Again this Christmas, I did not receive a pickup truck, a Ford tractor, bib overalls or a fruit cake. We did receive a gift. We watched Truman Capote’s famous story…

From Google:

“A Christmas Memory,” Truman Capote’s story about his Alabama childhood with an eccentric elderly cousin, has been one of the nation’s most beloved tales in the holiday canon for more than half a century.

First published in Mademoiselle magazine in the winter of 1956, it starts this way:

“Imagine a morning in late November. The coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town.”

His cousin, Nanny Rumbley Faulk, soon arises to exclaim, with her sherry-colored eyes, her breath smoking the windowpane, “Oh my! It’s fruitcake weather!” They were two misfits in a no-nonsense Southern household in the 1920s and ’30s. He called her “Sook.” She called him “Buddy.” They were cheerful co-conspirators at the opposite end of their lives; each delicate, sensitive and adoring of one other.

Oh, my! It’s fruitcake weather!

The Google description of the book is listed as “Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote and linked below. I knew about the story, but we had not seen the movie. I didn’t know that the young girl in the movie was depiction of Harper Lee.

The cover of “A Christmas Memory,” with young Truman Capote standing next to his beloved cousin “Sook,” Nanny Rumbley Faulk.

“A Christmas Memory,” Truman Capote’s story about his Alabama childhood with an eccentric elderly cousin, has been one of the nation’s most beloved tales in the holiday canon for more than half a century.

First published in Mademoiselle magazine in the winter of 1956, it starts this way:

“Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town.”

His cousin, Nanny Rumbley Faulk, soon arises to exclaim, with her sherry-colored eyes, her breath smoking the windowpane, “Oh my! It’s fruitcake weather!” They were two misfits in a no-nonsense Southern household in the 1920s and ’30s. He called her “Sook.” She called him “Buddy.” They were cheerful co-conspirators at the opposite end of their lives; each delicate, sensitive and adoring of one other.

Since then, the story has been issued and reissued in books and anthologies, over and over again, adapted to television at least twice, staged as an off-Broadway musical and even as an opera. Sook has been portrayed on camera by legendary actresses Geraldine Page and Patty Duke; the musical featured Tony Award-winner Alice Ripley. It’s around every Christmas, as dependable as holly and mistletoe.

Capote was an icon to me as a young writer, also growing up in a tiny Southern town lost among the pines, so you can imagine my delight when I discovered that the Library has Capote’s original, handwritten copy of the tale as part of his early papers. It is penciled into two thin brown notebooks marked with his neat, tiny script. “A Christmas Memory 1” he wrote on the cover of one, and “A Christmas Memory 2” on the other.

The story fills just a few lines on each page. There are several word edits, but only a couple of crossed out passages. The image that features in the story’s famous ending popped into his mind midway through the second notebook. He wrote it at the very top of the page: “kites like a pair of mingled hearts hurrying toward heaven.” A few pages later, he dropped it in for the story’s heartbreaking conclusion, exactly as it appears in the published version: “As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.”

Just like that, the entire piece seems to have emerged from his hand in a single sitting.

Brick ruins show the outlines of the “spreading old house” in Monroeville, Alabama, where Capote lived with his extended family, the setting for “A Christmas Memory.” Photo: Carol M. Highsmith

Today, the notebooks rest inside in a green folder tucked into a beige box, part of his collection in the Manuscript Division. Taken together, these early stories are a marvelous insight into his working technique and personal style.

He bought the occasional leather-bound journal for note-taking. He used a black one for his interviews with Marlon Brando on a movie location in Japan, which would become the classic 1957 New Yorker piece “The Duke in His Domain.” (More than two decades later, when I was a college journalism student, the professor taught that article as “how the masters wrote a profile” lesson. And here, lo and behold, was the actual notebook from the interview.)

His papers show he bought other fancy, hard-bound ledgers every now and again, say, from Italian bookshops during his vacations there. The first notebook he took with him to Kansas for reporting what would become “In Cold Blood” is one of these. Given his high-flying style, it’s about what one would expect.

But mostly, he worked with flimsy grade-school notebooks that cost a nickel or 10 cents. One is actually “Schooltime Compositions,” with a blank spot on the cover for one’s name, school and grade. He rarely filled out complete pages, but usually just a few paragraphs. His handwriting was precise and almost indecipherably miniscule.

And so it was with “Christmas.”

It’s written in two small “Double Q” notebooks “(Quality! Quantity),” which cost 10 cents each.

On top of the first line of the first page, he wrote his title, like a kid composing a high-school essay. Then, on the next line, he took a swing at the opener. The finished version is quoted above. Here was his first take: “Imagine a morning in late November, a last day of autumn, brown-leafed blowing morning more than twenty years ago.” The next line is crossed out, before picking up with “Consider the kitchen of a rambling old house in a country town.”

The opening page of “A Christmas Memory.” Manuscript Division

He crossed out his very first word, replacing it with “Imagine.” It appears, under the scratching, to be “This is,” as if he was starting the story in the present tense.

That’s about as much editing as you’ll see on any page. The story as it is written here is very close to the finished text. It’s tempting to think that the story came to him this cleanly, this clearly, and that we are looking at his first draft. Certainly he went through it again for a typewritten manuscript to send off for publication.

But I doubt there were many drafts. This was a  deeply felt story for Capote. He was 32 when it was published — almost certainly a year younger when he wrote it — and was known only as the author of a daring debut novel, “Other Voices, Other Rooms.” He had yet to publish “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the novella that would make him a star. (“Christmas” would first be published in book form as collection of stories with “Breakfast” two years later.)

Reading these pages, looking at his pencil moving carefully across the page, you don’t get the idea he’s copying earlier notes. You get the idea that the story is flowing, his mind is focused and that a moment of youthful innocence, a long-lost period when he felt safe and happy and loved, was upon him once more.

