Last week I had two interesting conversations with familiar strangers. These were those people that we have become comfortable around because of propinquity yet don’t really know. You know them, people at work we see every day but only say “Hi” and “See your tomorrow.” Or, those people at church we greet every week because they sit near our pew to whom we’ve passed the peace but could not tell the names of their children or what they do for a living if asked.

As often happens, those familiar strangers can turn out to be very interesting people with life stories that verge on the adventuresome. Such was the case with my two conversations. Both left me saying to myself, “Wow. You never know.”

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I was a hospice chaplain for about five years. It was a great job, despite the obvious need to redefine professional competence and success that comes with the territory. Nothing I was able to do would help the patient “get better.” And every one of our patients died. Over six hundred patients died under my ministry. That’s not something I put on the resume.

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Some things should be obvious, but often we require someone to point out the obvious to us. A man walks into a doctor’s office. He has a cucumber up his nose, a carrot in his left ear and a banana in his right ear.

“What’s the matter with me?” He asked.

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Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST), provides what any good theory does, namely, a rigorous, tested frame of reference for interpreting observable phenomenon. It offers a language for categorizing objects and naming dynamics, and it explain what was formerly unexplainable. Theories help us move from naive explanations toward more spohisticated and nuanced explications. Because theories identify patterns and establish principles and rules related to phenomenon they can also be handy resources for prediction.

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Learning to take responsibility for our own feelings can be hard work. Our culture certainly doesn’t help given its propensity for encouraging a “victim” mentality. People seem to “take offense” readily at just about anything. And too many encourage that by acquiescing to that weak stance rather than challenge it. I remember a pastoral counseling session with a young lady who would respond to my observational and interpretive comments by saying, “You hurt my feelings when you say that.” When she said it the third time I responded, “I’m not responsible for your feelings.” She stopped using that phrase (one she’d learned to use in her family) and started listening differently after that.

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I recently read a post at Learnings at Leadership Network, by Warren Bird, Ph.D., Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 19 books on various aspects of church health and innovation. This was posted on May 16, 2008 in Church Visits.

Warren wrote, “Unfortunately, too many churches exist where the senior pastor is a tremendous leader but an even bigger bottleneck. In such churches nothing of importance can happen unless the senior pastor is at the hub of it. Neither long-term volunteers, nor senior staff, feel empowered to take initiative on anything major. They feel underutilized – and they are.

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I’ve been working with a couple of organizations that are “stuck” but motivated enough to get moving toward becoming “healthier.” As I witness the process of working with the leaders and employees of both organizations I’m reminded of some fundamental truths about systems. First, while motivation is a necessary component for bringing about change, it’s not sufficient. For example, if the motivation is to simply ease acute anxiety or pain a system will settle on pragmatic “instant” solutions that will ease the symptoms.

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I finally got around to watching a DVD from Netflix that’s been sitting on the coffee table for about a month (thank goodness for that “no late fees” policy!). The movie was House of D. In the movie a thirteen-year-old comes of age through loss, grief, and escape. As an adult, and a father, he returns to the place of his childhood in order to reconnect and move on.

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An advantageous reminder is that while we are blessed with the power of cognition, we remain biological creatures often at the mercy of our phylogeny. This is advantageous when we recognize it, and, when the instinctual, non-rational part of our brain does its job in ensuring the survival of our little puddle of the gene pool. The problem comes in that our instinctual brain lacks discernment and will veto our rational cortex when it perceives a threat.

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Leaders often get caught by surprise by reactivity. That’s no surprise given that reactivity often feels like a dose of intense raw emotion. That kind of energy goes right to the amygdala triggering reactivity on the part of the recipient that results in a “fight or flight” impulse. A sudden assault of intense reactivity can turn off our brain, leaving us with an inability to tap into the resource of cognition—thinking through the problem

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