How can We Make Progress by Chase Butler
http://www.identitynetwork.net/Articles-?blogid=2093&view=post&articleid=160632&link=1&fldKeywords=&fldAuthor=Chase%20Butler&fldTopic=0
By Chase Butler
I sit down with hundreds of individuals throughout the year. Sometimes it's a business transaction, but other times it's an eye-opening conversation. Like I described last week, some people are especially gifted at discussing the deeper things, and that often means hard topics. "Do your clients ever try to ask you about politics?" I hesitated before answering a new client of mine. I've been around long enough to know when I'm on the precipice of a volatile conversation, but this didn't feel like one of those.
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I sit down with hundreds of individuals throughout the year. Sometimes it's a business transaction, but other times it's an eye-opening conversation. Like I described last week, some people are especially gifted at discussing the deeper things, and that often means hard topics.
"Do your clients ever try to ask you about politics?" I hesitated before answering a new client of mine. I've been around long enough to know when I'm on the precipice of a volatile conversation, but this didn't feel like one of those.
I was in the home of an older gentleman, who was now retired but still active in speaking and writing. He was a film critic at one point, a university president, and was even writing a book on Western movies. He was smart, thoughtful, and had decades of life experience to draw from. He was fascinating, to say the least.
As he stepped out of his living room earlier in the appointment I scanned his bookshelf, as I often do in a situation where I know little about a person or their interests. What I saw immediately caught my attention. I quickly gathered Abraham Lincoln was likely his hero and he was very passionate about civil rights.
I would like to also point out I was sitting in Montgomery, Alabama. It doesn't take a historian to know the horrors of racism and segregation committed in our own state. The sad reality, too, is that many older (white) people still carry the ideological baggage of a mindset that needed to die a long time ago. It was refreshing to see an elderly, white man so engaged with a non-antiquated idea of equality.
The Next Generation
The conversation shifted toward religion and the church. He told me as a young man he wanted to become a pastor. He never pursued it, though, because of his church's support of segregation. He was uninterested in being a part of something that went against his convictions.
That was the 1960's, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham would describe 11am on Sunday as the most segregated hour of the week. We've come a long way since the Civil Rights Movement, but our current context always begs the question--how can we make progress?
Every generation sheds some ignorance of the previous generation, I heard someone say once. I do wonder what books will sit on the shelves of those who pioneer change in our generation decades from now. Who will my Abraham Lincoln be? What will my Civil Rights Movement be?
I imagine a similar conversation as the one I had with my client when I am in my seventies, and a young man is sitting across from me. Will he sit there and admire the courage I had to affect change or shake his head at the ignorance that survived into my last years, much like I do when I still hear words like "colored" or "the blacks."
My hope and prayer is for eyes to see the blindspots and ignorance in my own life, to pass less baggage on to the next generation, to not only grow old but to grow in wisdom and love, continuing to ask the question--how can we make progress?
Chase Butler
http://www.identitynetwork.net/Articles-?blogid=2093&url=10&view=post&articleid=234074&link=1&fldKeywords=&fldAuthor=Chase%20Butler&fldTopic=0
There seems to be a recurring topic that continues to come up in my life—the balance between contentment and goals. Do I appreciate what I have, and am I working towards something meaningful that forces me to grow? An either/or approach never works. On one hand, you lend yourself to apathy and stagnation. On the other, you live under the tyranny of nothing ever being enough, endless striving that costs you something you never intended. I don't pretend to have this figured out. Every once in a while, I sense the alignment between the two within myself, but it's normally a fleeting moment followed by the pendulum tipping back towards one side.
http://www.identitynetwork.net/Articles-?blogid=2093&url=10&view=post&articleid=233123&link=1&fldKeywords=&fldAuthor=Chase%20Butler&fldTopic=0
There are moments when I long for an answer, clarity, inspiration, relief, or hope and receive nothing. Even in earnest seeking, eager anticipation, a proper posture, an open heart, a willing spirit—nothing. Then there are moments when I receive an answer, clarity, inspiration, relief, and hope when I least expect it. Not seeking, not anticipating, yet a glimpse is given. So what to conclude?
http://www.identitynetwork.net/Articles-?blogid=2093&url=10&view=post&articleid=231499&link=1&fldKeywords=&fldAuthor=Chase%20Butler&fldTopic=0
If the idea of selling everything and living out of a backpack on the road sounds like a nightmare instead of a grand adventure, this post might not be for you. If challenging the status quo and questioning societal norms in the pursuit of a full and satisfying life sounds intriguing, then let's continue. The beauty of friendship is that conversations tend to draw out aspects of yourself that otherwise would have been left untouched and dormant, or at the very least overlooked or ignored.