by Heather Plett | Mar 1, 2007 | Ethiopia, Martyn Joseph
Dear Martyn Joseph,
I don’t often write fan letters, but I’m making an exception today because I think you should know how much you moved me last night. I left your concert with a feeling of fullness – like I’d been given a delicious meal of succulent songs that fed the hungry places in my soul. Thank you for that. Thank you for writing such breathtakingly beautiful lyrics as “turn me tender again, mold me anew” and “my soul’s asleep now – wake me up” and – oh there are so many I can barely begin to list them. Thank you for giving of yourself again and again to us your audience. Thank you for taking risks. Thank you for baring your heart and soul and pouring your passion into the gift you offer us.
A few weeks ago, I was in Ethiopia. I traveled through some of the poorest regions of the country, visiting various food-related development projects. I visited people living in primitive huts made of mud and reeds. I watched labourers with picks and shovels painstakingly dig massive ditches to irrigate the parched land. I held the hands of children who weren’t sure where their next meal would come from. I walked past crippled or blind beggars sitting in the dirt next to centuries old churches.
Before departing on my journey, I downloaded my favourite music onto my daughter’s mp3 player. Music is so often my touchstone, my inspiration, and my solid ground and I knew that it would help me process and make sense of some of the pain and poverty I would see. Your two recent albums – Deep Blue and Whoever it was Who Brought me Here – featured prominently in my music selection.
Your music was just what I needed for that journey. You so beautifully reflected so many of my own thoughts – anger at the injustice, compassion for those in need, despair that there are so many hurting people and so little I can do about it, but always hope that there is a better way. Your words became my words as I traveled through almost incomprehensible beauty and equally incomprehensible pain.
I listened to “Yet still this will not be” over and over again and even shared it with my travel companions. More than anything, as I traveled through one of the poorest countries in the world, I wanted to believe that some day “the broken hearted shall indeed rule”.
One particular memory of my trip sticks with me. We stopped at the side of the road next to a rusty abandoned army tank leftover from one of the many wars that have ravaged Ethiopia. Passing school children, curious about our vehicles and our white skin, climbed onto the war machine to watch us. As I watched them, I felt a sadness settle into my soul. How could these school children have hope for the future when their path to school was littered with memories of war?
But then, high up on the hill above where the tank sat, a young girl called down to us. Giggling and waving, she shouted “salam!” (hello) She picked up one of the young goats she was herding and motioned for us to take her picture. In that moment, I felt my hope return. If there is any hope in Ethiopia, it is in this young girl, so full of life and joy.
As we drove away from the abandoned tank, the words of your song kept going through my head. Yet still this will not be. Yet still these tanks will not destroy Ethiopia. Yet still these ongoing wars will not destroy the spirit of this young girl. Yet still there is hope that some day the broken hearted will rule and the kingdom of the fool will be humbled and made low. Yet still there is within me the capacity to contribute to making the future a better place for this little girl and all those like her in this beautiful but broken world.
Thank you, Martyn, for coming with me to Ethiopia.
by Heather Plett | Feb 26, 2007 | tidbits
– The workshop with the dental staff was not my most stellar performance. It is much harder to deliver a meaningful workshop when the participants would rather be in the bar drinking. For the first half of the session, they just sat there staring at me like I had some nerve wasting their time that way. It’s pretty hard to feed off of group energy when there is none. It wasn’t a total flop, though. They warmed up to it and the group exercise I planned for the second half actually went over quite well.
– Nikki’s Fair Trade birthday party didn’t quite go according to plan. Some of the girls had a ringette game, so only one of them could make it to the party early enough to get to Ten Thousand Villages with us before they closed. But the other girls all bought their presents there ahead of time, and the store gave us a bunch of fair trade snacks (chocolate, dried fruit, hot chocolate), so it wasn’t a total dud. Nikki now has a collection of funky global jewellery that rivals mine – the girl’s got great taste!
– The rest of the party was at a hotel. I spent the night trying to sleep, while four giddy girls spent most of the night giggling. Though sleep would have been nice, I quite enjoyed the giggling. There is something very life-affirming about the joy of preteen girls. By two-thirty, though, I let them know that even though I was fairly tolerant, the rest of the hotel guests might not be, so they’d better keep it down. Soon afterwards, they were all sound asleep – all 4 of them in a King-sized bed. I wish my camera batteries hadn’t died.
– We had a family get-together at our house for Nikki’s birthday yesterday. Between the parties and the workshop on Friday night, I’m wiped.
– We made lasagna for the family party. Since I’ve given up meat for lent, I made a vegetarian lasagna which turned out better than any meat lasagna I’ve had in a long time. Mmmm… tasty! Leftovers for lunch today. Yum, yum.
