Following Your Passion

Teachers Don’t Punch Time Clocks

by Andy Wood on January 3, 2011

in Books and Music, Following Your Passion, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle, LV Stories

(From the forthcoming book, Coach Lightning)

Mention Morris Brown’s name around Jones County, Mississippi to anybody who knew him, and they’ll probably reply, “Oh, you mean Coach?”  Not much chance of somebody piping up and saying, “He was my Social Studies teacher!”

But don’t let the labels fool you.  Coach was always a teacher at heart.  And while a football field or basketball court may have been his favorite classrooms, they certainly weren’t his only ones.  There were precious few, if any, specialists in rural education in the 1950s.  But that was fine with Coach Brown.  He willingly embraced teachable moments wherever the situation called for it.

Just ask Dale Holifield, who grew up on a small farm in Jones County.  At age 11, Dale was so shy he could have been considered antisocial.  Outside of farming, he participated in very few activities.  Even when he went hunting and fishing, he usually did it alone.  All of that changed one summer day at the W. C. Houston grocery store, across from Shady Grove School.  Dale was getting a cold RC cola to drink and chatting with Bubba Houston, the store owner’s son.  The time came for Bubba to go to baseball practice, and he invited Dale to come along.  Dale reluctantly accepted, and joined Bubba at the small practice field behind Bubba’s house.  Hoping not to be noticed, Dale took a seat on the ground under a shade tree to watch the practice.

He didn’t sit very long. [click to continue…]

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Who’s on First?

by Andy Wood on December 6, 2010

in Following Your Passion, LV Cycle

It’s a famous scene in the movie “City Slickers.”  Curley, the cowboy character played by Jack Palance, says to Billy Midlife-Crisis-Angst Crystal:

“You city folk, you worry about a lot of [stuff]…  You all come up here about the same age, same problems.  Spend about 50 weeks a year getting’ knots in your rope and then you think two weeks up here will untie ‘em for ya’.  And none of you get it.  Do you know what the secret of life is?”

“No, what?” says Crystal.

“This,” Curley says, holding up one finger.

“Your finger?”

“One thing.  Just one thing.  You stick to that and everything else don’t mean [nothing].”

“That’s great, but… what’s the one thing?”

“That’s what you gotta figure out.”

Tough times have a way of bringing out complicated questions.  Ever since Cain killed Abel, or Job’s friends made a “sympathy” visit, people have responded to adversity by haggling and hand-wringing over the deep, often-unanswerable questions in life.  Questions like, “Why is this happening to me?” or “Who’s responsible for that?”

During times like that, we all need somebody who can again bring us back to consciousness. [click to continue…]

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Coach Lightning

by Andy Wood on October 28, 2010

in Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle, LV Stories, Principle of Legacy

 

He outran them all.  

From the woods and swamps around his home in Millry, Alabama to the grass turf at Wildcat Hill, where the Millry Wildcats play their home games…

From a stint in the postwar United States Navy to the gridiron at the Mississippi Southern College…

From the sidelines and dugouts in the rural South to a legacy of influence that will long outlive him…

Nobody ever outran Morris Brown.

Nobody.

And he’d be the first to tell you.

In college they called him “Lightning.”  But the people whose lives were most impacted by his teaching, motivation, and personal influence to this day simply call him, “Coach.” [click to continue…]

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Do You See What He Sees?

by Andy Wood on October 1, 2010

in Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Insight, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Eternity

“There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”(Milan Kundera) 

+++++++

Ever read about the double-pump miracle Jesus performed?  Fascinating story, about a blind man in Bethsaida.  Jesus led him outside the village and spit on his eyes.

“Do you see anything”? He asked.

He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

So Jesus double-clutched.  Once more, he put his hands on the man’s eyes. This time he saw everything clearly.

It doesn’t bother me that it took two rounds with the Son of God for a blind man to see clearly again.  It does bother me that many believers, myself included, have gone many rounds with Jesus, and we still don’t see clearly at times.

He saw people that looked like trees.  We see people that look like other things – jobs, economic status, social labels, racial stereotypes, gender.  Jesus saw something else entirely.  You can too, but it doesn’t come naturally. 

“I see people; they look like trees.” 

What do you see?  Butcher, baker, candlestick maker?  Hot babe, geek, hero, freak? 

They may as well be Klingons, unless we learn to see from Jesus’ perspective.  We talk a lot about pursuing our own passions, but you can never fulfill your deepest passion unless you first embrace his.  Take a look: [click to continue…]

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To Feed the Hungry and Heal the Brokenhearted

by Andy Wood on August 18, 2010

in Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Life Currency, Love, LV Cycle, LV Stories, Photos, Principle of Increase

What turned my head was the sign for Aunt Beaut’s pan-fried chicken. 

Why is it when God wants to get my attention, the easiest way to do it involves chicken?  My belt really is a leather fence around a chicken graveyard.

