36. ARTHUR BOERS: A Path Back to What Matters

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

[00:00:00] Arthur: I don’t think there are absolute dos and don’ts about every kind of technology, but there are questions to be raised. We do pause and reflect and think about what our ultimate priorities and what’s best to do here, rather than just get carried away with whatever advertising tells us is the latest great gadget.

[00:00:21] Michael: Hi, I am Michael Hyatt.

[00:00:22] Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

[00:00:23] Michael: And you’re listening to The Double Wind Show

[00:00:25] Megan: and today we have a fantastic conversation with somebody we have been wanting to talk to for a long time. Arthur Bos,

[00:00:33] Michael: before we get started, lemme tell you just a little bit about him. Arthur is an author, speaker, pastor.

[00:00:39] Widely respected for his writings on spirituality, resilience, and intentional living. And I first read his book Living Focus probably 10 or 12 years ago. It had an incredible impact on me, and I think it’s really undergirds and is responsible for a lot of the work that we do now. But Arthur’s taught at seminaries.

[00:00:57] He’s led retreats focusing on how to live [00:01:00] a more meaningful and focused life. His book, living in a Focus, offers a roadmap for reclaiming depth and purpose in a world filled with distractions, which is probably your world and our world as well. His memoir, shattered, I could really relate to because he explores his personal journey of growing up in a home shaped by trauma and seeking healing.

[00:01:20] He’s a passionate advocate for community simplicity and finding balance in a hyperconnected world. Without further ado, here’s our conversation with Arthur.

[00:01:32] Arthur: Arthur, welcome to the show. Thanks. It’s great to be here.

[00:01:36] Megan: Arthur. I’d love to hear you just talk about for a second, what is a focal practice when we’re talking about this, what are we even talking about?

[00:01:43] Arthur: So, a focal practice would be any kind of discipline and ritual habit that has three qualities essentially.

[00:01:52] The first one is they make some sort of demand on us. They take practice or we have to repeat them, or we have to [00:02:00] learn how to do them. Could be something like cooking, for example, or making music or birdwatching as we just talked about. All of those take some effort and some intentionality and deliberation.

[00:02:14] The second thing is that they connect us widely and deeply with a community of people. So here you might again think about, uh, music. When my son learned how to play drums, he uh, got connected with my dad. My dad. Had long before passed away. But my dad was a drummer and of course my son connected with the music teacher who taught him drums.

[00:02:37] And then he was in a, a band with some friends in high school. He was connected with them. Then all their fans would come out. Of course, all their families would come out and there’d be connections all over. And you know, when I sing in church, when I sing the hymns, I’m connected with people that I’ve sung hymns with all my life, connected with my dad, for example.

[00:02:55] ’cause as a child I stood beside him and sang hymns. And uh, you know, I [00:03:00] believe I’m, I’m singing with the Saints in Heaven at the same time. And we sing with all those who pass the hymns down to us. So there’s kind of deep, wide resonant connections with communities of people now and in the past as well.

[00:03:15] And then the third thing is that focal practices have a way of reminding us of what’s most important. They bring us back to our true selves that bring us to our true priorities. They often help us. Get a vision of where our life maybe has gotten off course, not quite according to our priorities. They can help ground and center us once more.

[00:03:37] Megan: Hmm.

[00:03:37] Michael: How is it that you got into this work and got focused mm-hmm. On focal practices? What was it that was the inciting event and when did that happen?

[00:03:47] Arthur: Well, a couple things happened. The first was I was pastoring a rural church here in Ontario. I was there for about 10 years and I became fascinated that everybody was [00:04:00] complaining about being too busy.

[00:04:01] Even these good country folk, they were too busy, they were too overwhelmed. The hardest item on the agenda of a meeting was always the last item. And that was when do we meet next? ’cause we couldn’t find a time in common. So I started thinking about this busyness and I started researching the busyness. I tried to understand it, how do we counter it?

[00:04:22] How do we overcome it? What does it say about our society right now? Is this an unusual thing for us? You know, all those kind of questions. And eventually, I came across the work of a philosopher in Montana who just died in the last couple years. His name was Albert Borgman. I read him and I thought his philosophical insights really informed me as a pastor and I.

[00:04:45] Help me get a handle on what was awry in the way that we live right now. But also, and much more importantly, Albert Borgman offer a hopeful way forward. So he helps us analyze things, and it’s not just a diatribe [00:05:00] about what’s wrong with society or how bad technology is. He helps us dissect some of the very real dynamics in a way that helps us move forward and live more joyfully and more purposefully.

[00:05:12] Megan: I love that.

[00:05:13] Michael: So you wrote this in 2012. Yeah. In response to people feeling busy. It’s a good thing that things have gotten better since then.

[00:05:21] Arthur: Yeah. When I wrote that book, it took me, that one took me a long time because. It’s really easy to go, kind of negative and righteous, prophetic and denouncing, and I was trying to figure out how do I talk about this in a way that’s inviting and encourages people?

[00:05:38] So it took me a long time to read the book. One of the things that I did in the research is I just clipped every news article, every magazine, article, any website that I saw that was relevant and I, I filed them in binders and I read through them all as I did, did the book. Now, the thing is, you would not be able to do that now, [00:06:00] because before is maybe once a month, maybe once a week.

[00:06:04] Now I just run into news every day, every day, every week, every section, whether it’s the news section or the business section, or the sports section, or the leisure section, or the family section. Everybody is talking about these kind of things. We all realize that there’s an emerging problem and there’s some really good literature emerging as well about that.

[00:06:24] Jonathan Haight had just had the wonderful book come out and a number of other authors as well, so it’s only become more pressing. And when I wrote the book, I didn’t wanna go into long analysis of specific kinds of technology because I knew as soon as I published it. It would be outdated ’cause there’d be some other kind of technology.

[00:06:44] And that in fact has been the case when it came out. The smartphone hardly existed. So what I was trying to pin down is, are there particular areas of discernment that we can look at that apply for all technology and in our discernment about how we use all [00:07:00] technology? And so, you know, I use examples from tv.

[00:07:02] I used examples from email or text messaging. But the point is not to get into long discussions about, well, email has these benefits or these hazards, or whatever. The point is, how do we as a community of people talk about what ails us and what are good ways to move forward?

[00:07:21] Megan: What are focal practices? The answer to

[00:07:25] Arthur: the three qualities of focal practices, kind of tell us what they’re the answer to.

[00:07:29] So, mm-hmm. The first would be, a lot of our life we just get swept along, carried along, we go along with whatever seems most pressing or urgent. Whatever seems popular, we don’t ask questions. So focal practices help us to be more deliberate. Another thing that focal practices do is they combat isolation and loneliness.

[00:07:53] Megan: Hmm.

[00:07:53] Arthur: The statistics are out there that people are growing more and more lonely. They’re feeling more and more isolated. I think in Britain, I [00:08:00] think they have a minister, a cabinet minister of loneliness who deals with that. I see it as a pastor with people who come in off the street or people that I meet, uh, randomly for my walks in the neighborhood.

