The Values Sort

I have tried to be vulnerable. I have tried to cultivate a willingness to show my soft underbelly and not worry that the world will eviscerate me like one of those Jurassic Park velociraptors. Spilling my entrails upon the ground. I wonder how that will go for me? Because as I’m writing this, only the first eighteen essays of my Values project have been published. And If Taylor Swift has taught me...

I want to talk about witness. Can I get a witness? It’s churchy, right? It kind of reminds me of old time religion. Call and repeat. Can I get a witness? I also think of a court. Witnesses being called to account for what they saw. Who did what, when, where, why? When I was growing up in church we were told to be a witness. A witness to the goodness of God. To the redemptive power of Christ in our...

Let’s talk about my heritage. Let’s talk about booze. For thirteen weird years alcohol was prohibited in these United States. It was a master class in the foolishness of attempting to legislate morality. You might be shocked to learn how much alcohol was still produced, transported and consumed under the pious noses of a government tasked with guarding the purity and upstanding character of its ci...

I’ve been stalling on this one for the whole series. It may be my most dearly held value. It’s not in the cards, but it is in the fruits. It’s kindness. I’m stalling because I don’t know where to start. I have established that I’m not necessarily kind naturally. I am also not always kind today, now, in my life. I want to avoid claiming kindness as a central part of who I am , intrinsically. I’m ce...

​Let’s talk awhile about Repair . I am at work. I am looking around at the things I have repaired over the years, just here, in this room, and it’s a pretty long list. ​I broke a stainless bolt off the foot of my effluent scrubber. I was so frustrated. It happened while I was uncrating it . It was brand-stinkin’-new! And I broke the foot off. I had to drill it out (no small feat, it was stainless!...

My grandfather was a craftsman. He was an accomplished woodworker. The president of our state woodworking guild, he had multiple lathes in his shop, and numerous heavy tools that he built himself, sturdy, out of wood. His bandsaw, wood. His router table, wood. Drum and spindle sanders, wood. He had a lathe on which he could turn huge columns for the Elks Lodge. He had a tiny lathe on which he coul...

Another central theme. Of this project. Of my life. A sense of belonging can encompass so many of the ideas we’ve talked about. Or at least it weaves, mycorrhizae-like throughout. What are we without a sense of belonging? Family security, humility, social recognition . They all intertwine with a sense of belonging . Forgiveness, equality, a world at peace. It’s all tied in. True friendship. Loyalt...

​Another one that’s hard to pin down. ​”Clean living.” That’s what my dad says. The old man who smokes all the days of his life and dies peacefully in his sleep at 93? “Clean living,” my dad might say with an eye roll. ​Health is an honest value to choose. Health for me and for you. Healthy foods, healthy habits. Healthy minds and bodies. At least we have our health. I can lose a lot and still hav...

This is another weird one. People don’t tend to choose it, and they often need help understanding it. Here’s how I explain it, imperfectly, when I’m sitting with someone doing the sort: Imagine I bring you a cup of your favorite beverage. Out of nowhere. What do you feel? Do you feel loved and cared for? Or do you feel a sense of urgency to reciprocate? Do you feel a sudden, heavy weight that you...

We choose our families. I believe that more deeply than ever. My wife and I have chosen one another time, and time and time again. Through thick and through thin, up times and down times. It’s been conscientious and it has not been either easy or automatic. My kids and I, also. We didn’t choose to be specifically who we are, they didn’t choose to be born. But staying in tight with one another is a...

Stability of society this card says at the bottom. Man, I feel like no matter where you land politically there is a tremendous instability in our society. On the heels of national security, the inclination is to see this as a very broad, national conversation. Maybe a global conversation about police and guns and the National Guard moving between communities. But I’m going to think small. Real sma...

I grew up American. All the way American. I know all of the songs. I know the old ones, like our National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring! You’re a grand old flag, you’re a high flying flag, and forever in peace may you wave, You’re th...

What the heck with this deck. I just finished the last essay… ummm.. The way I finished it. And now it’s cleanliness. Neat and tidy . The deck wills it, let’s do this. Cleanliness is another card that doesn’t make it to people’s top five often. I think it’s because in a deck with Mature Love , and Family Security, cleanliness feels a little out of place. Neat and Tidy. Is that a core and central h...