– Dennis Quaid is shooting a movie in the old church next to my office. I haven’t spotted him yet, but then again, I haven’t really been looking. Mostly, I’ve just seen a bunch of big trucks blocking the street and parking lot.
– Speaking of celebrities, doesn’t Britney Spears just look like a scared, vulnerable little girl under all that craziness? I wonder if anyone is loving her through this? I hope so.
– My next business trip is to Regina. After Africa, you can’t get much more anti-climactic than Regina. Fortunately, it’s only for one night.
– Maddie has asked me to pick her up more in the last month than she did in the 4 years of her life before that. My highly independent, non-cuddly girl has become cuddly lately, and I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.
– Nikki has a new pen-pal – Vicki’s daughter. In this age of electronics, it’s fun to see a girl get excited about what’s coming in the mail. I may have to help Julie find a pen-pal too. Anyone have a nine (almost ten)-year-old daugher they’d like to line up for a pen-pal?
by Heather Plett | Feb 23, 2007 | Leadership, personality, sin
Lest you all think I’m just strutting around bragging and calling myself phenomenal (no that’s NOT what I was suggesting we should do in the last post), I want to offer what I think is the other side of the coin. Yes, I think that we should embrace our giftedness and believe that we were created with potential and beauty, BUT…
I think there’s another side too. We may be phenomenal, but we are also phenomenally flawed. And what I learned recently is that we have to embrace both sides of the coin. Let me tell you about a personal journey I went on in the last few years…
One day (I was going to say it was during my “40 days ’til 40” contemplation phase, but it might have been longer ago than that), I stumbled upon a book called “The Gift of Being Yourself – The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery” by David G. Benner. At first, I just thought it was another “believe in yourself and recognize your gifts, blah, blah, blah” kind of book and I really wasn’t expecting much from it. But what I read when I first browsed through it intrigued me so I stuck with it.
Near the beginning of the book, Benner quotes John Calvin as saying “There is no deep knowing of God without a deep knowing of self and no deep knowing of self without a deep knowing of God.” Hmmm. Interesting. So there’s spiritual value in the navel gazing I’d taken up when 40 started knocking on my door. Benner also says “Being most deeply your unique self is something that God desires, because your true self is grounded in Christ. God created you in uniqueness and seeks to restore you to that uniqueness in Christ. Finding and living out your true self is fulfilling your destiny.” Okay, this seemed worth considering, so I read on.
The first part was interesting, and I found myself nodding my head now and then, but it wasn’t until I reached chapter 4 that I felt like there was something in this book that I needed to spend time learning. That’s where Benner throws the hard-ball. “Knowing ourselves as we really are inevitably brings us up against what the Bible calls sin.” Okay, this was getting a little tougher. So this wasn’t just going to be a “touchy-feeling pat yourself on the back for how great you are” kind of journey. From there, the book goes into how we should contemplate, pray about, and try to analyze our “core sin tendencies” – those flaws that lie deep down at the root of who we are.
Core sin tendencies? This was a new concept for me. I’d heard about sin all my life, but I’d never really considered that I might have a propensity for certain sins over others. Over the years, I’d spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out my giftedness, my personality, my leadership styles, and all those other feel-good kind of self-discovery things that are part of almost every staff retreat or leadership workshop anywhere, but I hadn’t really flipped my heart over and looked at the dark side. Maybe that was the fatal flaw in my navel-gazing phase.
“Genuinely knowing yourself as you are known by God can be quite frightening,” says Benner. Yup, that’s right, I was getting a little afraid of looking around those dark corners. Who knows what was going to pop up? “But if God knows you and still loves you deeply, there is hope that you can do the same.”
When I closed the book, I knew it was time to take another step in my journey. Gulp. But I don’t wanna know my flaws! C’mon God – can’t we just stay out here in the light? Hmmm… God whispered “Nope. Trust me. This is gonna hurt for awhile, but it will be worth it.”
So I started thinking, praying, reading my Bible, and searching for those pesky skeletons that had become firmly entrenched in the closets of my soul. It wasn’t pleasant, but I did it. I even attended a twelve-step program for awhile, trying to figure out what things I had to overcome and what I had to admit to myself to get there.
And what did I find out? Well, at the time, it became clear to me that there were 2 things that I needed to work on – gluttony and slothfulness. The more I thought of it, the more I realized I had let many things in my life suffer because of these two things. My relationships were harmed, my potential was stifled, my body wasn’t well cared for, my house looked like a constant warzone, and I was busy ignoring the fact that there was any problem.