[00:08:10] Loneliness is all over and focal practices our way to connect this with others. And then the third would be that we don’t always live according to our priorities. We don’t give enough thought to what our priorities are. And, uh, so we get swept up by other priorities and this helps us ground us in the things that are most important to us.

[00:08:29] Megan: Hmm.

[00:08:29] Michael: Is technology. The problem? Or is it a symptom of the problem? Is there something

[00:08:34] Arthur: deeper? Yes. Well, now we have a long discussion. So technology itself is not the problem. Technology is human manipulation of nature for human priorities. We’ve always had technology. Adam and Eve had fig leaves. That would be technology.

[00:08:54] So there’s always been technology. The Bible, by the way, the Book of Genesis has a lot of important things to suggest [00:09:00] about technology. You could think of the Tower Babel, for example. Mm-hmm. So there’s always been technology. The question is, do we master technology or does technology master us? And two myths that I like to counter.

[00:09:14] The first is. People often say, well, technology is neutral. And that I don’t accept. I think a lot of contemporary technology is not neutral. It’s designed to hook our attention, it’s designed to addict us, it’s designed to overwhelm us. And another thing people say is, well, we’ve always had technology and this, you know, we had the Gutenberg press in the 16th century and we have other kinds of technology and, and as I’ve already said, we have in fact always have had technology.

[00:09:44] But I would say that the quality of technology now is very different than technology before. So for example, it’s impossible to escape the grip of technology. Now you used to be able to not read a book if you didn’t want to or read a [00:10:00] newspaper or whatever. But we are being bombarded with technology and there’s a lot of pressure on us to use technology.

[00:10:06] So, for example, I don’t use a smartphone, mobile phone at all, but it’s becoming harder and harder to function. Payphones are gone. Of course, they’ve been gone for a long time. My wife and I are gonna go hear a concert tomorrow night and, uh, I can’t even print out the tickets. I have to have the tickets on a smartphone, but I don’t have a smartphone.

[00:10:29] So in some ways it’s small nuisance, but that kind of stuff is happening more and more. So there’s actually a pressure to have smartphone. There’s so, so I would say technology is not neutral and technology does have different qualities now than it did in the past, which means that it requires from us more deliberation and discernment, and it requires us to understand what’s going on so we can make different kinds of choices.

[00:10:55] Megan: Yeah, and that’s really difficult because. At present, you know, when we’re recording this, [00:11:00] this is 2025.

[00:11:01] Yeah.

[00:11:01] The pace of change with regard to technology in particular, AI enabled technologies is exponential, seemingly month over month. That’s, you know, that’s right. Not just year over year. It’s just, it’s unbelievable.

[00:11:12] And so it’s a challenge to be discerning when, like by definition, discernment requires thoughtfulness, stepping back, taking time, while simultaneously, these technologies are evolving way faster than we could ever, by the time we’ve gotten to a place of discernment about them, they’re not even what they were at the beginning when we began analyzing them.

[00:11:33] So how do you think about that? Because it’s, I find that personally challenging.

[00:11:38] Arthur: So that’s really one of the reasons why I wrote this book is because I want to encourage communities of people to start talking about how do we make choices around this? How do we do discernment around this? And the interesting thing for me is that in many settings I’ve done presentations and people will say, I just have [00:12:00] never thought about this before.

[00:12:01] Megan: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:12:01] Arthur: So I remember I did a retreat one time for a group of Lutherans in New York, and a woman came up to me afterwards and said, you know, I just got married for the second time late in life. I think they’ve both been widowed. And, uh, my husband is completely obsessed with raising flowers or roses.

[00:12:19] It was specifically Roser. He was very devoted and she said, I’m kind of bugged with how, how much he loves his roses. But she said, now that, now that I understand focal practices. I see what that does for him and I celebrate that with him and I’m gonna support him. Wow. So, you know, it was just something she had never thought of.

[00:12:39] And another time I, I was speaking at Gordon Conwell and there was a lovely, a lovely young woman who had organized the whole event and she was paying attention and she said, you know, I’ve just been married for two years and we at supper always turn on the TV and watch the TV while we eat. And because of your [00:13:00] presentations, she said, we’re not gonna watch TV anymore, we’re gonna focus on each other.

[00:13:04] Also, when I taught at seminary, I would talk to students about this and they had never thought about the fact that you can turn off the notifications on your devices. You know, the things that are pinging nonstop to get your attention. They just never thought about it. And so, you know, I’m trying to encourage people to have some thoughtful discernment and conversation about these things so that we have more choice

[00:13:26] Michael: back.

[00:13:27] Probably 23 years ago or so when Blackberry was still the dominant phone. Yeah. Yeah. Not even really a smartphone. Right. But it became ubiquitous and people used it all the time. Right. And I was leading a company, me meeting, I was the CEO of a public company, and we had all of our vice presidents, about 75 of ’em in a room.

[00:13:45] And so I suggested that they turn their blackberries off and they really, there were people in the room that didn’t even know there was an off button. Oh, wow. And we had to show them how to turn the device off. Wow. Again, that was over 20 years ago and now it’s,

[00:13:59] Megan: that’s crazy. [00:14:00]

[00:14:00] Michael: Good work. Right, right.

[00:14:02] Megan: I’d like to read a passage from the book.

[00:14:04] This is a little bit long, but I think it’s very apropos to what we’re talking about now. This is from page 73 and it’s in the chapter that is called Going On. The Alert and Alert is an acronym, as you’ll see in a second. So it.

[00:14:21] Six aspects of how technology affects us need vigilance, whether we’re talking about relatively old fashioned 20th century cars, televisions, or radios, or whether we pay attention to more recent devices, and who can predict what’s next. These areas need special, constant, and devoted care. They warrant discernment.

[00:14:40] The realms of concern in our technologically dominated lives today are as follows. First, attention. It’s the A. What is the primary and ongoing focus of our awareness? Screens and virtual relationships, family and neighbors. Voyeuristic television reality shows nature and our surrounding environments is our [00:15:00] capacity to pay attention.

[00:15:01] D, be aware, diminishing are we so overwhelmed with information and

[00:15:09] are moving to expecting perceive. So that’s attention and then limits what guides our sense of what is appropriate. Do we have the moral strength to recognize when something is beyond the pale and that we need to say no? Or does technology, which makes more and more things possible, including voyeurism, pornography, and gambling, also make all things permissible?

[00:15:33] Which taboos are worth guarding? How does technology free us from the moral constraints and accountabilities? What is the relationship of technology to addiction? And how does technology reinforce addictions? How is technology itself addictive? And then e engagement. How are we coping with life and its challenges?

[00:15:52] Do we approach our day and those we love with calm and anticipation, eager to be and work together or do such rushed and [00:16:00] harried attention span lead us into being demanding. How does technology speed encounters making conflicts and misunderstandings more likely? Does planned and perceived obsolescence contribute to eroding commitments are relationships.