Anyway, last week we were in downtown Charlotte on vacation.  And there on the corner of West Trade and Tryon Street was the King’s Kitchen.  Open for lunch or dinner, the restaurant trumpets “New Local Southern Cuisine.”

They had me at “Southern.”

True, I can get fried chicken anywhere.  But when was the last time you went into a restaurant that had collard greens, cream corn, and butter beans all on the menu for lunch?

So I staked the place out, and the next day my wife and I walked the block from our hotel to sample the King’s Kitchen for lunch.

I immediately knew something was different about this place when I read the quotation on the wall just inside the door [click to continue…]

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The Worst Lawyer Ever

by Andy Wood on July 1, 2010

in Ability, Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle, LV Stories, Principle of Legacy

It’s a little hard to feel sorry for Mo, even when at times in his childhood you would have been tempted to.  He was a sickly child, and his short, thin physique was no match for the other boys who were good at sports. 

Mo was no geek, either.  Something of a slacker in school, the truth was, book learning was way past hard for him.

But he had his looks, right? 

Uh, no.  Sitting atop his bony, wiry frame was a giant schnoz.  The dude was seven shades of ugly. [click to continue…]

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Where Do You Turn for Validation?

by Andy Wood on June 1, 2010

in Esteem, Following Your Passion, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Pleasers

Imagine for a minute that you’re five years old.  You have taken your crayons and, on your own initiative, made a card for your grandparents.  No special occasion… just an “I love you” message of your own design. 

Hopefully you are motivated by a simple desire to express love to your grandparents.  At the same time, even at age five, you probably also assume that your parents, teacher(s) or somebody will also be proud of you. 

Praise you.

Approve of you.

The big word for that:  validated.  And it feels good.

But what if you got something else in return?  [click to continue…]

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God Never Says “Uh Oh”

by Andy Wood on March 10, 2010

in Ability, Consumers, Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Principle of Abundance, Waiting

(What to Do When Your Brook Dries Up, Part 2)

In the last post I shared some ideas based on the experience of a prophet in the Bible named Elijah about what to do when we try to draw from familiar sources of support, provision (income), encouragement, or direction – only to find that they simply aren’t there anymore.  In the two days since then, I have talked to

  • a man who needed counsel and didn’t have a pastor,
  • a missionary who has seen a significant decrease in support,
  • a former lay leader in churches who is struggling to find a church home,
  • a pastor whose congregation is struggling both financially and in attendance,
  • a student whose marriage engagement has broken off,
  • a church member in another city whose pastor was terminated, then abruptly died.

What they all have in common – in the language of Elijah’s experience, their “brooks have dried up.”

I fully expect that nearly half the conversations I have tomorrow will be in the same vein.

Bottom line:  there are two kinds of people in the world [click to continue…]

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When Your Passion – And Your Religion – is a Liar

by Andy Wood on February 9, 2010

in Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Life Currency, Love, LV Cycle, Principle of Freedom

“If only I could build an exit ramp.  Something that would allow me to escape the rules and the never-ending expectations.  Why doesn’t he realize that I’m just not cut out for this kind of life?  That he and I would both be happier if I were on my own?” 

Sound familiar?  It should.  Thoughts like that are repeated daily, as people try to define freedom in their own terms. 

We all long for authentic freedom – the power to make choices yourself, and joyfully live with the consequences.  The good news of our relationship with Christ is that He came to set captives free! Unfortunately, many believers fail to experience that freedom because they pursue a counterfeit form of it in one of two directions. 

In one of the most often-repeated stories in the Bible, Jesus reveals God’s heart toward His children.  It’s the story of a father with two sons – an older one who served faithfully for many years, and a younger son who longed to be “funky and free.”  Each son pursued and believed in his passion.  Neither understood the life of joy and abundance their father wanted to give them because each pursued passion in his own terms.  One sought it through pleasure, the other through outward performance.  To the younger son, freedom meant license to do what he pleased.  To the older brother, freedom meant legalistic obedience to the rules. 

At any given time, you, too, can be a Prodigal or a Pharisee.  All it takes is a desire to find freedom apart from an intimate love relationship with God.  [click to continue…]

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The Scenic Route

by Andy Wood on January 30, 2010

in Following Your Passion, LV Cycle, Tense Truths, Waiting

A rewrite of an old (and probably true, since I heard a preacher tell it) story… 

What do you do when you know God’s call on your life is vocational evangelism, and your wife dies, leaving you with two sons, ages 8 and 10?  Will Martin decided to seek out a way jto be both Dad and faithful evangelist.  He rearranged his schedule to make sure he was never gone more than four days at a time, and made arrangements for a highly-trusted caretaker.  And he made himself a promise:  whenever he’d been away overnight, he would always bring his sons a special gift.

Then came the day that Will was wheels-up on the plane and it dawned on him:  he’d forgotten to pick up something for his boys.  So Will conceived a plan.

The boys were so ready to see their dad, and so excited to get inside his suitcase.

“Don’t even bother, guys,” Dad said.  “There’s nothing in there.  This one’s special.  [click to continue…]

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