I spent a fair bit of time addressing those things – I cleaned out my closets literally and figuratively. If you go back into my blog archives, you’ll find lots of posts about the messes that I tackled. Back then, you probably didn’t know why there was such urgency to clean up a whole lot of mess in my house and let go of some of the possessions I’d let into my life because of pure greed, but it all had something to do with this journey.
One day, when I looked around and realized the skeletons had shrunk and my home was looking liveable again, I felt this incredible feeling of peace come over me. Trust me, I was still a LONG way from fully addressing my sin tendencies, but at least I was no longer afraid to stare them in the face and challenge them to “get thee behind me.”
I’m still learning this stuff, and on almost a daily basis, I slip back into old tendencies, but the journey has definitely been worth it. So when I say that I am going to believe that I am phenomenal, it is only because I also recognize that I am flawed and my only hope of being phenomenal is if I am humble and put my trust in the creator who knows what I’m capable of.
And now, it’s time to pack my bags and head to Gimli where I’m teaching a bunch of dentists and dental staff about how they can use the “Six Thinking Hats” to make decisions and work more effectively. Here’s hoping I don’t screw up.
by Heather Plett | Feb 22, 2007 | Leadership
A few nights ago, I went to a Ruthie Foster concert, and since then the song “Phenomenal Woman” has been going through my mind. It’s based on a Maya Angelou poem. You can hear it here (click on “Phenomenal Woman” on the right) and you can read the poem here. To me, Ruthie Foster is the epitome of a phenomenal woman – beautiful, sexy, glowing, confident, funny, and with a rich voice that soars through the rafters.
I like it. I like thinking of ourselves as phenomenal. I think too many of us have been raised to believe that we shouldn’t “toot our own horns” or “strut our stuff”. Was it just me, or did you grow up thinking that it was sinful to believe in yourself or be too confident? After all, if we believed in ourselves, then we wouldn’t rely on God enough, right?
Instead, we’ve learned patterns of self-deprecation and low self-esteem. “Oh, I’m not good enough” or “I really don’t have any talents worth sharing” seem to be common phrases on the lips of too many people. (Perhaps it’s especially true for Christians?) I think that’s the OPPOSITE of what God wants to hear from us, because he/she can’t work through us if we doubt our own abilities. Confidence is not sinfulness, it’s trusting that our creator knew what he/she was doing when we were made.
Like Ruthie Foster, I think it’s time to embrace our “phenomenalness”. Oh, I’m not saying we should all start bragging about ourselves, or taking on overly-inflated opinions of ourselves, but what’s wrong with believing that God made us beautiful and talented and phenomenal? Sure we’re all flawed – that’s a given – but we all have within us the seeds of great potential. Believing otherwise is doubting God’s design and ability to work through us.
So today, I am going to believe that I am PHENOMENAL! Truth is, this month it’s not hard to believe. I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve been more open to new possibilities, or if my two weeks in Ethiopia inspired me, but all kinds of opportunities and inspired ideas seem to be “dropping in my lap”. (Or perhaps jumping out of a plane last fall did something to unleash the inner boldness in me.)
Usually February gives way to the doldrums, but this past month, I’ve had lots of chances to use the gifts that I most love to use. I’ve been hired for 2 freelance jobs, both of which entail facilitating workshops on things I love to talk about – like leadership and creative thinking. I also facilitated an all day staff retreat (not my own staff), and got my first chance to fly by the seat of my pants and prove that I could do it (I saw the agenda 15 minutes before launching into the day’s discussion). I had a chance to speak in church a few weeks ago – another thing I quite enjoy. I’ve also had a few writing opportunities, and will see some of it appear in print soon.
And then this week, I stumbled onto one of the most inspired ideas I’ve had in a long time. Part of my day-job involves leading the fundraising team. I don’t have much of a fundraising brain, so it’s good that my staff do most of that kind of work. But I’ve just managed to come up with a new campaign that might revolutionize the way we raise money PLUS it involves encouraging people to do more (lifestyle changes, etc.) than just give money. (I can’t tell you too much about it because it’s still in the seedling phase.)
There must be something in the air, because I feel PHENOMENAL! (Sorry – am I bragging too much? I haven’t entirely let go of the idea that it’s NOT okay to talk about myself like this. In fact, I almost deleted this post.)
This is all really exciting stuff for me, because in a few years, I hope to leave a “nine-to-fiver” job behind and do freelance consulting, facilitation, and writing – just the kind of stuff I’ve gotten to do in the last month. Woohoo!
How about you? What makes you feel phenomenal?
Dear Martyn Joseph, 
