New Years - a moment of reflection 45 minutes in to a better year

It is dark out and quiet. I've turned off the tv because the mediocre performers on Dick Clark's show were polluting all the good ideas I had at the gym earlier this evening. Yes, my resolutions are "rolling resolutions" and they don't start today. However, those resolutions that continue to roll over multiple years have now become a priority.

Here I am in the dark, in my bed, and on the laptop. I cannot sleep. I want to pursue all ideas now and feel hope of their success in this 2011.

In some ways, I feel like a bit of a failure this year. So much work and most didn't work out the way I planned.

I only lost 10-15 pounds. I still have no self control with cookies. Even bad cookies run across the room into my mouth. They pester me from distance places.

I stayed at my job, in a role I created, though I thought I'd leave for bigger and better things. Should I say that here? Not a problem. I've said this for a couple of years at work and no one believes me.

I'm still single.

My debt didn't go down, but my 401k went up. Not a lot of good that does right now. Golden handcuffs don't seem so golden, aye?

Friends had big issues. I helped a few and not others.

My soul despaired and went through lessons I had to learn.

But, like all tunnels, there are bright lights in the distance.

Yes, bright lights.

Humility
Humility was learned. Humility I didn't know I needed.

Job
I did stay at my job. I very good job in a bad economy. A position I created myself. A position where I learned that I am the strategist, the coordinator, the puppet master, the implementer and ....not the numbers keeper. A position that requires me to create entire strategies and plans out of nothing and I find that I LOVE that freedom! I haven't moved mountains (yet), but I've been managing some pretty big initiatives and helping an organization through culture change. Changing from old school rigid thinking to implementing new approaches for capturing and sharing knowledge. Uncomfortable approaches for some. My approach isn't perfect, but we are further along than we were last year by a long shot and gaining a lot of buy-in. Plus, I've been able to work with some great forward thinkers along the way. So, why was/am I trying to leave?

Good Gifts
I'm learning to give good gifts. Truly giving. Some giving hurts because they are truly from the heart and take a piece of me away from me. But, I see the wisdom and depth it gives my soul.

Pivotal People
Certain people were there for me at pivotal moments. They helped me help myself...if only through listening as I verbally worked through a problem, or to say "it will be ok" or "I have full confidence in you."

Exercise
Exercise is a key element of my life. No matter what I weigh, I exercise at least five days a week, if only a long walk. This year had many, many, many walks. Many were at a local battleground park where I could think and see the horizon. Sometimes I was quiet with my thoughts and other times I listened to scriptures, books, music or podcasts. All helped increase my knowledge and open my spirit to the possibilities that we sometimes forget are there.

Voices, or lack thereof
More than ever, this year, I learned to tune out all the voices at important times and listen to the one voice that mattered - inspirations from Heaven. My soul trying to figure out what my Heavenly Father wanted me to do with different situations, with moments, with goals and with my life. I experienced more than ever "pure intelligence flowing through me" and "inexplicable joy" in isolated and overpowering moments. Those are the moments that carried me through moments where I could feel nothing.

Relationships
I learned to love some people at church and work that I didn't love before because I allowed myself to reach out OR I accepted their reaching out to me. How beautiful to re-realize and understand that cycle of giving and receiving love, gifts of the heart, etc.

Entrepreneurial
Finally, I've pursued some of my entrepreneurial ideas. One idea was to promote other entrepreneurs, which is a fairly common practice by now, but I'm ok with that. Another is a company I set up six years ago, but couldn't move forward on because it was a conflict of interest. Now I'm moving it forward in different ways. I'm starting some other side work that will hopefully grow larger as I devote more time to the efforts.

Religious and Spiritual
Many people separate these out, but for the most part I put them in the same bucket in my head. Either way, I've grown in all kinds of areas related to understanding the core principles of my religious beliefs, but also learning and growing in other spiritual ways. I've found that my love for reading about psychology, marketing, customers, innovation, learning and related topics help me understand scripture better because I develop better mental models to take the information into my brain in the way I need to use it. And, I continually learn that God loves Rebecker....much, much, much.