[00:16:16] Do our lives include rich networks of loved ones, supportive friends, caring confidants, and casual acquaintances? Are there people who know us in our fullness care about our hardships and challenge us to grow in virtue? Or are our lives characterized by growing isolation and loneliness, our relationships dispersed and fragmented?

[00:16:37] What are the implications of having relationships increasingly mediated by technology? While opportunities for face-to-face conversations decline and in the flesh friendships decrease? How does technology reinforce casual approaches to relationships? Ones that are easy to enter or exit, but do not necessarily sustained?

[00:16:56] What kinds of communities are created by our technological [00:17:00] use time tea. Do we have a sense that there is enough room in our lives for the things that truly matter, work and play rigor and rest, love and laughter? Or are we too busy to live according to our deepest and highest priorities? Do distracting demands and pressures lure us away from our highest values?

[00:17:20] How does engagement with technology make us busier? And how does technology erode and displace opportunities to pause and determine, reflect on and honor ultimate priorities? And then lastly, space. S. How well connected are we with the geography and places where we are located? Are we rooted in neighborhoods connected to the earth and our environment?

[00:17:43] Or is much of our life lived abstractly in virtual reality?

[00:17:47] Arthur: Wow. Yeah. And that spells out alerts. And that’s quite deliberate because what I didn’t wanna do in talking about this book, I. Was to be legalistic and say, these are the do’s and [00:18:00] those are the don’t. So mm-hmm. It’s not tv or not tv. That’s not the question.

[00:18:05] The question is, how do we discern the appropriate thing in each setting? So, you know, I, I mentioned that I don’t use a portable phone at all. My wife has a smartphone. She needs a smartphone for her work. She’s a nurse practitioner and she’s a woman who drives by herself at times. And, uh, so for safety and security, she needs a phone.

[00:18:23] I don’t have any problem with that, but I’m encouraging people to think about how to discern these things together. So when I talk about alerts, I often use the example of yellow lights. What I mean by that is we all know what a red light means. It means stop, and uh, you don’t stop. You could be in trouble.

[00:18:43] Green light means go. If you don’t go on a green light. Other people around you are gonna remind you very quickly that it’s time to go. But the yellow light is really the most important. It’s the most complicated and interesting light because there’s no one rule that applies at all times. The only [00:19:00] thing it means is caution.

[00:19:02] If you always go on a yellow light. You’re doing it incorrectly. If you always stop on a yellow light, you’re doing it incorrectly. You have to gauge all kinds of things, the traffic behind you, alongside you coming forward. You have to gauge how long the light has been yellow. You have to gauge what the weather is like, what the surface of the roads are like.

[00:19:22] So it’s really a quite a complicated discernment process, and I like to say the same thing is true of technology. I don’t think there are absolute dos and don’ts about every kind of technology, but there are questions to be raised. We do pause and reflect and think about what are ultimate priorities and what’s best to do here, rather than just get carried away with whatever advertising tells us is the latest great gadget.

[00:19:56] Michael: It seems to me like alerts is an invitation [00:20:00] to reflect. And discern. Exactly. That’s what I’m trying to do. Does this encourage you that there’s, there’s kind of a, now a resistance there is, for example, where the money meets the road, so to speak, is that there are a lot of dumb phone manufacturers. Yes. Yes.

[00:20:17] Their chief attribute is that they’re not a smartphone. Right. You do a limited number of, uh, things on them and then there are all kinds of apps and I run a monochrome screen on my smartphone just so that it’s less enticing because we know the color is more enticing. But does that hearten you? Because it seems like be really easy to go backwards in this and just succumb to it and say, you know, there’s nothing we can do.

[00:20:41] It’s just all this pressure, we just have to succumb to it.

[00:20:45] Arthur: No, I am heartened by it. There’s a quite well known writer here in Toronto. He, he wrote a book recently called The Future is Analog. Mm-hmm. Yeah. People are interested in LPs, for example, and I think all these kind of questions show that there are people who understand that there’s something [00:21:00] awry and they wanna live differently, and they’re finding ways of living differently.

[00:21:03] New York Times had article a couple years ago about a group of high schoolers who decided they just weren’t gonna have smartphones, and that was an interesting article. And then in the last few months they revisited a number of those. Yep. High schoolers. I read that. Who in college Now And, and some of them do and some of them don’t.

[00:21:19] But I, all those things. Encourage me, because when I wrote the book, I felt pretty lonely actually. I mean, Albert Borgman liked the book and some other people liked the book, but I felt like, am I the only one thinking this and working on this kind of like Elijah, you know, feeling sorry for myself. And, uh, and now I see no, a lot of people realize something’s going on and they’re, they’re finding ways to live deliberately and differently, so I’m encouraged by it.

[00:21:45] For sure.

[00:21:45] Michael: What would you say to the person who’s hearing all this and wants to get started? Mm-hmm. With focal practices, they’re convinced that there’s something in a way that’s nostalgic and something about it that resonates. Mm-hmm. A lot of us can remember back to our [00:22:00] childhood when we didn’t have all these devices.

[00:22:01] Right. Increasingly, we have a generation that didn’t grow up in that time. Right. But would you, what would you say to the person that wants to get started, but they feel like they’re so busy right now, that there’s no room? For this kind of thing, where do you start to begin to unravel this? Well, I would, I think I would

[00:22:15] Arthur: say a few things.

[00:22:16] And one is that, first of all, start small. Hmm. Uh, when I was seminary prof, I used to teach seminary disciplines to people and I would say, don’t take on too much at once. Do a little bit. And if that works, then expand that. ’cause what tends to happen is people get enthused, they get converted, and they try to do many, many things at once.

[00:22:38] And then they discourage, then they quit. Yeah. So it’s better to start small and build on that. So have small goals if you’re are a member of a household or a family. Try to have one meal a week without devices and maybe move towards not having devices at any of your meals. But, you know, start with, you know, say Friday night we’re gonna have [00:23:00] supper and we’re just gonna focus on each other and nobody’s gonna look at the screen.

[00:23:04] So start small and expand from there. And another thing I would say is look for activities that really give you joy, because there’s a good chance that those are focal practices. And that’s one of the ways that I wrote this book. One of the handles, as I mentioned, I was trying to figure out how do I write this in a way that’s positive and inviting?

[00:23:25] And so what I did was I went and interviewed a number of people who lived in my community who were really devoted to one focal practice or another. So there was a birder. She discovered birding in her seventies. It changed her life and her faith, actually, her understanding of God. There was a quilter, she was the secretary of of the church where I was a member.

[00:23:46] And she had never been out of Indiana, but she was a great quilter. And as a result, Mennonite Central Committee invited her to do a quilting retreat in Mongolia of all places. Oh wow. And she loved it. And you know, she [00:24:00] was a person who didn’t like to speak in public, but if you asked her to get at the front of the church and give a testimony about quilting, she would do it.