It was so short, so sincere and so touching that audiences called upon him to give readings from it for the rest of his life. In the wake of “In Cold Blood,” his mammoth success, crowds still wanted “Christmas.” After one such posh Manhattan gathering in the winter of 1966, audience members had tears in their eyes when he finished, writes Gerald Clarke in his biography, “Capote.” “It was a very moving moment for me,” Barbara Paley, the socially powerful wife of CBS founder William S. Paley, is quoted as saying.

Later that year, when publishers announced “Christmas” was going to be reissued as a special boxed set, Capote was ecstatic about the cash flow. “It’s forty-five pages long, and it’s going to cost five dollars and be worth every cent,” he chortled. That’s about $43 in 2021 dollars for a book the width of your little finger. It sold phenomenally well.

Capote died in 1984 after long years of drug and alcohol abuse, often in the public eye. He had become a caricature of himself, his talent and drive long since dissipated. He was only 59.

But here, on these youthful pages, there is not a teaspoonful of anything artificial and there’s nothing diluted, either. The sincerity of his emotion and the surety of his vision is in every line. On his deathbed, his mind wandering, his final words? “It’s me, it’s Buddy.” As if he was reunited with Sook at last.

It was, at the end, where he always wanted to be.

Movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6KWOck97OU

I don’t know what it means, YET, but 2024 wants to become “Fruitcake Weather.” Blessed New Year.

D. Dean Benton 12-31-23

Again this Christmas, I did not receive a pickup truck, a Ford tractor, bib overalls or a fruit cake. We did receive a gift. We watched Truman Capote’s famous story…

From Google:

“A Christmas Memory,” Truman Capote’s story about his Alabama childhood with an eccentric elderly cousin, has been one of the nation’s most beloved tales in the holiday canon for more than half a century.

First published in Mademoiselle magazine in the winter of 1956, it starts this way:

“Imagine a morning in late November. The coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town.”

His cousin, Nanny Rumbley Faulk, soon arises to exclaim, with her sherry-colored eyes, her breath smoking the windowpane, “Oh my! It’s fruitcake weather!” They were two misfits in a no-nonsense Southern household in the 1920s and ’30s. He called her “Sook.” She called him “Buddy.” They were cheerful co-conspirators at the opposite end of their lives; each delicate, sensitive and adoring of one other.

Oh, my! It’s fruitcake weather!

The Google description of the book is listed as Christmas Memory by Truman Capote and linked below. I knew about the story, but we had not seen the movie. I didn’t know that the young girl in the movie was depiction of Harper Lee.

The cover of “A Christmas Memory,” with young Truman Capote standing next to his beloved cousin “Sook,” Nanny Rumbley Faulk.

“A Christmas Memory,” Truman Capote’s story about his Alabama childhood with an eccentric elderly cousin, has been one of the nation’s most beloved tales in the holiday canon for more than half a century.

First published in Mademoiselle magazine in the winter of 1956, it starts this way:

“Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town.”

His cousin, Nanny Rumbley Faulk, soon arises to exclaim, with her sherry-colored eyes, her breath smoking the windowpane, “Oh my! It’s fruitcake weather!” They were two misfits in a no-nonsense Southern household in the 1920s and ’30s. He called her “Sook.” She called him “Buddy.” They were cheerful co-conspirators at the opposite end of their lives; each delicate, sensitive and adoring of one other.

Since then, the story has been issued and reissued in books and anthologies, over and over again, adapted to television at least twice, staged as an off-Broadway musical and even as an opera. Sook has been portrayed on camera by legendary actresses Geraldine Page and Patty Duke; the musical featured Tony Award-winner Alice Ripley. It’s around every Christmas, as dependable as holly and mistletoe.

Capote was an icon to me as a young writer, also growing up in a tiny Southern town lost among the pines, so you can imagine my delight when I discovered that the Library has Capote’s original, handwritten copy of the tale as part of his early papers. It is penciled into two thin brown notebooks marked with his neat, tiny script. “A Christmas Memory 1” he wrote on the cover of one, and “A Christmas Memory 2” on the other.

The story fills just a few lines on each page. There are several word edits, but only a couple of crossed out passages. The image that features in the story’s famous ending popped into his mind midway through the second notebook. He wrote it at the very top of the page: “kites like a pair of mingled hearts hurrying toward heaven.” A few pages later, he dropped it in for the story’s heartbreaking conclusion, exactly as it appears in the published version: “As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.”

Just like that, the entire piece seems to have emerged from his hand in a single sitting.

Brick ruins show the outlines of the “spreading old house” in Monroeville, Alabama, where Capote lived with his extended family, the setting for “A Christmas Memory.” Photo: Carol M. Highsmith

Today, the notebooks rest inside in a green folder tucked into a beige box, part of his collection in the Manuscript Division. Taken together, these early stories are a marvelous insight into his working technique and personal style.

He bought the occasional leather-bound journal for note-taking. He used a black one for his interviews with Marlon Brando on a movie location in Japan, which would become the classic 1957 New Yorker piece “The Duke in His Domain.” (More than two decades later, when I was a college journalism student, the professor taught that article as “how the masters wrote a profile” lesson. And here, lo and behold, was the actual notebook from the interview.)

His papers show he bought other fancy, hard-bound ledgers every now and again, say, from Italian bookshops during his vacations there. The first notebook he took with him to Kansas for reporting what would become “In Cold Blood” is one of these. Given his high-flying style, it’s about what one would expect.

But mostly, he worked with flimsy grade-school notebooks that cost a nickel or 10 cents. One is actually “Schooltime Compositions,” with a blank spot on the cover for one’s name, school and grade. He rarely filled out complete pages, but usually just a few paragraphs. His handwriting was precise and almost indecipherably miniscule.