Miracles
I continue to experience and witness miracles. And, hope for more to come.



So, perhaps last year was more light than tunnel than I realize. Or, more likely, once you get closer to the light some of the darkness falls behind and seems smaller.


This probably should have gone into my personal journal (and it may well be added), but sometimes it helps to publicly expose trips down memory lane because it can make us accountable to ourselves and others.

Here's to a great new year in 2011!

It will be a great one ....just like how all the others ended up being ...after I forgot the details. (-:

C.S. Lewis - interesting article

If you are a C.S. Lewis fan, take a few minutes to read this article. It is at http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/17/surprised-by-c-s-lewis-why-his-popularity-endures/ , but some of these newspapers disable links to unpaying/unlogged in members a few weeks after posting. So, figured that I'd copy/paste below.

What I get from this is the importance of each of us just plugging away doing those things that are good throughout our lives ... and to do them well. Our influence goes beyond our immediate surroundings and well beyond our life on earth. But, not to worry about it and just do what is right. You may have other thoughts.

Enjoy!
_______________________________________


Surprised by C.S. Lewis: Why his popularity endures - 12/17/2010


By John Blake, CNN

C.S. Lewis was talking to his lawyer one day when the attorney told him he had to decide where his earnings would go after his death.

Lewis, who had already written “The Chronicles of Narnia” book series, told the lawyer he didn’t need to worry.

“After I’ve been dead five years, no one will read anything I’ve written,” Lewis said.

Lewis was a gifted writer, but he would have been a lousy estate planner. More than 40 years after his death, the former medieval literature professor has become the Elvis Presley of Christian publishing: His legacy is lucrative and still growing, scholars and book editors say.

The third film adaptation of Lewis’ "Narnia" series, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” was released in theaters worldwide this month. HarperOne publishers also just released “The C.S. Lewis Bible,” a book pairing 600 selections of Lewis’ writings with matching scriptural passages.

Lewis’ books remain strong sellers. His “Mere Christianity” has been on the BookScan Religion Bestseller’s list a record 513 weeks since the list started in 2001. At least 430,000 copies of Lewis’ books have been sold this year alone, HarperOne officials said.

Lewis’ contemporary appeal may strike some as odd at first because he seemed so firmly planted in the past. A scholar at the University of Oxford in England, he wore shabby tweed jackets, smoked a pipe in the pub and was wounded in the trenches of World War I.

But Lewis’ popularity endures because of several reasons: his distinctive writing style, a tragic love affair and a shrewd choice he made early in his career, Lewis scholars say.

Lyle Dorsett, author of “Seeking the Secret Place: The Spiritual Formation of C. S. Lewis,” says Lewis was fearless.

“He didn’t dodge the tough questions,” says Dorsett, who told the story of Lewis’ conversation with his lawyer in “Seeking the Secret Place.” “People find that refreshing.”

Lewis’ shrewd early career move

Lewis is labeled a Christian writer, but he also wrote essays, children’s fiction, literary criticism and science fiction. He even hosted a popular BBC radio show during World War II.

Some scholars say Lewis’ BBC experience, where he had to make points quickly, honed his writing style. Lewis learned how to systematically explain Christianity in clear and catchy language, devoid of religious jargon.

Philip Yancey, an evangelical author, says Lewis developed this gift because he came to Christianity as an outsider. He was an atheist.

“Coming to faith as an atheist, he had an understanding of and sympathy for people who look at faith wistfully but can’t swallow it,” says Yancey, who writes about Lewis in his latest book, “What Good is God.”

Lewis remains popular because his books don’t seem dated, says Mickey Maudlin, HarperOne's project editor for "The C.S. Lewis Bible."

Lewis didn’t write about the doctrinal squabbles dividing Christian groups of his time, Maudlin says.