[00:24:06] Um, you know, there’s a carpenter, a baker, there was somebody who biked to work all year round, even in Northern Indiana. These were all focal practices. And one of the things that I was doing was I was hoping to help people see that there might be activities that they’re devoted to that can have the function of focal practice in their life.

[00:24:25] And this could reinforce their commitment to that or to give them other ideas of other things to do. There were gardeners and, um, I forget what the whole list was, but one of the interesting things was these people on the whole were not. They were not philosophical people, shall we say. And I talked to them.

[00:24:45] I, you know, I made an appointment to talk to them because I knew of their devotion to some particular activity. And sooner or later they would ask me, well, what’s this about? What are you doing? And I’d give them a snapshot of what focal practices were and why they were important. [00:25:00] And this was sometimes the most interesting part of the interview because the people would go, oh, I’ve been wondering why this activity is so important to me.

[00:25:08] Or they might even say, I’ve been embarrassed at a, how important this activity was to me. So the quilter, for example, her sister would make fun of her and tell her she was a member of a quilting cult. And, uh, but when I gave her the handle, the explanation of why focal practices were significant, it gave them the language to defend and uphold and prioritize these activities and, uh, uh, keep going forward with them.

[00:25:34] Megan: I love that. That’s great. One of the things that I’ve experienced, Arthur, myself, and this is kind of recently relevant again, in that in December, I decided to give up Instagram completely. Okay. Indefinitely. I realized I was addicted to it, you know, I could spend. As much time as I had on it, you know, I, I couldn’t sit at a stoplight without pulling out my phone looking at it.

[00:25:57] Right. I was just everywhere all the time. One of the [00:26:00] things that I quickly experienced on the other side of that is one, I had a lot more time than I thought I did. Yes. So, the sense that I don’t have any time is sometimes more perception than reality. Correct. Is we’re filling it up with all this stuff.

[00:26:12] Yep. But now I gotta figure out what to do with that time. Which, you know, what I wanna do are things that are like focal practices.

[00:26:18] Mm-hmm.

[00:26:18] But what I found is that the frustration tolerance that was necessary for doing these activities, doing something that demanded something of me, for example, or something that evolved other people.

[00:26:32] Yeah. I’m an introvert. I’d just be happy to be at home by myself most of the time. I mean, I have five kids, so I’m not really at home by myself, but, you know, in my home with my, my own nuclear family, first of all, what’s your explanation for like the challenges that we experience? Trying to pursue these things given our current kind of dopamine rich context, and how do we overcome that to get ourselves kind of over the hump, right?

[00:26:54] To where they become joyful when we’re used to everything being just so fast and easy,

[00:26:58] Arthur: right? I [00:27:00] also used an idea that I learned from Albert Borgman that I found life changing. He would talk about thresholds, so you know, a threshold in the doorway, for example. He said that lots of times the thresholds to doing things that are not necessarily our priority are most important are often very low.

[00:27:20] So you think about you have a hard day at work, you come home, you put your feet up on the hassock, and it’s really easy just to turn on the TV or turn on the computer or press a button. The threshold is low and you slide into it, you know, and I’m not saying those are always bad things, but I’m just saying the threshold is low and then the threshold.

[00:27:43] To doing things that we like, takes more effort and discipline. So the threshold is higher. One of his examples in a book that he wrote in the nineties, and the example will tell you that it was pretty dated. He said, when a TV was moved into a family’s [00:28:00] house, the decisions for what to do that evening suddenly got very narrow.

[00:28:05] Whereas in the past, you might say, shall we sit on the porch? Shall we visit with the neighbor? Shall we go for a not walk? Shall we write letter? Shall we play games? On and on and on. Now, all of a sudden, the decision was what’s on TV tonight so that the threshold is low? Mm-hmm. So his answer to that was he said, what we ought to do is raise thresholds against things that are not the priority.

[00:28:30] And because of him, I still had a TV then, but my TV was in a central place in the living room. So it was easy to turn on, especially when I was feeling tired. So what I did as a result, I moved the TV down into the basement. It was an uglier room. I had to travel some distance. I had to walk over creaky floors to get the stairs.

[00:28:51] And my beloved might say, are you really gonna watch TV again and have to give, give it a little more thought, you know? So you see you’re raising [00:29:00] the threshold. It didn’t mean I’d never watch tv, but it did mean I watched the TV not as often. So I raised the threshold. And then the other thing is lower the threshold for things that are your priorities.

[00:29:11] So one of my big focal practices is walking, walking, and hiking. What I do is I buy really good shoes that are a pleasure to wear, that feel good on my feet. I’m glad to put ’em on. I buy good outdoor gear walkers, like to say there’s no, there’s no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing, right? So you lower the threshold.

[00:29:33] For the things that are a priority. I know that I’m a better person when I pray regularly and when I pay attention to my reading and my writing. I do that usually first thing in the day. ’cause that works the best for me. I’m the freshest, I’m alert and I’m happy then. And so I, I just do it right away. So, you know, another thing I did was for years I always wore a watch on my arm.

[00:29:58] And I know a lot of people don’t wear [00:30:00] watches anymore ’cause you have phones. But, uh, I just realized I was too obsessed with that watch. There’s even a picture of me on our wedding day where I’m looking at my watch and I’m like, I. Is there one day? You know, if there’s one day where I shouldn’t be worried about the time, it’s that day, but you know, there’s a picture of me looking at my wristwatch and I wasn’t necessarily engaging people that I wanted to.

[00:30:21] Like I would be, if the conversation went too long, I might search Fictitiously, start to try to look at my watch to figure out what was going on. Now, I’m not somebody who can live without a watch. I’m Dutch. So the 11th commandment is not just punctuality. Being early is a high priority, so I haven’t been able to give up a watch, but I put it in my pocket.

[00:30:42] So it’s like putting technology in its place so I can still look at my watch from time to time, but the threshold’s a little higher. I’m not gonna pull it out and look at it when somebody’s talking to me about a difficult subject. I’m going to be patient. So just small gestures of, uh, raising thresholds or [00:31:00] lowering thresholds accordingly.

[00:31:02] Megan: It’s really good.

[00:31:03] Michael: This reminds me of people who wanna start. Eating in a more nutritious way. They might take everything outta their pantry and their refrigerator, get rid of it, and fill it with the healthy stuff so that if they wanna have dessert or something, that may be a little less healthy problem.

[00:31:19] It’s just that they have to go out and get it. So it’s of a deliber choice. Yeah,

[00:31:22] Megan: that makes a lot of sense. Mm-hmm. You know, one of the things that we talk about as being kind of necessary for human flourishing, and I think your version of this is kind of biggie sized, is the need for hobbies. The need for recreation.

