From “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation” by Steven Johnson The platform builders and ecosystem engineers do not just open a door in the adjacent possible. They build an entire new floor.

From “Embracing Your Second Calling: Find Passion and Purpose for the Rest of Your Life” by Dale Hanson Bourke If prayer is the bedrock of the second half of life, then friends are the rich soil that gives form, substance, and richness to our calling. Friends, in my experience, are different in this time of

From “Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner” by Frederick Buechner As a seminary student, Buechner was assigned to work part-time in an East Harlem parish. Here he is commenting on the regular parish staff members. THEY HAD CAUGHT something from Christ, I thought. Something of who he was and is flickered out

From “Sacred Compass: The Way of Spiritual Discernment” by J. Brent Bill As I grew contemplative in my faith, questions arose as to how any of the things I had done fit into “a” wonderful plan for my life. Learning to see life as way opens answered that question.  You might want to draw a

From “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon To maximize the value of the advice in this book, you must have a purpose in your life… A useful statement of purpose for a company needs three parts. The first is what I call a “likeness”. By analogy,

From “Cumulative Advantage: How to Build Momentum for Your Ideas, Business, and Life Against All Odds” by Mark W. Schaefer Kristian Bush is one of Nashville’s most prolific singer-songwriters and is best known for being one half of the Grammy-winning, multi-platinum band Sugarland. Kristian told me that a mashup of early life events created an

From “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life” by Richard Rohr The Dalai Lama said much the same thing: “Learn and obey the rules very well, so you will know how to break them properly.” Such discrimination between means and goals is almost the litmus test of whether you are moving in

From “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation” by Parker J. Palmer After a few months of deepening frustrations, I took my troubles to an older Quaker woman well known for her thoughtfulness and candor, “Ruth,” I said, “people keep telling me that ‘way will open.’ Well, I sit in the silence,

From “What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman” by Lerita Coleman Brown I have not yet read about a nature-based custom common among the enslaved Gullah people, African Americans who lived along the coast of and on the islands near South Carolina. Gullah youth would go out into nature to find

From “Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life” by Henri Nouwen with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird God speaks to us all the time and in many ways, but it requires spiritual discernment to hear God’s voice, see what God see, and read the signs in daily life.                      -Henri Nouwen