And so it was with “Christmas.”

It’s written in two small “Double Q” notebooks “(Quality! Quantity),” which cost 10 cents each.

On top of the first line of the first page, he wrote his title, like a kid composing a high-school essay. Then, on the next line, he took a swing at the opener. The finished version is quoted above. Here was his first take: “Imagine a morning in late November, a last day of autumn, brown-leafed blowing morning more than twenty years ago.” The next line is crossed out, before picking up with “Consider the kitchen of a rambling old house in a country town.”

The opening page of “A Christmas Memory.” Manuscript Division

He crossed out his very first word, replacing it with “Imagine.” It appears, under the scratching, to be “This is,” as if he was starting the story in the present tense.

That’s about as much editing as you’ll see on any page. The story as it is written here is very close to the finished text. It’s tempting to think that the story came to him this cleanly, this clearly, and that we are looking at his first draft. Certainly he went through it again for a typewritten manuscript to send off for publication.

But I doubt there were many drafts. This was a  deeply felt story for Capote. He was 32 when it was published — almost certainly a year younger when he wrote it — and was known only as the author of a daring debut novel, “Other Voices, Other Rooms.” He had yet to publish “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the novella that would make him a star. (“Christmas” would first be published in book form as collection of stories with “Breakfast” two years later.)

Reading these pages, looking at his pencil moving carefully across the page, you don’t get the idea he’s copying earlier notes. You get the idea that the story is flowing, his mind is focused and that a moment of youthful innocence, a long-lost period when he felt safe and happy and loved, was upon him once more.

It was so short, so sincere and so touching that audiences called upon him to give readings from it for the rest of his life. In the wake of “In Cold Blood,” his mammoth success, crowds still wanted “Christmas.” After one such posh Manhattan gathering in the winter of 1966, audience members had tears in their eyes when he finished, writes Gerald Clarke in his biography, “Capote.” “It was a very moving moment for me,” Barbara Paley, the socially powerful wife of CBS founder William S. Paley, is quoted as saying.

Later that year, when publishers announced “Christmas” was going to be reissued as a special boxed set, Capote was ecstatic about the cash flow. “It’s forty-five pages long, and it’s going to cost five dollars and be worth every cent,” he chortled. That’s about $43 in 2021 dollars for a book the width of your little finger. It sold phenomenally well.

Capote died in 1984 after long years of drug and alcohol abuse, often in the public eye. He had become a caricature of himself, his talent and drive long since dissipated. He was only 59.

But here, on these youthful pages, there is not a teaspoonful of anything artificial and there’s nothing diluted, either. The sincerity of his emotion and the surety of his vision is in every line. On his deathbed, his mind wandering, his final words? “It’s me, it’s Buddy.” As if he was reunited with Sook at last.

It was, at the end, where he always wanted to be.

Movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6KWOck97OU

I don’t know what it means, but 2024 wants to become “Fruitcake Weather.”

Blessed New Year.

D. Dean Benton

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people he chose for his inheritance.  (Psalm 33:12).

Pondering and wondering.

I think our spiritual environment and cognitive, feeling and behavior atmosphere have portals & portholes in the spirit world. The kingdoms of good and evil.   A nation is not “blessed” meaning it has direct access with Yahweh. Neither does it mean we are His favorites, and we get sacks of candy on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The nation is “blessed” because it has made decisions that are congruent with Him, and that nation makes room to invite His presence and His principles, plans, laws and love.

The portals between man’s place and the separate two fountainheads of good and bad; righteousness and evil, are determined by “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven.” Pray that and set one’s body, soul (thinking, acting, feeling), and spirit to that outcome to keep the “porthole” open and under God’s control. That would be true for each of us and as a country.

The keys to the portals are held and kept on the belt loops of whomever the nation’s population selects to represent them. Not just for political agendas or policies. Our government representatives set the tone, morality, virtue of the whole nation. We are blessed when God is also the LORD of heads of government.

Listening to a doctor talking about nutrition in the food from current land usage. He said, “The dirt is dead.” Aside from his alliteration, he says “We are seeing planting and harvesting from dirt instead of soil.” His solution is to rotate crops. Maybe added to letting the land rest every 7^th year.

One of my odd experiences of the summer occurred at HyVee. I watched a young woman wrestling a big watermelon out of a shopping cart. I held the door for her and then asked if I could open her car door for her. Later, I asked myself why I didn’t offer to carry the melon. The answer is, I didn’t want her to think I was aiming to steal it. Thinking that through makes me laugh. How would I look running to escape while carrying a large melon? The lady was appreciative. We shared gardening stories. We both were disappointed in the melons we planted this year. Small and filled with seeds. Tomatoes didn’t mature. In fact, our garden was a bust. It could be there weren’t enough visits from bees which may be evidence of a smaller number of bees. The young lady suggested it was due to toxic mulch or dirt. I asked Carole. She said the dirt is dead.

A friend responded to my comments about the decline of respect for government by erasing the Senate’s Dress Code.  She observed that “I wonder if the decline of student’s behavior coincides with the relaxing dress code.”

There is a “stick-it-to-the-man” worldview and mindset in today’s Western Culture and society. That flows through the torn open portal from the fountain of evil into a feeding trough of options and things to consider.

• Corrupt leaders by example tell followers “This is the way to do it.”
• I suggest that a national leader who has sex in the Oval Office rips open immorality for the nation. The current sexual identity confusion and excesses with no society boundaries may be traced to what the Bible calls sin that grows into mainstream debauchery,
• I’m wondering if the Head Honcho who can be bribed and is open to use money not his/her own, can lead to gangs raiding stores to shoplift vast amounts. Theft by the wealthy or the flash mobs not only is personally wrong, but it is also response to the portal of evil. In another word, it is demonic.
• How about kids’ games where the target is a human or humans as displayed in Hunger Games? Add that to 60 million abortions. The value of life is diminished, and the quality of life slips and as Gen Z is experiencing, existential nihilism. How can violence be celebrated in movies, TV, and games without it impacting brains, and souls?
• You undoubtedly can add to this list.