In some ways this entire project has been about my own self discipline. It has come up time and time again–it’s at least a central focus of the project. I have had to exercise tremendous self discipline in my life. Ever since I was young. Don’t get me wrong–I often fail in my disciplines! Emphasis on the word exercise . I have regularly been called upon, in many forums, to be less . “Half as hard,...

Another tricky one for me. Let me say at the outset that I love my parents and elders. I crave their approval. Less so now, in my forties, but the craving is still fresh in my memory. Let’s start with another heavily paraphrased bible story! Near the beginning of time there came a great flood that killed every man, woman and child, every beast of the land and every bird of the sky and presumably e...

The next four cards all fall under the heading of “Conformity”. Here we go. Let’s get this deed done. You will not be shocked to learn that I can be quite an impolite person. I have that capacity. But in truth, as I sit and reflect on what on Earth to write about this idea, I do think I am quite as polite as I can be. It’s a learned behavior, maybe for all of us, but certainly for me. My mother ta...

I placed the photo upside-down on purpose. Just to be difficult. I thought it would be funny to start by disrespecting the 45-essay-long tradition of putting a normal photo atop each post by making you crane your neck around. I really ain’t got much. I do not actively respect very many traditions. As I’ve aged, I’ve become less conservative—in that there are fewer and fewer things from the past th...

We’ve left my five chosen values behind and these are getting trickier to write. I feel like we’re back at the beginning again writing about “Wealth” or “Social Recognition”. I feel awkward and ham-fisted. Because indeed I am, and anyway, we are very near the beginning again because as I’ve said before these values are arranged in a great wheel; spoiler alert, the last card in the series is #57, A...

I needed to look up the word effacing . I could use context clues—I got what it meant the first thousand times I thumbed through the deck. It means what I imagined it would: To erase. To make oneself smaller or less conspicuous. I am not humble. I am loud and somewhat boorish, and I can be rude and perfectly monstrous the better you get to know me. I can be outlandish. Just far, far too much somet...

I visited with a college professor yesterday. He taught that biology class series that changed my life. Yesterday I had the opportunity to tell him so. The class was environmental science , and it was a required class for my course of study, (forestry). I have already told you that I did not finish this course of study–I am not a silvaculturalist today. This biology class was part of the reason I...

You may recall that I grew up in church. Perhaps you did, too. This card is funny because people have one of three responses, and maybe it’s actually this way for all fifty-seven cards. But I’m reflecting on the triad of choices now. It’s either a shoe-in, no contest, a definite value, OR it’s an easy card to toss in the “no” pile on the first round, OR, it is deeply wrestled with; compared and an...

I am in a time of flux. I am in a time of transition. I am in a time of metamorphosis. When we were all younger my wife and I started a coffee shop called Chrysalis Coffeehouse . Do you know what a chrysalis is? Maybe you do, but if not you should because it’s beautiful. Before about 2012, if you would have asked me how a caterpillar became a butterfly I’d have said something about going into a co...

In my last essay, A spiritual life , I identified that many times people struggle with a binary choice . Is it this one or is it more that one? Is it capability that’s driving my choices, driving my thoughts and behaviors, or is it ambition? So this one goes for me. I sat and looked at mature love and true friendship together for a long while. Which one is it? If I’m not able to walk in mature lov...

**Fair warning, this one gets a little churchy. Buckle up, but keep reading.** I’ll tell you an interesting thing to observe about this values exercise I do with people. People often find themselves struggling with a binary . A duo of cards that, for them, represent something so similar so as to be nearly indistinguishable. Or at least inseparable. How can you have one without the other? How can y...

In 1998 a movie came out that I love. It was called Waking Ned Devine . Maybe you’ve seen it, too? It’s a beautiful film, literally and substantively. It follows the inhabitants of Tulaigh Mhór, (Tullymore), a small Irish village. I won’t give everything away. The community, small and tightly knit, commits to an attempt at community-wide Lottery fraud, (as you do), when Ned wins a substantial sum...