Closed-off Thought

Summary: Prebuttal cuts off true dialogue by retreating inward to prepare for an attack that may not come.

• Prebuttal happens when you expect or predict disappointment and respond by retreating back into your internal world.

• Prebuttal happens when you react to your own anticipation and limit participation to your closed thought world.

• Prebuttal happens when you prepare your claim in advance, either refusing participation or not delaying intellectual gratification.

• Prebuttal clogs your ability to hear fairly and diminishes your skill at and willingness to engage in dialogue.

Wise Sight

Summary. Perspicacity is insight, shrewdness, understanding, and judgment internally sourced and externally applied.

• Having a ready insight exercises that capacity to uncover how material and immaterial things work in the dailies.

• Shrewdness produces judgments and decisions that consider provenance, means, context, and telos.

• Accurate and deep understanding provides clarity about elements in their relations and functions.

• Good judgment is public wisdom.

Influence as Godly Connection

Summary: Disposition Is the conduit for the personal influence that links relationship with God and with community.

• Inherent qualities of mind and character, also known as disposition, are expressed through skills, strengths, and knowledge.

• Influence happens when one's disposition is relationally connected with communities.

• Proper influence is when one's personal influence is the conduit through which trust in and alignment with God and faithfulness to God are carried out in relationship with others through one's place in a community.

Emulation versus Imitation

Summary: Emulation creates expansive improvement, while imitation creates additive replication.

Emulation. The one who emulates seeks to be better than, and being better is the measure of success. The end goal is to match or surpass the model, though both model and emulator remain comrades. Emulation is expansive: the one who emulates seeks to replace the model, creating rivalry and tension while maintaining horizontal honor.

Imitation. The one who imitates seeks to be the same, and similarity is the measure of success. The imitator follows the model by copying, even if in externals alone, so the resulting simulation can have some flatness. Imitation is additive, for imitators create copies of the model. Imitator and model are in parallel, maintaining vertical honor.

Now is a Moment

For those in Christ, life here is not permanent. He is. Therefore, we can say, "It is what it is for now."

All things become new and former seems pass away when God makes his dwelling among humans in the kingdom. For now, I will need. Then, I will have no tears. For now, death happens. Then, even the seeds of death are gone. For now, I mourn and cry and experience pain. Then, all these are gone.

So, I will live here while knowing it is for a moment, even when life feels unbearably long.

There be Monsters

Monsters exist, but in a world where we see through a glass darkly, they are difficult to identify.

When decisions and actions are consistently pointed away from the good, these pile up and form a monstrous demeanor, and the person doing so becomes a monster. Sometimes we misidentify persons as monsters because their decisions and actions are of greater influence than we deem appropriate. But monsters are identified in relation to goodness not power. Sometimes we misidentify persons as monsters because they are formed in ways that seem to be distortions of reality, an they may look think or act quite differently than we do. But monsters are identified by evil not difference.

Monsters are monsters first in the heart and second in expression. Indeed, some monsters put on such a good exterior that their internal anti-goodness is difficult to recognize. These are the most despicable monsters.

Perception is Thought

Perception is a form of thinking, for it goes beyond sensory input to apply perceptual filters and translation matrices.

Senses are inputs, and we are responsible for processing them into knowledge. Knowledge is a resource, and we are responsible for processing it into wise living. None of this is automatic. None is accidental. Most is background processing, but we are responsible to feed the stores that run the process.

Perceptions are processed inputs, for we almost never received the actual, though it is available to us. Rather, we practice selective perception by nature. This is why thinking in community is so important, for in community we bump up against the perceptual filters of others.

Justice (tangentized definition)

fact-based payment made in integrity, from truth to action; life lived in chosen acts bringing earned response; responses, not reactions, not from mood, but fact

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(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Teaching is a most human encounter

Teaching and learning are fully human events in which teachers and learners engage as persons and during which thinking and acting reveal their inherent interplay.

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(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Every church needs a senior pastor, right?

We freely proclaim the fact of Jesus’ resurrection, glorification, and headship over the church, but I doubt we understand the implication:

He’s THE Senior Pastor.

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(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Church Government (Definition)

More than structure, adhering to settled Constitution and By-Laws, more than hierarchy handed down through centuries, church government is properly a means of communal God-following.

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(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

How would you define “maturity?”

In reading through Carlson’s chapter on adult development in Christian Formation, I have begun to realize that Sanctify has not defined “maturity.”

Any suggested passages?

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(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Definition: Coach

teaching infused skills applicable to roles and functions, furthering practice from modeling extending ability beyond expectation in sundry specifics necessitated by situation or future plans

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(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Done versus Complete

To be done, only only need stop and decide to do no more.

To have a task complete, all must be set in proper order.


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(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Definition: Discipline

Submission to wisdom’s adventure, adapting tradition’s lesser known paths: Conformity brings newness honoring the known, pressing forward, developing a creative internal heuristic that enriches life.

===
Informant

• definition of "tangent" in Merriam-Webster 7.0 for Windows Mobile, (c) 2004-2007.
• definition of "discipline" in synonym discussion under "teach" in Merriam-Webster 7.0 for Windows Mobile, (c) 2004-2007.

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(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Strength: Strategic (tangentized definition)

extrapolating from known ways, lightly tethered, yet free; recognizing possible systems, testing for reasons and causes, discerning true tangents that reflect rich divergence and contiguity
===
Informants

• Teach with Your Strengths 
• definition of "strategic" by Clifton StrengthsFinder
  
• definition of "tangent" in Merriam-Webster 7.0 for Windows Mobile, (c) 2004-2007.

--- Twitter - Facebook
(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Strength: Ideation (tangentized definition)

intrigued by the Creator’s symphony, harmonies of theme and variation mapping to skittish kinships, revealing family resemblances, painting glory with seeming disconnections, seeking his fingerprints

===
Informants

• Teach with Your Strengths 
• definition of "ideation" by Clifton StrengthsFinder
  
• definition of "tangent" in Merriam-Webster 7.0 for Windows Mobile, (c) 2004-2007.

--- Twitter - Facebook
(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Strength: Input (tangentized definition)

insatiable hunger for depth and breadth, adding richness to what is known; gathering sundry bits for future connections, ignoring accepted silos, while respecting traditions’ passions

===
Informants

• Teach with Your Strengths 
• definition of "input" by Clifton StrengthsFinder
  
• definition of "tangent" in Merriam-Webster 7.0 for Windows Mobile, (c) 2004-2007.

--- Twitter - Facebook
(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Strength: Intellection (tangentized definition)

riding tangents to knowledge, mapping connections for clarity, seeking interior instigators to understand external responses, reveling in interdisciplinary dance, teasing out inherent reflections of glory

===
Informants

• Teach with Your Strengths 
• definition of "intellection" by Clifton StrengthsFinder
  
• definition of "tangent" in Merriam-Webster 7.0 for Windows Mobile, (c) 2004-2007.

--- Twitter - Facebook
(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Strength: Learner (tangentized definition)

hungering for knowledge’s influences, connecting new with known, desiring innovative expansion of common truth; driven to dance on monkey bars, playing freely on steadfast fundamentals

===
Informants

• Teach with Your Strengths 
• definition of "learner" by Clifton StrengthsFinder
• definition of "tangent" in Merriam-Webster 7.0 for Windows Mobile, (c) 2004-2007.

--- Twitter - Facebook
(C) Laura Springer

Laura's Writings by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.