Yesterday, 3000 illegals breached our southern border in two hours. Day before yesterday, 4000 bum-rushed the border. Our evening family discussion centered around, “Explain to me how that being allowed makes sense to anyone.”

How does that make sense? The dirt is dead. It is an invasion in response to a stated invitation. “Sure! Come on in!” Our mental, spiritual, emotional, legal ecological systems are polluted to the degree they reject incoming virtues. Romans 12:1-3 is an important paragraph for our current “climate crisis” which has not much to do with C₂0.

When the soul of a nation is bartered or abandoned, the soil becomes toxic. The soil has no nutrients to grow life-related produce, fruit. There is a prohibitive factor that keeps the nation from saying, “Wait! This is wrong! We are better than this—or should be.”

How does the soil rejuvenate?

The promise of God is, “…and I will heal your land…” (2 Chronicles 7:14). Does “land” also mean “soil”? For that to happen: I wonder what Abraham Lincoln would do in response to the anarchy and chaos that dominates this nation? How would Andrew Jackson handle the invasion? How about the hero who twice led millions of Europeans out of starvation—Herbert Hoover. How would he deal with the darkness? Equally important: how would Vivek respond? Trump? Robert Kennedy Jr.? DeSantis? Nikki Haley?

We know what Lincoln did. He called for a National Day of humiliation, repentance, prayer, and fasting. Remember, this is pondering and wondering. Since the elected leader is our selected representative, he/she and their appointees are keepers of the portals of good and evil. The national restoration begins with their acknowledgement and deep sorrow that we are in one terrible mess and choose to “seek His face.” The dirt is dead. God have mercy on your servant and restore our land.”

An obvious next question is, if the elected leader will not call for a sacred day of seeking, who is positioned to do so? Who has the nation’s ear? Who has street cred and spiritual authority to say, “My fellow citizens…” and raise a quorum? Is there a spiritual Line of Succession if the leader(s) cannot or will not call a National day of repentance and prayer?

There is another option which restores the spiritual ecology. It feels to me like it lets national leaders off the hook.

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Jesus as recorded in Matthew 16:19)

Just wondering. Searching for effective ways to bind and loose.

©2023 D. Dean Benton

I think I’ve been praying for the wrong thing.

I celebrated the “reviving” event at Asbury University and prayed it would expand into a nation-wide spiritual awakening during which many would come into the life and lifestyle of Jesus’ Kingdom. I was/am angry at those who argued that the Asbury event was not a bona-fide spiritual awakening. I want to ask them if they are pleased that it had limited impact. But then, I’m left with—Why the limited impact?

First, we must be clear about words. What we see in such events as “Asbury” is indeed a revival. God’s people were revived, renewed, refreshed and took the next step in their personal faith development. When the prayer movement people talk about revival, they see reviving of Jesus’ Followers and a harvest of souls. I’ve been praying for a revival.

Charles G. Finney was a leader of the 2^nd Great Awakening. One of the earliest stories I heard about the working of the Holy Spirit is about Finney walking through a garment factory. Machines ceased as he passed, and the workers began to weep under the conviction of sin. “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:31). Other stories about entire factories stopping the work as conviction settled on those needing to repent and trust Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross for the only hope of salvation.

Second Chronicles 7:14 quotes God, “If my people, who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray, seek my face, forsake their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land.” That is about revival and fresh commitment.

Jesus said, “And He (Holy Spirit), when He comes will convict the world about (the guilt of) sin and the need for a Savior… (John 16:8). In verse 8 the word convict also implies convince.

Holy Spirit conviction may come as “heightened sensitivity.” If it is manipulative it is not Holy Spirit. Conviction is not limited to conscience. Conviction offers solution, not just guilt. It offers clarity. Holy Spirit responds to a heightened sensitivity that something is missing, perhaps an inner thirst.

“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins” (Mark 2:22).

Historically, revivals are connected to human leadership. There are contemporary stories of entire villages or tens of thousands responding to the preached message of the Gospel. Expect new containers–methods we have not seen before. The sense is heavy on me that given suspicion and lack of trust, Holy Spirit will also approach entire cities or gatherings in malls or at ballgames to convict of sin apart from preaching. I know! We have not seen anything like this in our lifetimes. That’s what they said in Mark 2 as Jesus spoke and healed.

Jesus is recording by John in 16:8-11,

“And when [Holy Spirit] comes, He will convict the world about [the guilt of] sin [and the need for a Savior], and about righteousness, and about judgment:  ⁹about sin [and the true nature of it], because they do not believe in Me [and My message]; ¹⁰ about righteousness [personal integrity and godly character], because I am going to My Father and you will no longer see Me; ¹¹ about judgment [the certainty of it], because the ruler of this world (Satan) has been judged and condemned” (Amplified Bible).

Conviction—the encounter with the Holy God and awareness of personal sin, righteousness, judgement. Holy Spirit conviction is not about God telling us how bad or flawed we are. It is about revealing that we have a need for forgiveness by God and healing. I sense one more element.

Jesus was not only talking about individuals when he said sin, righteousness, judgement. He was talking about neighborhoods, families, nations, and cultures. He was talking about USA-2023.

