Just before turning forty, my optometrist warned me that I would soon return for a new prescription. This was despite the fact that my prescription had hardly changed since I began wearing glasses 25+ years earlier. He claimed he often had patients who would call him on their 40th birthday to say, “I can’t see anymore!” We laughed.
My birthday came and went . . . no change in my vision.
Last year — in the middle of the pandemic lockdown — I realized something was very wrong. I couldn’t see anymore. No more laughing.
Clearly, I wasn’t blind. But I was holding books further away from my face and zooming in more often on my computer. In 2019, I read a book on my phone; but a year later, reading the words on my phone screen was unbearable.
I now have multi-focal (progressive) lenses that change their intensity depending on where you look out of them. They’re helpful, but over six months later, I still struggle to see clearly with them (frustrating!!) and they often make me sick because I haven’t used them enough.
Organizational Vision
Vision is often used as a metaphor for looking into and planning for the future. A vision is our attempt to clearly describe the future ahead and how we’ll accomplish our mission.
At African Christian College, we were finalizing our vision of the future when the pandemic started. We weren’t prepared for this challenge, but God was at work: we’ve had zero Covid19 cases on campus and continued with our educational mission, graduating 22 students in December 2020.
At the same time, we took a pandemic pause from moving forward with our vision. As we moved into this year, I noticed something: I couldn’t see. I’m holding our pre-pandemic vision a little further away and am frustrated that the future is much less clear now than ever before.
What might the doctor prescribe?
We shouldn’t stay on pause — even if we cannot see clearly. We need a vision doctor to help us clarify organizational vision, too. What might the organizational eyedoctor prescribe?
Updated lenses. We need to update our eyeglasses so we can see better in our current circumstances instead of past circumstances. We must seek more reliable and updated information to identify new opportunities and threats that didn’t exist before. And, even when all the change and newness makes us sick or frustrated, we need to keep wearing them until we learn to use the new glasses well.
Discard the old lenses. It’s tempting to try to save money and just keep our old eyeglasses. But our view of the world and the future is uninformed by new circumstances. We must put them away knowing that our new glasses have are prescribed for our current circumstances while also being informed by our past prescriptions.
Work with others. For personal vision, the eye doctor wouldn’t tell us to just find someone who can see more clearly to help us see. But organizations need all the eyes and ideas (eye-deas?) they can to help identify a clearer vision — especially during times of change.
Trust in God’s guidance & provision. God goes out before us and is at work. We seek the work of God around us and before us, listening and discerning the way into the future.
The pandemic brought me two-fold vision problems — physically and as a leader. In many ways, the prescritpion is the same: update our lenses and put them to use.
Smelling instead of seeing
In his newletter, Scot McKnight has been sharing from A Burning in My Bones, Winn Collier’s biography of Eugene Peterson (pastor, theologian, and translator of The Message).
I’m adding this quote from Collier to my notes for talking with students about discovering vocation or following God’s will:
“His life and work had been more like tracing a scent than following a map” (60).
Discernment is hard. We often get stuck over-thinking and dissecting the many routes the map offers. So, I love this idea of smelling our way, of tracing a scent. It helps me to move beyond too-much thinking, to following the scents left by others on the journey. And to follow the scent of God at work as God moves ahead of us.
“How are you?”
Where I live, many people respond to “Hello!” with “I’m fine.” The greeting is combined with the question and the appropriate response to “Hello” is always, “I’m fine.”
Perhaps that’s why I my recent reply one difficult morning to the prompt brought confusion when asked “How are you?”
“I’m here,” I replied.
He pressed on with, “What does that mean?”
“Well, it means I’m not doing so good right now, but I’m here.”
I needed this response proposed by psychologist Adam Grant in the New York Times last week:
“Honestly, I’m languishing.”
We need this word. And we need courage to be honest rather than automated in our replies to “How are you?”
Languishing is not burnout or depression. It is the gap between depression and well-being, “that blah you’re feeling”. And if unaddressed, it could mean bigger problems down the road.
Grant offers antidotes to those of us who may be languishing:
Find Flow. Becoming immersed in an activity or project that carries us away into another time and place. This could be a project like building something, or getting caught-up in a new world through books and even television or movies. (Or chasing a goal of writing more and launching a newsletter!)
Uninterrupted Time. Guard your time to focus on what you’re doing. In reality, multi-tasking is working against our well-being This is especially true when we’re social media multitasking. Grant writes:
We now know that the most important factor in daily joy and motivation is a sense of progress.
As someone who enjoys creating and completing something, I’ve often felt the blah when I finish work with nothing to “show for it”. Now we know that the sense of progress truly is essential (not just in my head!).