[00:31:37] Mm-hmm. You know, a lot of the people in our community are people who consider themselves high achievers. They’re pursuing goals, they, you know, want us to be successful, that kind of stuff. And consistently, when we talk to our clients, when we talk to people in our community, the thing they struggle with most are hobbies.

[00:31:55] Mm-hmm. Of how are focal practices and. [00:32:00] Or not. And why do you think we struggle with those as people who are high achievers?

[00:32:05] Arthur: First of all, I would say that often hobbies are focal practices, so I don’t make a distinction there necessarily. I think hobbies can be a very good thing. And by the way, the understanding of focal practices really helped me as a pastor because.

[00:32:19] As a pastor, I prioritize getting to know people, hanging around people, hanging around with people, visiting people at their workplace or in their home. And it would happen from time to time that I’d visit people in their home and they’d have some hobby that I did not get at all. Not that I would say that to them, and not that I would show it, you know, with my body language.

[00:32:37] I hope I didn’t show it, you know, because as a pastor you’re supposed to be professionally interested in everybody making fun of myself here. But when I started to understand focal practices, I understood, oh, this is fulfilling a function in their life that’s really important and is worth celebrating.

[00:32:53] And so even though it might be something that I wouldn’t engage or do, I could really celebrate that with them, [00:33:00]

[00:33:00] Megan: I,

[00:33:01] Arthur: another thing I would say is. A lot of focal practices really are things that were quite normal in the past. They were regular and they’ve been displaced by our reliance on technology. And so in some ways, focal practice is just helping us reclaim things that we knew or did before, and helping us prioritize them, helping us have a different perspective on them.

[00:33:24] Now, there are all kinds of reasons for why we don’t go in that direction. I’m a type A personality, so, you know, I get the obsession with lists and accomplishments and awards and you know, whatever. So I have that certain kind of driven nature too. But I, what I have found was when I take seriously sabbatical, for example, of taking the Sabbath seriously on a weekly basis, that has a way of changing my perspective and also ironically, can make me more productive than I was before.

[00:33:53] Hmm. So I learned this when I was a pastor and I, I had a summer sabbatical for writing. [00:34:00] For years, I had, I had written one or two days a week even while I was a pastor. And the way I would write is on those days, I would just write all day until I was exhausted.

[00:34:09] Megan: And

[00:34:09] Arthur: then when supper came and have supper with my family, I was kind of obliterated.

[00:34:14] And when I had a sabbatical, I made a surprising discovery. At first, I thought, oh good, I’m gonna write eight hours a day for five days a week. I’m gonna just churn out so much material. I’m gonna finish the book I’m working on. And I don’t, I don’t know what stopped me, but I actually changed my pattern.

[00:34:30] And what I did was I would write every morning and then I checked the weather later in the morning, and then I would go windsurfing every afternoon for hours a night. Oh, windsurfing is a focal practice. And I loved it. I was really healthy, I was really fit. I was getting lots of exercise. I was enjoying the fresh air.

[00:34:48] I got home for supper. I was rejuvenated. I was a much happier fellow family member. And I, ironically, I was writing better and more than when I wrote. Eight to 10 hours a day, [00:35:00] and so it was a kind of a, a funny way to discover it, but it was a discovery that I made.

[00:35:05] Megan: Wow.

[00:35:06] Michael: When does a hobby stop being a focal practice?

[00:35:10] Arthur: You’re asking for a friend.

[00:35:12] Megan: A friend that looks just like him.

[00:35:14] Arthur: I don’t know. I think that’s probably a conversation that you need to have with a discerning person who knows you. Oh no. Your friend needs to have with a discerning person who knows him or her quite well. I have several

[00:35:25] Michael: hobbies, but one of them is golf.

[00:35:27] Yeah. It’s easy for me. Very similar to you, very driven person that I can turn any non achievement activity. I do that too. Yeah. Into an achievement activity. I guess that’s when I think, Hmm. Right. I’m not sure this is kind of serving its purpose. Like when I go fishing, I’m perfectly content to not cat fish.

[00:35:46] Yeah. I’m just being out there. Or when I’m playing the guitar. I also play Native American flute, you know, I’m just content, right. To just enjoy myself.

[00:35:56] Arthur: Yeah. I don’t golf, but I mean, I, you know, I totally get that is I used to [00:36:00] bird regularly for a while, and then you start getting obsessed with the lists and the numbers and the, the ones that you miss.

[00:36:06] And you know, the thing about birding that was so fantastic was it helped me to slow down when I was outdoors. Yeah. You know, I used to go to the monastery and I’d go outdoors and I was just antsy. I wanted to do things, you know, I wanted to read books or write stuff. I wanted to get back to my cell and, and get busy.

[00:36:22] And when I started birding, it gave me the discipline of just slowing down, finding a nice, quiet place, watching for a while and let whatever happens, happens. And that was, that was much healthier for me. So, you know, I’m not going to judge your golfing or the way that you golf, but I, I totally recognize that we all have these kind of urges that drive us in ways that can be destructive.

[00:36:47] So. Golfing may still be a focal practice. Practice, but sometimes it may be a kind of a distorted one for you. Yeah.

[00:36:54] Megan: Hmm. That’s a good way to say it. Before we got on, I was on a, a coaching call with a client [00:37:00] who, like me, has a number of children. Hers are actually younger than mine are. She has a successful business, and I would say one of the most common questions that I get asked by people who have young children at home is, how do I find time for hobbies?

[00:37:16] You know, like this particular woman has three young children under three years old who are, her youngest is several older children as well, but you know, if they’re awake, she’s on with these kids, right. I think sometimes hobbies or activities that are recreational or focal practices to be more specific can feel really out of reach.

[00:37:36] It feels like something that you get to do when you’re retired or it feels like something you get to do if you don’t have children. And it can be really discouraging for people who are in a season of caretaking sometimes that is when you’re retired, when you’re taking care of elderly parents, you know, or another family member, right?

[00:37:52] Um, sometimes that’s when you have little kids at home, you’re not sleeping or they’re, you know, just, you gotta have your eyes on them all the time. What could this practically [00:38:00] look like for people who find themselves in a season of very demanding caretaking without a lot of free time?

[00:38:07] Arthur: I think there are a couple things I would say.

[00:38:08] One is that we need to recognize the season of life that we’re in. My wife and I had small children. We both worked part-time and we juggled our jobs so that we could juggle childcare and you know, there’s only so much you can do and the kids did a priority. And I remember I looked forward to nap time and uh, yeah, sometimes I let them nap longer than I should have let them nap.

[00:38:31] But you know, that’s another thing. So, you know, there are things that are appropriate in particular seasons. But another thing to say is that caretaking itself can be a focal practice, cooking meals for people that we care about. That’s a focal practice. I. And quite simple things can be focal practices. I love, for example, walking in my neighborhood and just having random conversations and there’s some people that I talk with more often than others and sometimes it’s just a one off.