I was about to launch this blog. But I needed to exercise a bit. As I walked, I listened to the Mark Rutland podcast—The Leader’s Notebook. Rutland powerfully says what I am trying to say. This came heavily onto my spirit as I calculated where Western culture is.

https://the-leaders-notebook-with-dr-mark-rutland.castos.com/episodes/ep-172-the-journey-home

Yes, we are to pray, “Lord, revive your people.” A spiritual awakening also demands His people pray, “Lord, send Holy Spirit conviction and convincing.” As you pray that supplication, can you visualize what conviction of sin, righteousness, judgement will look like? And a renewed nation?

©2023 D. Dean Benton,   Meanderer, Wonderer, Ponderer, Opinionator.

Happy Labor Day ‘23.

We watch YouTube homesteaders. I think some are on Carole’s prayer list. Watching someone build a house having heard them say they knew nothing about construction and have no inherent skills is interesting to me. A resource we didn’t have was how to do everything–just ask Google.

Homesteading families who recapture land for production stimulates. Joel Salatin is a good resource no matter what your vocation. One of the families that uses Salatin’s teachings is The Justin Rhodes family in North Carolina. Their homestead is a family operation. The “ownership” the kids display is remarkable. I wondered if they resented early morning chores. It appears they respect their parents, see value in their work and are assets to the family farm. Their knowledge of animals and what needs to be done next captured my attention. If those kids were to incorporate and go public, I would invest in them and know the ROI would be huge.

My consulting career may not be working out—consulting and commenting on all things political, all things baseball and TV commercials. So, I’ve been wondering how my life would be different today if I had grown up on a homestead. What would I have learned from the labor and skills on a farm? During the Farm Crisis of the ’80s, a proverb spread widely: “Willing the family farm to your kids is called child abuse.” I published a magazine article titled, “Until and unless you have manure on your boots.”  A County Agent in South Georgia told me the best resource for the bankrupt or foreclosed  farmer is someone who has been through it–“someone with manure on their boots.”

Justin Rhodes interviewed a homesteader on the video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-75_YgTDKQ

He didn’t know anything about chickens. He had no farm experience, yet…. But the vocation he left–he was a CPA. The expertise he learned as a CPA gave him skills to run a business—be an entrepreneur. Whether you manage a car wash or sing professionally, you need to know what makes business work.

Two other YouTubers I learn stuff by watching: Cole the Cornstar. His labor grows out of working with his family near Gladbrook, Iowa. Cole The Cornstar – YouTube. And his education at University of Northern Iowa. Both resources depend on the other. Another YouTube mentor is Red Poppy Ranch. “Red Poppy” is about one man’s labor, his imagination and philosophy. He tells meaningful stories about his heritage, planned destiny and trends. In the intro YouTube video, this rancher in Idaho lists all the skills one needs.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCORtBvRVwy8s4vAvwWJ_A3A

That chicken rancher story started me questioning what inherent skills or knowledge did he and his brothers possess? It was certainly more than the difference between debit and credit and balance sheets. As I consider a new career or side hustle, I’m calculating what I’ve learned in my former “lives” that can be generalized. Surely, like Caleb, there is another mountain waiting for me to develop. Some side hustle that can benefit from my work experience.

This is not narcissistic. On this Labor Day weekend, I’m thinking about you. What pieces of knowledge your past work experience have given you unique perspectives, abilities, perceptions, and manure on your boots?

Thanks for your sweat and forehead rubbing and midnight pacing.

©2023 D. Dean Benton—Wonderer, Meanderer, Ponderer, Consultant, Kitty litter monitor.

Pondering a perspective by author and lecturer Nir Eyal. He is called a foremost authority on habit formation and focus.

“We are sold this unrealistic and unhealthy fixation and obsession with happiness. And most people don’t understand that we are evolved to be constantly happy. You want a species to be perpetually perturbed. You want us to always strive to always want more, to always be discontent so that we fix things.” (Nir Eyal)

“Feelings of discomfort are important. They push us to find and fix what is broken.” (Lewis Howes.)

In his book The Greatest Mindset, Lewis Howes comments:

“…reimagining the purpose of discomfort. When we feel bored, lonesome, uncertain, anxious, fatigued, fearful, we have to start by understanding that these uncomfortable sensations are a gift. A gift to help us use that as rocket fuel toward traction, rather than trying to escape it with distraction.” (page 187)

“Our emotions are data, not directives” (Psychologist Dr. Susan David).

I’ve been looking for a word or two to say when someone in the news clearly speaks an untrue opinion. I want something as effective as “damn!” Or a more graphic word. I want to set into motion activity that is not verbalizing witchcraft. I don’t want something horrible to happen to the liar or propogandist, like a severe rash in an inaccessible spot. I sure don’t want the wrong to go unchallenged. There is “Let your yes be yes and your no be no,” (Matthew 5:37). That has always meant to me: let responses not get mucked up with profane statements. However, I don’t think Jesus said “Behold, behold!”

After several days of thinking about, and trying words and phrases, a potent phrase jumped into my mind. “Jesus’ Kingdom Come”! That is what Jesus taught us to pray—“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven.”

An educator described what is happening to some students—hundreds of thousands to 6.5 million—who went missing after the pandemic or are truant on any given school day. Without supervision or education they are in peril of becoming a feral kid. I want to ask for judgement on those events and people who facilitate(d) that. I avoid cursing them, but I want them to be accountable. I want the students restored—“Jesus Kingdom Come!” in that youngster or young person’s life immediately. Right now!

Guys playing golf. One swore when he hit a bad shot. The other hocked up a goober and spit. “Does spitting make you feel better?”   The spitter answered, “I know that where I spit the grass will never grow again.”

To say/pray “Jesus’ Kingdom Come,” sets Resurrection power into motion. If it aligns with God’s will!

Jesus’ Kingdom Come!

©2023 D. Dean Benton, Ponderer, Wonderer, Meanderer.

Jus’ Pondering

Christian Drag Queens?

