7 Quick Takes Friday #23

What a week! Even for me. I feel like the roller-coaster has pulled into the station just in time to take off again for another climb without me letting off! (Truly, one more ride up and down and around the track is in front of me for next week, with a quick trip to Nebraska planned for Monday (yep, in and out in one day) and the big question: Do I or do I not go to the Middle East at the end of the week? That depends upon my boss, and he is not telling (yet). I nearly did not write this week's 7 Quick Takes, a meme hosted by Jennifer Futwiler at Conversion Diary, because I have been hit by a pretty severe cold. (I don't like being sick, but I guess no one does.)

1. Last Friday at this time I learned that I was to be stuck in Hawaii for a while due to plane mechanical problems. I suppose one does not consider oneself "stuck" in a lovely place like Hawaii. As is often the case when something goes "wrong" with my life, things turned out better than had they gone according to plan. The extra few hours allowed me to write a presentation for a conference in Jordan (the one that I may or may not attend) that can be read by a proxy should I not be able to go. When I did get to the airport and obtain my ticket for the rescheduled flight, I found out that United had given me a complimentary upgrade to First Class as an apology for the delay. Cool! (I have to admit, however, that First Class is lost on me; I am short enough to fit neatly and comfortably into Economy Class.) Nonetheless, I accepted the accommodation, with thanks, ate too much, watched the movie, slept, and arrived too late to catch the plane home from San Francisco so the colleague I was traveling with and I took a rental car and drove home, arriving around 3:00 in the morning.

2. I did not get much post-plane sleep. I had to be at a retreat at 8:00 Saturday morning at the St. Francis Retreat Center. The retreat, Franciscan Spirituality, provided the perfect opportunity to slow down and pay attention to the more important things after a busy week. I noticed that we were not the only retreatants there. With the newly re-built center (after the center burned and the staff scrambled to raise money to replace the old building with a contemporary, more versatile new main building), more groups are now attracted to the serene hills outside our rustic community.

3. The retreat ended Sunday afternoon, just in time to say good-bye to one of my mid-level managers, who will be moving eastward to take over our Maryland office. I invited him and his new girlfriend to Jardines Restaurant. Hailing from Panama, he loves the Latin cuisine there; his girlfriend, who hails from Mexico, decided that she also loves the cuisine. She ordered pollos borrachos (drunken chickens), a puebla (Mexican) recipe. There are some very pleasant aspects to my job. Sending someone off a new adventure is one of them.

4. Monday evening I rushed back home from work to our prayer group meeting because my co-leader was not going to be there. (I rely on him always to be on time because the 6:30 start is difficult for me. I often arrive a few minutes late.) For some strange reason, only Sr. M and one other person showed up. We managed to get so involved, just the three of us, though, that we ran almost an hour longer than usual. There is something delicious and addictive about 2-3 gathering together in God's name and praying together. None of us wanted to leave but just to sit quietly and bask in the feel of God's presence. Needless to say, the rest of the evening was relaxed and satisfying, to some extent a continuation of the retreat experience.

5. At work, this has been a good week for training. On Tuesday, I attended training led by a contracted organization that had done some research for us into best techniques for teaching adults. The presenter was somewhat nonplussed to find me in the audience because she had used one of my books as the basis for some of her conclusions. This has happened to me before, and I always look at it favorably. If someone wants to use my work, it is a compliment; I never criticize the way in which they apply it even if they did not quite get it right. Then, on Wednesday, together with the head of our personnel office, I conducted an all-day training session for new and relatively new managers from our branch offices on the topic of managing "difficult" people in a servant leadership approach to management. What fun! I ordered pizza and pop for a group lunch (then got called away to be on a telephonic conference call over the lunch hour with my boss and the visiting research team; oh, well, I am on a diet and really did not need any of that pizza...). Since I don't believe that people are born difficult or want to be difficult, I entitled my presentation, "How to Create Difficult People." I hope it helped the new leaders have an understanding that everyone is a reflection of God and, therefore, should be treated with respect and love -- and, if that really happens, the difficult side of "difficult people" generally disappears.

6. Our organization's contribution to Afghanistan was finalized at an all-morning meeting today. I will be sending four people there next week. Yikes! One of them, one of my senior managers, had no idea when he got up this morning that he would be going, but he readily agreed. I have such incredibly wonderful and flexible people working for me! I get a lot of credit for meeting "impossible" client needs, but it is not I, but the people who work for me, doing it.

7. Some time during this emotionally charged week, I caught a severe cold. Medicine does not seem to be helping much. Sleep might if I could squeeze time in for that. I was going to call in sick for teaching catechism this evening (it would have been the first and only time in three years), but my co-teacher beat me to tthe punch. Since she had called in sick, there was no question about stopping to pick up some snacks and dragging myself in to the parish educational center. Even though I did not feel any better physically afterward, I am glad that I had this evening with the teens. First, during the break, the classroom aide "caught" our self-proclaimed atheist reading beyond the Bible passage we had read in class. (I don't believe he is truly an atheist. As a former atheist, I recognize other atheists, and he is not one, in my opinion. I think he is just angry at God because his aunt was attacked by her boyfriend five years ago, killed, cut into pieces, and left beside the road in a garbage bag. Only God is going to be able to help him move beyond his anger, but if my co-worker or I can facilitate any rapprochement, we would love to be used in that way.) Second, during an activity that required the teens to track down specific information in the Bible, it became clear that one of the boys, a leader in sports at school (one of the jocks, I guess you could say) did not have good skimming and reading skills. One of the quiet, less popular girls, Clare, went over to him, sat with him, and walked him through the whole process. I could not help but think of St. Clare. It was an unselfish, helpful gesture, undertaken without any regard for cliques and popularity (something that sometimes we have to help the kids to work through). Someone needed help; she helped. Observing that was a great way for me to end the past seven days.

I hope you have had a good week, too, and that God will bless your weekend.