lives in the first three weeks.

Since the book is finally out, I became to reflect on what I learned over the past seven or eight years since I began jotting notes on the importance of saying no, then an actual sermon called “A Time for No” and then chapters on the book. I learned—well, I really heard from God, to be honest—that I have a vocation to write. And that process is exactly that—the process of responding to a call. It’s the ongoing response not only to God directly, but to those authors (C.S. Lewis, Anne Lamott, Marilynne Robinson, John Updike, William Shakespeare, Blaise Pascal, to name a few) who really move me with their words. They penned books where I can recall the place, date, weather, and beverage in which I first encountered specific passages. As a result, I want someone else to read my words and feel the same way. (At least Ican hope…)

All this means that the response has been the right kind. Hoopla is not really the response to vocation—things much more subtle, nuanced, and meaningful are. Interestingly, in the midst of writing this post, I got a call from a reporter with USA Weekend, who is going to interview me and ask my opinion (as the author of why we need to say no) on Jim Carrey’s movie, Yes Man. Now, with 48 million readers, USA Weekend is pretty good hoopla. So that brings good fodder for another post...

For now, let me wrap this up by saying that whether there’s buzz or not, writing is something you do because God calls. And that’s reason is certainly good enough yes for me.

Getting This Rocket Launched!

Advanced anniversaries are curious to me. What makes one month before an event another event in itself? Why not 19 days, for example?

For whatever reason, the coming advent of my book, Say Yes to No, in exactly one month has me partly nervous, partly beaming. The nerves arise from that age-old question: What if you invite people to a party and no one comes? More specifically, what if, on March 3rd, the book doesn't get grabbed by eager hands and sits there on bookstore shelves and the warehouses of Amazon.com? The other side of my dual emotions is simply the pent-up excitement of having started this project over seven years ago. And now I stand--almost with disbelief--before the day when the final version of my reflections and labor will be tangibly present.

It's probably just a heightened version of the mixed bag we face every day. At any point, there are things, experiences, and people that can disappoint us or that can exhilarate us. The only real variation is that, given the day, the challenging and the motivating present themselves to us in varying proportions. And the opportunity to choose anxiety and fear or gratitude and hope in God's future lies ever before me.

On this day, one month before Say Yes to No appears, I think I'll say No to anxious fear and Yes to grateful faith. (And, by the way, you can help that process: the book is available for pre-order.)

Martin Luther King, Jr. on Saying Yes to a Life of Serving Others

On this profound and historic week, we celebrated the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and saw some of his dream for our country realized in the inauguration of the first African-American U.S. President, Barack Obama.

I'll let King's words speak for themselves. In his famous sermon, "The Drum Major Instinct," he calls all of us not to take the first position in the parade, where the drum major can be found. Instead he calls us to the life of service to which Jesus directed us:

Everyone can be great because anyone can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. . . . you only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

Do I hear an Amen?

Say Yes to a Life Worth Living

In the publishing world, this time of year is known as “new year, new you.” In other words, as we turn to calendar to a new year, we naturally think about how we want to make our lives new. Just a quick Googling a moment ago revealed that “new year, new you” means a time when the world of publishing and media generally goad us to make resolutions to exercise more, to eat better, to make more money, to work toward that career we’ve always wanted, that kind of thing.

Now of course there’s nothing overwhelmingly wrong with those things—most of them are worthy goals. But do they add up to a life worth living? If we all got thinner, richer, more powerful, and more famous, would we be truly happy? Would we be living a beautiful life? Most importantly, would it be the path that God wants?

And so, at this time of year, I ask myself, What needs to be the one big, hairy, audacious Yes in my life?

What I want in my life is not to make adjustments, to move the furniture around, but to become not simply a “new me,” but what the Apostle Paul calls “a new creation” in 2 Corinthians 5:17. And since I find myself on the brink of 2008, I’m also finding myself turning again to a great passage from Paul where he describes his overriding motivation. I am particularly moved by this passage because Paul writes this—not as a detached reflection—but in midst of imprisonment, where his lifelong ambition to proclaim the Christian message would seem to be thwarted. But for him, this affliction only further clarifies what he lives for. He knew the big, overriding Yes in his life.

"This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:13-14

I think this is something worthy of human life. It’s not a life built of secondary goods of money, recognition, and position. It’s built on what we are created for—to enjoy and glorify God. And when we do this, I believe there we discover life, excellence, and beauty. That’s something worth living for.

Touched by God’s Yes

Last weekend, I had a fabulous time speaking at the all-church retreat of First Presbyterian Church of Burlingame. I focused on Paul’s letter to the Philippians and the yeses we say to God—in faith, in friendship, in our work, and in daily life. Given my interest in the power of no, I touched on where and why we need to state nos to make these yeses mean something. But here I want to underscore—as I did last weekend—that in order to be touched by God, the final word is not a no. Our final word is a Yes to God’s Yes to us in Christ. As Paul writes in another of his letters: “For in [Christ] every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’” (2 Corinthians 1:20). And that is good news indeed.