I’ve been reading Water From A Deep Well, by Gerald L. Sittser. Foreword by Eugene Peterson. Sittser tells the stories of the Christian movement from the first to fourth Century. For a decade plus, I’ve been asking how does the Christian movement of the 21^st Century impact our population, institutions and culture? There are indicators!

“The fledging Christian movement thrived in such an unstable environment. The church became like family to aliens and outsiders who flocked to the cities. The church welcomed people from a wide cross-section of society and taught a message that was easily understood. ‘The appeal of Christianity’ Peter Brown states, ‘still lay in its radical sense of community: it absorbed people because the individual could drop from a wide impersonal world into a miniature community, whose demands and relations were explicit.” (page 62)

“…‘look,’ they say ‘how they love each other.’” “See how ready they are to die for one another.”

During the first couple of centuries, historians say Jesus Followers would worship next to former prostitutes and every form of outcasts, outsiders and rejected. A radical community. A place to belong.

With these words, I pondered: Is the local church called to welcome drag queens? I know! My mind may have slipped a cog. Or two.

A former member of a major Contemporary Christian band is now appearing and recording as a drag queen and his/her latest song is #1 on the itunes Christian Music chart. So, I listened. I liked the track. It has a good sound. I can’t understand all the words, but some were about belonging. Is it prophetic or seductive to corrupt living?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiXscOjacIM

From the comments about the song:

“You sing for all of us who have felt abandoned and outside the ‘”circle’”

The loneliness and angst are vivid. When I ponder, I can’t discount the role of the Holy Spirit. I pondered if I would be more comfortable if the singer didn’t show up on Sunday morning in his stage costume. Maybe, not teaching Sunday School?

The story is now in Newsweek. Another performer states she is committed to bypassing or setting aside “Church Gatekeepers.”

The church historian Sittser makes it very clear that the early preachers/teachers declared boundaries and the expected behavior for members of the ekklesia. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians indicate that. God has intentionally set gatekeepers and declarations of how one becomes a member of the universal Body of Christ and expected behavior specs. Culture or society or social media have no legitimate voice. If grace is the provision and our only means of salvation being God’s grace and our trust in Jesus’ provision, can a person be a Christian Drag Queen?

Pondering. Is that singer my brother or sister in Christ? Will Jesus settle for the deconstructed faith drag queen as my crazy cousin?

Jus’ Pondering

© 2023 D. Dean Benton—Wonderer, Meanderer, Ponderer

Boomer Skills Millennials Just Won’t Use

Two hundred & three of them (203)! Most are hardly skills. They are preferences. I could be wrong—I gave up reading at #137. I would never make a good Millennial, so I’m not even going to apply.

They won’t use cursive writing or hire money managers. They refuse to set an alarm or use a planner. (I shuddered at that one.) A few others won’t:

• Use good China
• Read a paper map
• Drive a stick shift
• Write in Cursive
• Use traditional grammar
• Sew
• Use a land line
• Balance a checkbook
• Iron your clothes
• Write letters
• Maintain a resume
• Use a compass

203 “skills” that some of that generation won’t learn or use and are disgusted by Boomers who do. Get real! A whole bunch of those skills have been abandoned by all ages, or they prefer better technology. Some skills are not used because of ignorance. We can choose our behavior, but we cannot the consequences. Arrogance fuels those who attempt to change outcomes for all people for all time. To abandon habits of civility throws culture and society into turmoil—chaos. Somebody better balance the checkbook and use recognizable grammar in trans-national communiques.

The Barna Group research on why Millennials are “put off,” or “turned off” by Christians. The reasons listed. Christians are:

• Judgmental
• Hypocritical
• Old-fashioned
• Too political

In A.D. 112, Roman governor Pliny wrote to the emperor the Roman Elites called Christians “depraved, excessive, foreign, and new.”

A prefect charged that Christians participated in orgies, practiced cannibalism, and indulged in incest. Such outrageous charges were explained by “the ignorance of pagans.” They didn’t know any difference. A Christian historian wrote, “(Pagans) confused the Christian love feast with orgies, the Eucharist with cannibalism and the use of terms of endearment—brothers and sister—with incest.” (A.D. 177)

Eugene Peterson writes in the Foreword to Water from a Deep Well, Gerald L Sittser, (IVP 2007). “…antidote to the amnesiac, one-generation world we live in.” He also says, “A one-generational church is capable of generating energy but there are no roots.”

“Perception is all there is” was a widely used phrase in the 80s-90s business literature. What is it that Millennials perceive when they look at me, or you, that guides them to those conclusions?

All of this after I thought to myself, “It seems to me, the woke folks want everything to be different—yellow should be orange, apples must be called cucumbers from now on. Girls are only allowed to live if they are boys.” Is it judgmental to demand laws be obeyed? Old Fashioned?

Every day there is an Internet article comparing differences between Boomers and Millennials. It is a growing industry. In today’s differences the list of four is contradicted. While the younger people complain about Boomers being “too political” Millennials are more involved politically.

Forty-four million abortions world-wide in 2022 and there is a constant buzz to overthrow any incumbrance for anyone and any time at any age, in any trimester to be allowed an abortion on demand and at government cost. It sounds to me like there is a world conference that is pleading, “You can do better!! We can do 50-million in 2023!”

And if a Christian refers to biblical content about gender confusion or radical decisions, we are called old-fashioned, too political and judgmental. I can’t speak for the hearts of all. History provides non-emotional data: Larry Alex Taunton destroys the taunt that we are being judgmental or old fashioned to point out vivid warning signs that led to the destruction of Grecian and Roman empires.

“Pagan writers observed that Christians tended to remain somewhat separate from society. Tacitus, a Roman historian, commented that Christians were ‘haters of humankind.’ ^{2 (page 36)} The martyrdom of Perpetua, perhaps the most famous of all early martyr stories, illustrates how firmly Christians resisted the encroachment of Roman culture.”  