[00:38:58] Last, last week I walked [00:39:00] around the corner. I ran into a woman who was walking her 18-year-old cat, and we had a long talk about her cat and options for a cat. And uh, you know, it was great. I felt like it uplifted my day and I think maybe it uplifted hers as well. And so, you know, I think there’s joys that we can find in our daily life and it’s worth focusing there.

[00:39:19] It’s not just about hobbies, it’s really about and approach to life and prioritizing our highest values.

[00:39:26] Michael: Do you ever, and I’m asking you to be vulnerable here, do you ever backslide and you find out, oh, I’ve just become kind of mindless about this and I’ve drifted back into not practicing these things the way I’d like to.

[00:39:39] What do you think? I think probably the answer is of course,

[00:39:43] Megan: and all guys people said, amen. We’re so glad we’re not alone.

[00:39:47] Michael: Yeah, for sure. For sure. I have a theory. Yeah, and I don’t suppose it’s probably right in every case, but it’s definitely right when it comes to me is that people write about the things they struggle with.

[00:39:57] Arthur: For sure. Yeah, that was true of, [00:40:00] uh, one of my mentors was Henry now, and I spent a lot of time with him and you know, he wrote so brilliantly about silence and solitude and stillness and he was a harried man. Like he was busy, he was frantic. He bought a new car one time, and even though the auto lot was only at a mile or so from where he was living in the daybreak community, he totaled the car before he got back home because he drove too fast.

[00:40:28] The daybreak community was on this farm. His house was at the back of the farm and his office was at the front of the farm. And I remember the community had a big, long debate whether they should pave that road. On the farm from the front to the back, and they said, we really don’t wanna pave it because Henry’s gonna drive even faster if we paved.

[00:40:49] So, you know, he was doing the same thing. And as a pastor, of course, I’m doing this all the time. I’m preaching about things that I struggle with, and I’m hoping that it makes connections [00:41:00] with struggles that other people have as well. Yeah.

[00:41:10] Michael: Let’s turn a corner and talk about Shattered. Okay. This is your newest book, right? Give us the story. I know you talk about generational trauma in there, but kind of give the long arc of the book.

[00:41:21] Arthur: Most of my books would be considered pastoral theology or practical theology, and I’m trying to give people counsel on how to engage certain challenges in life.

[00:41:32] But about 20 years ago, I started noticing that there were a. Some examples of nonfiction that particularly inspired me and were lovely. So I read them not just because I liked the ideas or they helped me live a better life, but there was something about the quality of the literature that really captivated me.

[00:41:51] And then I realized, oh, there’s kind of a whole genre of what’s sometimes called creative nonfiction or literary nonfiction. And I thought, I’d like to [00:42:00] try my hand at that. I’d like to try to write something a little bit differently than is just preaching or advising or counseling or arguing or whatever.

[00:42:09] And the more I thought about that, the more I thought, I think I’d like to write about my childhood. I was a son of Dutch immigrants. Dutch is my first language. I had to learn English in the street. My parents gave me an English name that they couldn’t pronounce. And so I grew up not sure whether I was Dutch or Canadian.

[00:42:26] And then, you know, when I started working with missionary kids as an adult, I realized, oh, I was a third culture kid. I didn’t know whether I was Dutch or Canadian. I really struggled with that for a long time. So I thought it would be worth exploring. There’s some funny things in there. And I also had very vivid experiences, uh, religious experiences as a child.

[00:42:45] I felt a call to ministry at age four in a church where they didn’t talk about call. And that sense of call has persisted through my life. So I thought, well, that’d be worth exploring. And then I thought, well, I’d like to explore the mystery of my dad, who was a brilliant man. A [00:43:00] businessman, didn’t have much education, but he created a manufacturing business and exported greenhouses.

[00:43:05] All around the world. He was also very troubled. He struggled with alcohol and anger. And uh, there were times when his anger focused on me in very destructive ways. And so I thought, well, I like to explore the mystery of my dad. And in the book, I do all three things. But the more I wrote, the deeper I dug into it, I realized the main story that I wanna explore here is the mystery of my dad and how it affected me.

[00:43:30] And as I was working on it, I realized, oh, my dad had PTSD something that,

[00:43:36] Megan: you know, we

[00:43:36] Arthur: didn’t talk about when I was a child. And it made sense. He survived two wars. He had a very abusive father. And when I thought about him in terms of PTSD, it explained how he would get triggered by things and act way out of proportion.

[00:43:52] The more I reflected on it, I realized, oh, I have PTSD as well. Mm-hmm. Because his violence focused on me on a couple of occasions, [00:44:00] and all my life I have struggled with depression and anger. And then, so then as I realized that I have PTSD, it helped me have more compassion for him, but also more compassion for me.

[00:44:10] And in fact, compassion is the way forward. It doesn’t help to school people who are struggling with these things, but to listen to them with patience and kindness and compassion can in fact make a difference.

[00:44:22] Michael: I have a similar background. Yeah. And I just, you know, one of the things you say in the book, or one of the things that certainly related is that focal practices can be a way to heal or improve generational trauma.

[00:44:35] Yeah. What the

[00:44:36] Arthur: experience there, it’s interesting, a lot of people who deal with PTSD especially. Soldiers, they often recover through walking and hiking, for example.

[00:44:46] Megan: Hmm.

[00:44:46] Arthur: And hiking has been very important to me. I’ve hiked a whole Bruce trail here in Ontario. It’s about 800 kilometers. I hiked the community, Santiago and Spain also, 800 kilometers.

[00:44:56] I wrote a book about that as well, the way it’s made by walking. [00:45:00] So I think that focal practices have a way of reminding us what our priorities are and paying attention to the things that heal us and bring us back to where we want to be. When I started hiking, one of the, one of my discoveries was I would go and hike on the Roos Trail here in Ontario and I’d go for, you know, two or three days or something.

[00:45:21] And I started to realize hiking on the Bruce trail was a lot like going to the monastery. I’d been gonna the monastery for decades. It’s time to recalibrate, to reevaluate one’s life, to look at where your life has gone off course. And Michael, in answer to your previous question, yes, my life regularly goes off course.

[00:45:40] And so there’s an opportunity to see these things. Plus it has the added benefit of being outside, enjoying the beauty of nature, enjoying God’s creation, having physical exercise, getting fresh air. So those would be examples of how focal practice really help help me deal with some difficult

[00:45:59] Michael: things. I [00:46:00] would think too, we’ve, we’ve talked on this show about polyvagal theory and nervous system regulation and some of that.

[00:46:05] Yeah. And it seems like focal practices are a way for us to get into that parasympathetic mode. Yes. Where we can, you know, our brains relaxed and we feel safe, and that all by itself would be a way to deal with trauma.

[00:46:21] Arthur: Yeah. That’s a big help for

[00:46:22] Michael: trauma. That’s right.

[00:46:23] Arthur: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah,

[00:46:24] Michael: that’s good.

[00:46:25] Megan: You know, we were talking Arthur before we started recording that.

