a blog by John P. Schuster
Our congressmen and women today are locked in idealogical warfare that resembles trench warfare in WWI: endless attacks and no movement. One of the transcendentalists who “hung out” with Emerson and Thoreau (I can picture that with these people) was the chaplain of the US Congress. His words need to be heeded for today: To live content with small means; to see elegance rather than luxury and refinement rather than fashion. To be worthy, not[…]
Read moreMy dear friend Jeanne Coyle, up in Portland Oregon, where I arrived yesterday for some coaching work, had a very self-made, un-culturally compressed husband, Jim. At his funeral a few years back she read this e. e. cummings quote, one that is at the root of my thinking on differentiating through harvesting our history: “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it’s best to make you everybody else, means to fight[…]
Read moreThere is an apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas. If you don’t know “apocryphal,” it is the word for unofficial ancient scripts, the ones that did not get included in the Bible when the church defined it. So, of course, many of us want to consider these unofficial writings to see what got mistakenly left out. This phrase from St. Thomas is one that rattles my cage: If you bring forth what is within you, what[…]
Read moreThis is heavy tornado time in the land known as tornado alley. Such sadness south of us at Joplin. Amazingly enough, some people will be strengthened by the tornadoes. The will find a way through even mega-trauma, to tap inner resources they have never had to muster before and literally end up giving thanks for the calamity that hit them because it made them somehow bigger or better. They will enlarge themselves through the challenge.[…]
Read moreThere is a song for our times. There is a singer/composer for our hearts. The song is Standing Still and the artist who wrote it is the insightful, deep, and light-hearted Greg Tamblyn. (www.gregtamblyn.com). (I was wrong about this, not about Greg, whose work I admire, but about the fact that his friend, Mike Mahaffey from Nashville, wrote this song and Greg recorded it.) As I have travelled on the book tour, now in week[…]
Read moreOur anger doesn’t leave; it shifts around. Lots of people are proud of their brand of anger these days. We’re mad at the government for fighting the wrong war, then bail outs, then health care. We’re mad at Goldman because they work all sides of the deal so they can’t lose. Then it’s BP’s turn as they foul the Gulf. Now its Congress for not balancing a budget that we ran up with lots of[…]
Read moreI promoted my book last week, on April 13th, with a viral email blast. It was so cool to see the Amazon ranking for The Power of Your Past: the art of recalling, reclaiming and recasting climb all day. I past 156,000 other books and got into the top .05 % of all the titles Amazon carries. Wow! Perhaps 100,000 or more people read about the book. It was a lot more than cool of[…]
Read moreIn celebration of the official release of The Power of Your Past, John Schuster will be leading a complimentary teleseminar Thursday evening, April 21st at 5:30 p.m. Pacific (8:30 PM Eastern). Learn more about the book and register for this thought-provoking and inspiring conversation. View a short interview with John talking about writing The Power of Your Past: Read an excerpt from The Power of Your Past. Find upcoming author events.
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