Haters, White supremacists, Nazis, racists and old fashioned for homophobia or for balking against transgenderism. Larry Alex Taunton is a fine journalist and author. This is one of his research articles. He reminds us where bad choices and cultural markers will take us.  

A History of Sex: From Feminine to Frida

Walking past the TV where Carole was doing health research, I heard Dr. Mindy Pelz say some extraordinary results of neglecting the body’s natural workings. Dr. Pelz has some startling numbers and physical realities in this conversation that indicates biological men and women are different regardless of plumbing.

Dr. Mindy Pelz– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2mQOGzHtQc

Whether we are calculating Jesus, His disciples, or People of His Way 2023, our beliefs and behaviors are not political; they do have political ramifications and results. The first-century critics or Leftists in our time are quick to complain about Christians being political. It is about conflict. Christians and Marxists can’t both be powerful controllers. If Christians become influencers, the critics fear, they will become abusers of power and push beliefs down everyone’s throats. A concern to be monitored, but not a legitimate Spirit-led, biblical goal.

Let’s hang around “old-fashioned” for a little bit. Of course, the young adult sees his Olders old-fashioned. The drums and bass are now louder, the vocals are weak singing words that sometimes can’t be understood. Harmony is stored on the Mills Brothers and the Andrew Sisters shelves. Tim Elmore talks about the music of youth during the Pandemic. A generalization: Not much hope there. Gloom and the minor keys increased. (Pages 24-28 The Pandemic Population.)

It is to my mental enrichment that Holy Spirit directed me in the middle of this study to read a church historian who tells biographical stories from the conflicts and events in the Pagan and Roman-Grecian worlds of the days and years following the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus.

“We (21^st Century) tend to be preoccupied with the present, captured by the contemporary, attracted to anything that is immediate and current. We assume…that what has happened most recently is always—or at least usually—the most important. We therefore view the past with a certain degree of indifference, suspicion, even snobbery, thinking it obsolete and irrelevant, like a piece of outdated technology, before we have given it a chance to teach us anything. Consequently, we criticize or ignore before we have even bothered to listen and understand.” P21

That description assumes a person who has a measure of curiosity and a modicum of inclination for truth. Today’s some (to many) young generations have been indoctrinated or influenced by the agenda of Marxists, Socialists, and the generally demanded pluralism of our day. The F word, Nazi, Racist, Today’s newscasts could take their text and script from First Century A.D. Our focus is how The Ecclesia faced nearly exactly what our culture has become and impacted the nation and in half a century had established churches and outposts in every major city on the Earth.

John Eldredge, therapist, author, international spiritual leader said on a podcast he had been talking that morning with a group of therapists. They said, “We have seen horrendous things in the past, but today is much worse….”

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-the-gospel-to-everyone/id260843816?i=1000620448784

The Pagan’s (2023) ignorance is still a factor in criticism. So is the ignorance that Believers have about the “worse” the therapists reference. And! The power and meaning in Ephesians 2:8-10.

You Are A Masterpiece!

©2023 D. Dean Benton—Writer, Wonderer

Dr. Mark Rutland is one of my favorite preachers. On his current podcast, he talked about his first pastoral appointment. He was twenty-two. “They should not give a driver’s license to a 22-year-old. They sure shouldn’t give a church to a 22-year-old boy.”

I was on the treadmill with my ear buds listening to Rutland’s podcast. Things got real personal. I was also twenty-two when I began preaching each week at the same church. I probably proved his contention.

Several years later, an acquaintance who established a school of religion at a Big-Ten school talked to me about going back to school. With two small kids, we considered 6 or 7 years in school. “How old you going to be if you spend six years at University and Seminary?” He asked. “How old you going to be if you don’t?” So, I enrolled where the school would accept some of my Bible College credits and was appointed to a 2-point charge.

It was the late 60s. Great time to be in college! Speakers at the weekly assembly were testing out the F-word. (They succeeded. It sounds like it is the most important and most often publicly used word in the English language.) Riots in Iowa cities and assassinations in America. I was confronted with new thoughts in sociology classes; ideas that I had ignored, diminished, or didn’t bother with. One was about having an “inner-child.”

I’m currently reading Lewis Howes’ book on Mindsets.¹ He tells of riding in an Uber and listening to the female driver’s story of abuse and trauma. “The physical evidence of her past still remained, but the energy she radiated was full of positivity and kindness.”

She said, “It doesn’t hurt anymore. I’ve learned how to heal it and turn the pain into wisdom.”

Howes assesses the story: “She has taken intentional action to bring the cycle of trauma to an end.” Then he adds, “Whatever your trauma—and we all have past trauma of some sort—if left unhealed, it will direct your future too. Trauma perpetuates trauma. To stop the cycle, you have to let your adult self make the decisions instead of the younger, wounded self.” (Page 132)

Howes observes, “Until I did the healing work my inner child needed, I ended up…feeling shamed and wronged.” Two paragraphs later he says, “Only when I started to heal my inner child and the trauma from my past did I finally start to feel like I was acting authentically as my true self.” (Page 133)

“I acknowledged that child part of myself, I felt capable of becoming a new person. Now when I am faced with a trigger, I can say those unhealthy behaviors are not who I am anymore.”  

Dr. Karyn Purvis has a descriptive phrase for kids who grew in a difficult atmosphere: “Kids from hard places.” For example, the abandoned, assaulted, abused, alienated, attacked. Kids from hard places would also include life events or experiences that were mis-interpreted and carried into adulthood.