[00:46:29] Um, and I’ve shared this before on the show, that of my five children, three of my younger children are adopted. And of course, any child who’s made available for adoption has endured incredible trauma to be in a place where they need a new family. And so one of the things that I find fascinating about our own family journey of trauma and healing is how much attention is affected by trauma, how difficult it is to pay attention to be embodied, you know, the, the impulse [00:47:00] to dissociate when you’ve experienced a lot trauma

[00:47:03] Right.

[00:47:03] Is a tremendous poll. Yes. And I’d love for you to just talk a little bit about the relationship between attention and focal practices and kind of like what the dark side, and we’ve talked a lot about the benefits of focal practices, but I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about like, if we don’t have focal practices in our life.

[00:47:22] What happens to our attention, what happens to our lives? Because I think we need to know what’s at stake.

[00:47:28] Arthur: Alright, so you’re inviting me to bring together two books that I haven’t really conceive. That’s right. Just right here on the spot. I haven’t really tried to make connections between them before, so that’s a very good challenge.

[00:47:42] See, one of the things about having been traumatized and having PTSD is that we can have reflexes that are automatic and not really thought through. It’s called triggers. We get triggered and my dad got triggered really easily. You know, you never knew what was gonna trigger ’em. You [00:48:00] know, one day I could bash up the car and it didn’t bother him, and the next day I could quibble with my sister and he would explode, you know?

[00:48:06] So we never knew what the triggers were. But this is not so much about my dad. It’s that I’ve needed to learn what are my triggers. I need to learn when I’m being triggered, and I know that there are certain kinds of situations that are more likely to trigger me. Other kinds of situations. And so then I need to be on alert to go back to living into focus.

[00:48:25] I need to pay attention. Yeah. I need to be on alert. But if I live a life that pays attention to focal practices, especially pays attention to writing, reading, and praying on a regular basis, I tend to be more centered and focused and less likely to be triggered.

[00:48:42] Megan: Hmm.

[00:48:42] Arthur: Prayer disciplines are also a place where we get to reflect on our life and we can think about things that have gone wrong or things that have gone well, and we can make decisions about them, and we could just be more deliberate.

[00:48:53] So for me, focal practices are about getting away from just [00:49:00] acting automatically. See, that’s how I was raised, is that if you act automatically, it’s right. You’re justified. And of course, that’s. Thinking, but I’ve had to unlearn that.

[00:49:10] Megan: That’s so helpful because one of the things we talked with, uh, I think Dad, it was when we had Ian on Oh yeah.

[00:49:16] We were talking about how, you know, if you’re. You have to be able to live intentionally and you can’t live intentionally unless you’re self-aware. Right. And you can’t be self-aware. Right. If you’re numb or dissociated or otherwise checked out. Like you have to be attentive and present in your life.

[00:49:37] Yeah.

[00:49:38] Then that I think is what I hear you saying is that if we’re going to become aware of our triggers, if we’re going to ultimately have the capacity to heal, then we have to be able to be in a place where we’re like plugged into our lives so that we can catch them before they become explosions. For example, like in your dad’s case, right?

[00:49:56] Or before they take us way far off the rails. It’s one thing, you know, to have [00:50:00] our life drift a little here and there and then we kind of recalibrate and you know, I think we’re always doing that to some degree. Sure. But what we don’t want is to have years go by and realize we were way off course. You know?

[00:50:09] That’s where a lot of bad things happen. So I think this invitation, really my experience of living in a focus is an invitation to be present. An invitation to be fully where I’m and fully embodied. And the practices tend to be things that engage your physical self as much as your emotional or intellectual self.

[00:50:28] And I think that in and of itself is deeply healing and restorative in the true sense of the word.

[00:50:35] Arthur: I agree with everything you said, and I, I would also add that it also means a willingness to live with ambiguity and to live mm-hmm.

[00:50:44] Megan: With

[00:50:45] Arthur: pain and to live with things that aren’t resolved and hold that there, that’s a hard learning.

[00:50:51] Um,

[00:50:53] Megan: that is hard for me.

[00:50:53] Arthur: For me it’s a hard learning.

[00:50:55] Megan: Me too.

[00:50:56] Michael: When you’re in that reactive mode, it’s harder to do. [00:51:00] Yeah. And I think the focal practice creates the space. I remember Dr. Steven Covey talking about, I think he got this, um, inspiration for this from Viktor Frankl, but the idea was that between the stimulus and the response.

[00:51:14] Is the opportunity to pause Exactly. And to think about right. How we’re going to react. Right. But if we always feel rushed, if we’re going at the edge of our capacity, then we don’t have the ability really to reflect. We really do become, at that point, you just have to do things automatically. Right, right.

[00:51:33] We could talk all afternoon, but uh, we do have three questions that we like to ask at the end. Okay. Rapid fire. Yeah. And so, you know, our concept of the double win, winning at work and succeeding at life. Right. So basically a way of saying work life balance, that life is more than work. There’s all these other things that create hum, human flourishing.

[00:51:55] Right. But what’s your single biggest obstacle in your life today [00:52:00] to getting the double win?

[00:52:01] Arthur: Oh, I am, I’m really drawn to being busy and I’m drawn to stroking things off my list and, uh, being overly active, that’s a constant ongoing. Struggle and temptation for me.

[00:52:14] Megan: Hmm.

[00:52:15] Okay. How do you know when you’re winning at work and succeeding at life?

[00:52:20] Arthur: It’s a, I guess it’s a kind of subjective thing, but you know, a sense of fulfillment and purpose and calm and uh, direction. Uh, when I’m at peace with God and peace with myself, and peace with my spouse. Mm-hmm. Those are good signs that things are going in a good direction. Yeah. That’s good.

[00:52:37] Megan: Peace is a, an answer that often comes up with this question.

[00:52:40] Is that right? It’s really interesting. Mm-hmm.

[00:52:42] Arthur: Yeah. Yeah. A sense of peace and purpose, for sure.

[00:52:45] Michael: Yeah. What’s one ritual? A routine that may be a foundational ritual that helps you do

[00:52:51] Arthur: what you do? One of, one of my most important rituals actually would be going for regular walks in the neighborhood, which I’m doing [00:53:00] more now because turns out I have diabetes type two diabetes.

[00:53:03] If you go for even just a fairly brief walk after your meals, it can help process the blood sugar and really, really great. Yeah, so that’s the recent addition in the last few years, but it’s something I’ve been working on for a long time and it really fits into my theology of prioritizing the neighborhood.

[00:53:21] And I mentioned earlier there’s some neighbors that I know I have long conversations with, but I’m always meeting new neighbors as well and uh, really makes my day when I do that. Well, you’ve challenged me

[00:53:30] Michael: on that. I like it. Yeah. Okay, that’s great. Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a rich conversation and man, just keep doing what you’re doing.

[00:53:39] I think the world needs this message. Increasingly, I.