Focus on small goals. Do something that matters to move forward a worthwhile goal or interesting project. Identify the next step on a project and make it happen. That could be a phone call, a brainstorm, or a sketch.
In other words, Grant says that to move from languishing to well-being, we need to get lost in something meaningful — even if just for a little while each day.
What will you get lost in this week?
Covid19 & Africa
The pandemic is far from over — especially in Africa — and the story of its impact becomes more troubling every day. Experts say the pandemic is not over anywhere until it is over everywhere. But actions speak louder than words:
“Many advanced economies have secured enough vaccine doses to cover their own populations many times over and are looking to the second half of the year with a renewed sense of hope,” [IMF’s Africa director] Selassie says. “In Africa, however, even in the best-case scenario, many countries will be struggling to simply vaccinate their essential frontline workers this year.” (quoted in Quartz, 26-Apr-21)
A Duke report (among others) estimates that it could be 2023 or later before low-income countries reach 60% coverage . . . at least at the current rate of vaccination. There appears to be limited commitment to ending the pandemic globally.
COVAX exists to provide global access for Covid19 vaccines, led by several international agencies such as the WHO. And countries are pledging and contributing money to the program and directly to countries to cover the gap COVAX will leave. (In eSwatini, it’s reported that the government has the funds to purchase enough vaccines for everyone (and our official cases have dropped to less than three dozen). But there are no vaccines to purchase!
As reported last week in Quartz, the billions pledged for vaccines is mostly meaningless:
For one thing, the dispersal of this money still will not allow poorer countries to secure vaccines — because there aren’t many vaccines to buy, at the moment. “The world’s wealthiest nations have locked up much of the near-term supply,” a new report authored by Duke University scholars points out. For their population of 1.2 billion, the wealthier nations have booked themselves 4.6 billion doses, so the manufacturing capacity of vaccine firms will be locked up for months to fulfill these orders.
There simply aren’t vaccines to purchase. Unfortunately, there are few signs of sharing from the excess stored up in the barns of high-income countries. However, yesterday, the US announced it would export 60 million doses from its reserves of AstraZeneca. A primary motivation seems to be that the vaccine has not been able to pass FDA review, so it’s not getting used anyway. Even so, there’s no details yet on whether they’ll go to low-income countries or to wealthy neighbors like Canada.
Besides health risk, the lasting effects of Covid19 is also killing economic recovery. This Quartz Africa chart (and article) released yesterday puts recent data from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) clearly:
African governments had little resources to provide financial support to companies or individuals during the pandemic. And they have even less to use in recovery. So, the IMF estimates that the growth gap will continue to grow (and could even be permanent).
What do experts say is essential to mitigate all this? Ending the pandemic globally — not just the high income countries.
Reflective White Paint
African Christian College’s former board chairperson, Dr. Ira Hill, advocated painting the red rooftops found on its campus white in order to help cool things down inside. When it came time to repaint the house roof where I live, I took his advice. Though I didn’t track the temperature differences, we noticed the difference. And, we’ve gone on to paint other rooftops white since then.
I was reminded of this last week when Purdue University announced its researchers had created the whitest white paint ever. The whiter it is, the more sunlight it reflects instead of absorbs — it’s true for t-shirts and it’s true for rooftops.
Some commercial paints reflect 90% of the sunlight; this new paint reflects 98.1% of sunlight. That seems like little difference . . . except when you think about absorption instead of reflection of sunlight. The commercial paints absorb 10% of sunlight while the new paint absorbs only 1.9% of the sunlight — more than 5 times an improvement!
Small actions — like painting rooftops white helps reduce the heat — can go a long way for improvement.
The downside? A fresh coat of white paint on a rooftop is bright — even making it hard to see again.
Virtual Chapel on Psalm 60
I had an opportunity to share a devotional thought with African Christian College’s online Chapel last week. I’m putting here, too, in case you’re interested.
The best part of this Virtual Chapel was getting a message from a recent graduate:
I really like your encouragement in this video. It’s like you spoke to me directly. I have thought and said exactly what you said in that video. I thank God for you coz you have given me hope again through his Word.
We pray to persuade God, not knowing whether God will act, while simultaneously thanking God, assured that God will act. This contradiction is reflected in the lament psalms as well as our own personal prayers these days.
Will you share your feedback?
If you’ve made it this far, I’d appreciate your feedback. This is the first edition, so I’m still working toward the right rhythm.
Is this too much, too little, or just right?
More depth or more topics?
What would you like me to focus on? Do you have questions?
How can I make Inspire Action something that you’ll enjoy and learn from?
Would you help with your suggestions, ideas, and feedback either by email or by leaving a comment?
A great deal of information here, but from my perspective all good. Thank you for taking the time to share!