The last morning of the Academy session, Dr. Heidi A. Miller opened by saying the ground we stand on is shaking. On a blessing of the senses borrowed from the fourth century, rest as something you owe your neighbor rather than something you earn, the question Jim carried home — who is not allowed to rest in our culture — and a librarian who changed one word. Part 3 of 3.
Dr. Heidi A. Miller gave a room full of us three minutes and a body awareness prayer, and what Jim found there sent him off gluten and sugar. On the grandmother who refused to wipe the fingerprints off her window, why presence is the one thing an achiever cannot achieve, and what thirty-eight years of wiping the glass actually cost. Part 2 of 3.
At the Academy for Spiritual Formation, Dr. Heidi A. Miller took the word just — the word we use to diminish — and traced it back to a pitcher used to measure an honest pour. Jim on what that did to a man who spent thirty years believing he was a just businessman, and on the difference between a spiritual life and a religious one he could never name until that week.
Five studies, over a thousand people: when a group believes itself morally superior, it starts seeing the other group as less than human — and it happened even with groups invented minutes earlier. But the fifth study found the hinge. Being right is not the problem. The problem is when being right buys you a higher place in the room. Jim on what that means for people who do inner work for a living.
Jim and Lynette offer both coaching and spiritual direction, and they get asked the difference more than almost anything else. Coaching is future-oriented — where do you want to go, and what is in the way. Spiritual direction is present-oriented — where are you, and what is already stirring. Here is how to tell which one fits the season you are in.
“Love your neighbor as yourself” is not a sequence — it is a measure. Whatever you say to yourself when you fail is the voice you will use on someone else when you are tired and out of patience. Jim on what he refused himself for twenty years, what the self-compassion research actually shows, and why each Enneagram type exports its own accusation.
Jim had “Failure is not an option” painted above the door at Varment Guard, and it built a company. It also built a ceiling. On the shadow in leadership — the strength that keeps running past the point where it was useful, what it cost the people in the room, and why the Enneagram is a more practical tool for it than most leaders expect.
People tell me they’re an open book, and then tell me how badly it went. The problem is almost never honesty. It’s proportion — and after twenty-five years I draw it as a set of circles.
Jim and Lynette offer both coaching and spiritual direction, and they get asked the difference more than almost anything else. Coaching is future-oriented — where do you want to go, and what is in the way. Spiritual direction is present-oriented — where are you, and what is already stirring. Here is how to tell which one fits the season you are in.
Varment Guard ran ninety black and gold trucks, kept identical on purpose, sent home every night to sit in ninety driveways across central Ohio. The internet now looks like that yard — all the recognition with nothing behind it. Jim on borrowed language, the false self, and the question that matters more than sameness: is there anyone in the cab?