[00:53:41] Arthur: Oh, thanks very much Michael and Megan. It’s been great being with you. I’ve admired your work for a long time, so it’s nice to connect with you in this way. Likewise. Great

[00:53:49] Megan: to connect with you.[00:54:00]

[00:54:01] Well, dad, what did you think?

[00:54:03] Michael: You know, I’ve long been a fan of his. Mm-hmm. And he’s kind of a hero to me, and you never know what you’re gonna get. Right. Yeah. You know, sometimes you meet your heroes that it’s a big disappointment, but he was delightful and thoughtful, and he was pretty much like I suspected he would be.

[00:54:21] Megan: Yeah.

[00:54:22] Michael: Kind of a fellow struggler who’s figured some stuff out, but is humble enough to admit that he’s not perfect at it.

[00:54:28] Megan: I loved getting to know him. I had forgotten that I had heard him speak many years ago, more than a decade ago at a church event that he came and, and spoke at. And I think I was in a very different place in my life.

[00:54:40] But it was very meaningful then and even more meaningful, I think now. I just feel like that framing around focal practices, it’s such a helpful way to think about it, those three qualities of it needing to be something that demands something of you, something that connects you widely and deeply. And I forget the last one.

[00:54:58] I’m gonna, you know, I’ll [00:55:00] have to look it up here in a second. But, you know, I, I think that is a helpful way of framing up what we need more of in our life and what the qualities need to be.

[00:55:12] Michael: You know, one of the things that I’m realizing increasingly, like I’ve always had focal practices of some sort.

[00:55:19] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:19] Michael: But I rarely do focal practices with others.

[00:55:21] Megan: Right. And that’s a key distinction.

[00:55:23] Michael: I know. And I, it’s just like, I remember one time. My wife, Gail, for those of you listening that don’t know her, suggested or thought we should go or join a running team because we were trying to run a half marathon.

[00:55:36] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:36] Michael: Very much a lone wolf. Do it yourself. So I ultimately joined that and I loved it. I loved, I anticipated seeing people and it was a lot of fun. Fun and fun. Same thing with fishing. I like to be an introvert, but increasingly I love to go with a bunch of guys. Yeah. In fact, we’re taking a trip this, uh, coming fall that I’m excited about.

[00:55:57] But yeah, I think there’s things I need to do. Like, one of the things [00:56:00] I’m really motivated to try now is painting, but I wanna do it with my wife, so,

[00:56:06] Megan: oh, that’s awesome. I didn’t know that

[00:56:08] Michael: painter, but I wa it just is a way for me to enter into her world. But I also think I’d really like it.

[00:56:13] Megan: Yeah. Well, so the, the third quality I was just looking this at while you were talking is focal practices need to have a centering or orienting power, which is kind of something that connects us to reality.

[00:56:25] Our, our values, our highest priorities, those things. So it’s gotta demand something of you. It’s gotta take you deeper into connection with others yourself, God. And it’s also gotta have an orienting or centering element to it. And I think that’s a big idea. You know, I mean, I, I was thinking yesterday morning, I think it was before we left for church.

[00:56:46] So yesterday when we were recording this was, um, Sunday, and I looked out the window and at the bottom, one of the oak trees was what looked like a woodpecker, but it wasn’t quite right. And I, oh, my birds [00:57:00] a hobby. It was like a woodpecker, but it had this black sort of bib on it. And I’m like, that is not the woodpecker that comes to my bird feeder every day.

[00:57:10] So I got out my little bird book and I looked it up, and as it turns out, it was a yellowed sap sucker for those in the know. Never seen one of those before. Oh, you

[00:57:20] Michael: know.

[00:57:21] Megan: Yeah. I got so excited about it, and it just happened because I was looking out the window and I was just kind of taking my time and it gave me so much joy to see a bird that I had never seen before, didn’t even know it existed on the planet.

[00:57:35] And then there it was. And I just, I think that’s a good example of that kind of centering. It’s like I was really where I was. I wasn’t off in my head somewhere. I was really just looking out the window in my front yard at the bottom of this tree, at this bird, and I thought, I need more of that in my life, you know?

[00:57:51] Michael: That’s why I think I would enjoy painting.

[00:57:53] Megan: Yeah.

[00:57:53] Michael: You have to be present to what you’re painting.

[00:57:56] Megan: You do.

[00:57:57] Michael: I remember somebody said to me one time about fishing when you’re doing, [00:58:00] when you’re fishing, you’re doing something, but you ain’t doing much.

[00:58:02] Megan: Yeah.

[00:58:03] Michael: Your mind off work. Right. And I think that anything that requires a different focus is really a good thing.

[00:58:10] Megan: Yes.

[00:58:11] Michael: Are you inspired to pick up any new focal practices or just to dive more deeply?

[00:58:15] Megan: Actually, one of the new focal practices that I’ve committed myself to is gardening. So we just as of this last weekend, just installed a pretty elaborate raised bed garden on the side of our house, and my friend Natalie at Kingdom Soil Gardens is helping to bring that to life.

[00:58:34] ’cause I don’t know much about gardening yet, so I’m learning everything is planted now. And Joel and the boys built everything and Natalie helped plant it and now we’re just gonna take care of it and cultivate it. And I think the practice I told her, she said, well, how much time do you have to give to this?

[00:58:50] That was part of her consulting with.

[00:58:59] The food from [00:59:00] the garden. Although that’s great. I mean, who doesn’t, you know, want some healthy organic food? Right. I said the reason I’m doing it is because I want it, because it’s a focal practice. I actually want it to take at least 30 minutes a day where I have to be out there doing things because it’s the doing of the gardening that is the benefit to me, not the stuff that comes from it, which is actually like very counter to my personality.

[00:59:20] And she was like, oh my gosh, you can have such a great garden if you’re willing to give it, you know, 30 minutes a day at least. And I was like, uh, no problem. So I, I’m really excited that that’s gonna be my new focal practice. And the cool thing is it’s situated such that I will see my neighbors walking by.

[00:59:36] I imagine I will often end up in the driveway talking to neighbors about the tomatoes or whatever, giving them some tomatoes. You know, we’ll have way more than we need, and I think that’s gonna be a really joyous thing to be involved with.

[00:59:48] Michael: Well, the fun thing is, Natalie just finished our garden. And you’ve gotta come over and see it.

[00:59:53] Megan: I know I need to.

[00:59:55] Michael: She did some amazing things this year, so we knew we weren’t too involved in [01:00:00] actually making it happen other than mom shoveled the dirt into the raised beds. But I promised her that I would be involved in the gardening. So I’m looking forward to that as well. Again, another opportunity to do it with somebody.

[01:00:12] Megan: I love that. Well, guys, get this book Living Into Focus. Get the book Shattered from Arthur Bs. This is an important topic and it, it will enrich your life in ways you can’t even imagine.

[01:00:23] Michael: Thanks for joining us guys. Look forward to seeing you next week.