“He made a strategic decision early in his career to talk about ‘Mere Christianity,’ ’’ Maudlin says. “He never writes about different modes of baptism, different views of communion or anything that separates one church from another.”

The result: Lewis has a big following today among Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Mormons - even skeptics, Maudlin says.

“C.S. Lewis wasn’t trapped by tribal thinking,” Maudlin says. “He was able to speak to everybody. He felt called by God to be an explainer of the big issues.”

How 'good infection’ converted Lewis

Though Lewis looked like the prototype of the mid-20th century English professor, he was actually an Irishman. He was born as Clive Staples Lewis in 1898 in Belfast. Friends and family called him “Jack.”

Scholars cite two events as the source for Lewis’ early atheism. His mother, Florence, died of cancer when Lewis was 9. And his best friend, Paddy, was killed during World War I. Most of the men in Lewis’ platoon didn’t survive the trenches.

“When he saw the carnage of World War I, he concluded that if God exists, He is a cosmic sadist,” says Dorsett, Lewis’ biographer.

Lewis' conversion to Christianity was gradual. It was prompted by what he later called “good infection” - being drawn to faith unawares through the friends he made and books he read.

One of those friends was J.R.R. Tolkien, a fellow English professor at Oxford best known today as the author of “The Lord of the Rings.”

According to some accounts, Tolkien, a Christian intellectual, helped convert Lewis. He showed Lewis that many of the mythological books he loved to read were Christian allegories.

Lewis, though, would later add that there was something more subtle that led to his conversion.

He called it “joy.”

“Joy” was Lewis' term for a stab of longing that unexpectedly welled up in him during moments of contemplation, such as listening to opera or reading an ancient Norse tale.

In his book, “The Weight of Glory,” Lewis wrote that the yearning he experienced during those moments convinced him there was another existence beyond this world.

“For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a love we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”

Lewis’ painful love affair

Lewis could be poetic, but he could also be brutally honest. He demonstrated this in his most searing book, “A Grief Observed.”

In the book, Lewis writes about falling in love - and losing that love. Lewis was a bachelor who lived with his older brother Warnie for much of his life. Then he met Joy Davidman Gresham, a Jewish American writer who was 15 years his junior.

Dorsett says Lewis was both physically and intellectually smitten with Gresham. He says they used to play Scrabble together, using Hebrew, Greek, Latin and German words to fill in the blanks.

“She had a sharp wit and he loved it,” Dorsett says. “She loved to debate and challenge him. They were always having an intellectual tennis match.”

Lewis’ relationship with Gresham would also challenge his faith.

Lewis married Gresham when he was 58. Soon, however, she developed bone cancer. She experienced what seemed to be a miraculous recovery only to fall ill again. Four years after marrying Lewis, she was dead.

Lewis was devastated. He began to question his belief in God:

“Go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face and a sound of bolting,” he wrote in “A Grief Observed.”

“A Grief Observed” inspired the film, “Shadowlands,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. One of the most moving scenes in the film took place when Lewis’ character embraced Gresham’s grieving son, Douglas, and they both wept unabashedly together.



Douglas Gresham at the premier of the latest 'Narnia' film in London.Douglas Gresham is now 65 with a bristly white beard and a booming baritone. He still holds tightly to his memories of Lewis.

Gresham says there’s one part of Lewis’ personality that movies and scholars often get wrong. Many people think Lewis was a dour Englishman.

“He was full of fun,” Gresham says. “He was always surrounded by people who liked to laugh and drink pints of beer. You could always tell if Jack was in the house. You would hear roars of laughter.”

He was also humble, Gresham says. Lewis spent hours each day answering letters from his admirers.

“Jack was someone who believed that if someone would write him, then the least he could do was give a reply,” Gresham says. “Sometimes people would just show up at the door, and he would never turn them away.”

What would Lewis think of his fame?

Gresham says commentators also often miss the mark on Lewis' friendship with Tolkien.

Lewis and Tolkien were both members of the Inklings, an informal literary group at Oxford that met to swap stories and ale.

In “Shadowlands,” Joy Gresham is portrayed as a party crasher who alienated a stuffy Tolkien. Some scholars have suggested that Lewis and Tolkien’s friendship suffered because of Lewis’ marriage to Gresham.

“Tolkien was a devout Catholic,” says Dorsett, Lewis’ biographer. "He found her quite abrasive.”

Gresham, though, snorts at the suggestion that his mother damaged Lewis’ friendship with Tolkien.

“It never happened,” he says.

Gresham says that when he went to visit Lewis in the hospital during his last days, he saw Tolkien. Tolkien told him he could live with him if anything happened to Lewis, Gresham says.

“Now you don’t do that for someone you’re not fond of,” Gresham says. “He was Jack’s best friend when he died.”

Lewis died at 64 of kidney failure on November 22, 1963, the same day President Kennedy was assassinated. His death was overshadowed by coverage of Kennedy’s death as well as the death of Aldous Huxley, another famous author who died that day.

Lewis, however, grabs his share of headlines today.

Gresham, a retired physiotherapist, spends much of his time talking about Lewis. He’s a producer for the latest "Narnia" film, answers letters from Lewis' fans and has written a biography called “Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis.”

He says he doesn’t get tired of talking about the man some still call “Jack.”

“It gives me great pleasure to introduce him to people who haven’t met him yet,” he says. “I’m an unashamed C.S. Lewis fan.”

And what about Lewis? What would he think of the movie franchise he’s spawned and the Christian icon he’s become?

“I think he’d be embarrassed,” Gresham says quickly. “The thought that he would be idolized by so many people would embarrass him deeply.”

Personal Purpose Journey

As they say, I really think the "universe combines" to take you where you want to go...even if you are only sure of the fact that you need to go somewhere else and no other details.

For the past six months or so, I feel like I've been in the "depths of despair" (Anne of Green Gables) and at the height of inspiration - often in the same day.

Lucky for me - God puts people in my path that continue to help me along this journey.

A simple discussion on the phone, a spiritual breakfast (or dinner) at the Silver Diner, talking with a former co-worker at Border's bookstore as we brainstorm ideas for our future, quotes from different church meetings, drive by cubings at work that turn into heartfelt sharing and innovative solutions, taking a break from the DC traffic to go on a hayride with some good friends.

These are those moments that tell me that I am blessed and must be grateful.

As I make all of the changes that have been swarming around in my head for the last while, I will need all of these moments to reflect on, act on and express gratitude for since all will contribute to who I become and how fast. Note: I'm trying not to say slow because that is not an option. (-:

Either way, this evening I'm experiencing immense gratitude for the people in my life, the possibilities that are ahead and how I can better serve others.

By the way, in particular, "people" actually boils down to a lot of awesome women right now - OK, and a few men. Let me take a moment to name a few:

• My parents - who have learned patience through our lives not going the way THEY planned
• Brothers and Sisters - for being my best friends even if we don't talk every week or even month!
• Nieces and Nephews - that allow themselves a special "Aunt Rebecker" spot in their hearts. All 19 of them...so far.
• My Neighbors - who I'm spending more time getting to know based upon a quote I read on Erin's blog. Come visit and I'll introduce you - we've got some characters.
• Ms. R - for being my mentor, having confidence in me with all the program management "junk" I deal with on a daily basis.
• Angela - for giving me confidence for outwardly expressing that "I am a Woman of God" and talking about religious things with me, though we are of different "faiths."
• Pam - always thinking of ways to keep up, enjoy time shared and talk through the challenges of life.
• Ann - virtual support who I still need to travel the world with since I'm much delayed on delivering my promises. (-:
• Tiffany - my cousin that boldly shares her beliefs (politically and spiritually) on her blog.
• Anthony - a work kindred spirit who loves to talk ideas, forward thinking, politics, and religion.
• Harrison - is still willing to meet up with me for long walks and talks and to share photobooks. And, honestly never judges.
• Heidi - another great conversation that took my thoughts even further on the path toward realizing who I want to be and to get to it!
• Erin - constantly writing and sharing ideas and the ups and downs candidly and with a fierce desire to keep moving forward and making a difference in the world.
• Mrs. L - a new friend who is a bit intimidating (retired Chief Learning Officer for part of DoD) that realized before I did that I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life and was comfortable telling me so.

Wow, I truly did not mean to get carried away here! Thought it was going to be just a couple of people and the list just kept growing. I'm sure I'm forgetting quite a few too.

I am one lucky lady!

Let's all keep on this journey together -side by side. Hmmm - do you remember that song from a long time ago? (I just went and looked it up here - http://visit.elysiumgates.com/rag.html)

Well we ain't got a barrel of money...


We may look ragged and funny...

But we're travelin' on...

Singing our song...

Side by side.

Through all kinds of weather...

What if the sky should fall?

As long as we're together,

It doesn't matter at all.

So we ain't got a barrel of money...

We may look ragged and funny...

But we're travelin' on...

Singing our song...

Side by side.



Through all kinds of weather...

Drought, flood, rain and snow,

We will be together...

So it just don't matter at all...

Oh we ain't got a barrel of money...

We may look ragged and funny...

But we're travelin' on...

Singing our song...

Side by side.



Don't know what's comin' tomorrow...

maybe it's trouble and sorrow...

but we'll travel the road...

sharin' our load...

side by side.



Oh we ain't got a barrel of money...

We may look ragged and funny...

But we're travelin' on...

Singing our song...

Side by side.

When they've all had their quarrels and parted...

we'll be the same as we started...

just travlin' along singin' a song...

side by side.

Let Freedom Ring ...in my neighborhood

July 4th morning I awoke early, but not necessarily bright.

I got a text late the night before from a friend that I hadn't seen in a while. Would I meet at the Silver Diner at 8:00 a.m.? Why sure. I temporarily forgot about the July 4th church function and figured it was more important to see the person that was in town.

We had a great conversation. She is a wonderful former co-worker. She is African-American and a great example to me. She gave the prayer over our food. We thanked the very gracious Hispanic waiter and both went our separate ways.

Driving into my neighborhood I saw the skinny older lady walking her dog. Her dyed blond hair, wrinkled sun spotted skin, and her constant cigarette smoking make her look a little out of place here, but she puffs away and walks through the curvy streets. Yep, it sounded a little trailer park-ish there for a moment, didn't it?

At the bottom of the hill, I turn toward my little neck of the woods. There on the basketball court, is the Thai lady that carries her own personal boom box, wears her tight yoga pants up to her chest and starts doing some kind of mixture of yoga, tai chi and ballerina pirouettes wherever she pleases. Today it's the basketball court, but other days it is dead center the middle of the sidewalk. It is quite the interesting sight. It at least puts a smile on my face.

Almost to the parking space and I look up at the building next to mine and the nice lady with lots of kids from India is washing her car. I've seen her wear jeans on a daily basis, but today she is in a beautiful sari all decked out and ...yet she is washing her car. Full fledged bucket of soap, scrubbing tires and car sides all while holding the hose and wearing an outfit worthy to wear at a fancy Indian restaurant.

The Indian lady upstairs is coming down the steps to go to the pool with her son. The Hispanic family is trying to buckle the kids into the car anxious to go celebrate somewhere. The disabled lady across the street has a friend in town that is carrying both their lawn chairs to view fireworks at some location nearby.

I don't have a date tonight and so I go inside, clean up a bit, turn on the tv to watch the celebration and crack the window so I can hear the noise of the local fireworks, though I can't see them from my neighborhood.

However, I feel very much a part of America sitting here at home. We are a strange bunch, all of us neighbors. But, we are what make this country great. Diversity of race, religion, culture, and thought.

God Bless America and let freedom ring!

P.S. Wish I had pictures. The characters of the neighborhood are truly a sight to behold and I'm including myself in this equation.