“Experiences can be both formative and deformative. Trauma (real or mis-interpreted) disrupts helpful neural patterns and creates unhelpful ones. Those disruptions produce counterproductive coping strategies and behaviors.”²

Michael Hyatt and daughter Megan in their Mind Your Mindset ³ nail this down:

“Our strategies…will always be based on our underlying story about our situation. So to create an effective strategy, we must have an accurate understanding of reality. Stories drive strategies and strategies drive results.” (p.26)

Helpful, healthy, successful—or not!

“If we want better results, we will have to tell ourselves better stories” (Hyatt).

I’ve been thinking about my “inner child”—did it ever grow up, or did it accompany me into my golden years? For sure, some of the fears, self-concepts, emotional responses were formed in grade school and then teen years brought a second iteration and a second litter.

The Uber driver’s statement, “I learned how to heal it…” raises questions. And Howes’ statement, “Until I did the healing work my inner child needed….” Are those New Age statements or self-help hopes? If your spiritual tradition included or includes prayers for healing, altar calls, healing evangelists, can you remember or imagine being encouraged to heal your inner child? Is that possible? Does redemption reach that far?

I began the next paragraph with “Brief, shorthand, foundational comments:” I ended with what looked like Augustine’s Confessions. Suffice it to say when people talk about “healing my inner child,” that is soul work, not spirit-work. The Father, Son, Holy Spirit are involved to the degree we invite them. We individuals have responsibility for soul-care. When Apostle Paul says, “…all things become new,” (2 Corinthians 5:17), does he mean instantly, immediately and forever? For me, wounds, bad habits, trauma, ignorance did not change completely and immediately. I used those characteristics to interpret my world and to build coping mechanisms.

^“…being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion” (Philippians 1:6, NIV).

God wants us whole—moving toward His projected destiny for us, but He won’t water the roots.

We could talk a while about self-healing in Jesus’ authority. “Doing the healing work,” in my view, is planting roots of a desired life. What are the character traits—your brand—you do not possess or project, but desire? The books and articles I list all contain suggested ways to change. A common habit is to read, but not “do the work.”

Dr. Dweck’s research is built around the two mindsets: The Fixed Mindset and The Growth Mindset. In the link below, an article about Dweck’s study concludes with “How to Change a fixed mindset.” It is a very helpful place to start.

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-mindset-2795025

I’ve been thinking about writing, The Caleb Initiative. God said about the 85-year-old,

“…my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly” (Numbers 14:24).

©D. Dean Benton

RESOURCES

¹The Greatness Mindset, Lewis Howes, (Hayhouse, Inc Publishers) ©2023

²Mind Your Mindset, Michael Hyatt & Megan Hyatt Miller, (Baker Books) © 2023

Water The Roots

Carole and I take turns watering the garden of veggies and flowers. When the hose is in my hand, she reminds me not to get water on the leaves or blossoms.

“Plants need water to grow, but they take nutrition only through the roots, never through blossoms or leaves or branches. Only through the roots. Water the roots!”

Watchmen Nee said, “Jesus called me a branch. I am not becoming one or will be one day, but I am a branch now.”

The Holy Spirit is the grower of Spiritual Fruit. I cannot grow fruit such as love, joy, peace, patience…. That is Holy Spirit’s job. The branch carries nutritional growth from the root. Water the root. Fruit may be live and good; fruit may be destructive or crippling depending on the roots we choose and nourish.

Think this through. When we “get saved” or are “redeemed” by confession and choosing to give our lives to God, it is our spirit that is saved and aligned with God. To renew our soul—will, emotions, behavior—the action is to intentionally establish specific roots and then nourishing them. The roots we nourish will grow specific fruit.

“Your mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how you make sense of the world and yourself. It influences how you think, feel, and behave in any given situation. It means that what you believe about yourself impacts your success or failure.”

Carol S. Dweck. Ph. D. a mindset researcher found there are two mindsets: “The fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you’ll be judged; the growth mindset makes you concerned with improving.”

I am determined to follow Jesus and concentrate on growth.

1. Fixed Mindset

People in a fixed mindset, with its focus on permanent traits, quickly fear challenge and devalue effort. In this mindset, success is about proving you’re smart or talented—validating yourself. All setbacks or failures are an indication in this mindset that you’ve proved you are permanently flawed—not enough. Effort is seen only as a way of proving you didn’t get selected or adequately equipped.

“…for in the fixed mindset it’s not enough just to succeed. It is not enough just to look smart and talented. You have to be pretty much flawless. And you have to be flawless right away” Actually, people with fixed mindset expect ability to show up on its own, before any learning takes place” (Dweck-page 24).

One more:

“…in the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you are not the best—it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome (Dweck, page 48).

[If you are driven by love to accomplish something a failure is not necessarily proof you must quit, but to learn what you lack or find correct resources—grow skill(s) or accrue what is missing.]

2. Growth Mindset

This assumes human and spiritual qualities and characteristics can be cultivated. People with growth mindsets don’t just seek challenge, they thrive on it. (Dweck) Those with growth mindsets have better mental health. A fixed mindset will be a constant engagement in frustration, reminder of limitations and no way out of the cul de sac.

How would you relate a growth mindset to Jesus’ concept and promise of The Abundant Life in John 10:10?

God has promised to place dreams and visions within each of us. He does not promise to develop our potential.

Constant, endless curiosity and challenge seeking.

That means we focus on the root—establishing growth mindsets and watering the root. “Seeking challenges” is not a scavenger hunt. It is focusing on what you love and what you seek to accomplish and confronting challenges that restrain or barricade. That is watering the roots—God’s plan.

“…growth mindset lets people—even those who are targets of negative labels—use and develop their minds fully. Their heads are not filled with limiting thoughts, a fragile sense of belonging, and a belief that other people can define them” (Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D—Mindset—The New Psychology of Success, Ballantine Books, © 2006, 2016) page 80.

Developing Your Primary Mindsets:

My friends, Mike and Danielle operate a cleaning company. (Superior Shine) