Day-Timers or Begging Bowls

When Christ comes to us, he often appears in unrecognizable form

I'm a slow learner. For most of my Day-timer, life I began each day making a list -- I list; therefore I am - and then spent the rest of the day checking it off, counting it twice, seeing if I'd been naughty or nice. After decades of trying to govern my life by lists, it finally hit me one day that if I can't get even one day according to plan, what am I doing trying to get months and years and even decades to go "according to plan"? Think about it. Has there ever been even one day when your schedule has gone the way you planned it? My life has not gone in straight paths. Has yours? My path has often been in circles.

My new favorite book of 1995: The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning by Henry Mintzberg (New York: Free Press, 1994).

I now begin my day with a different image than that of a list. I now begin it with this . . . a begging bowl. (Lift up a bowl, preferably clay, preferably big enough for everyone to see). I borrowed this idea from Sue Bender, who reminds us of the...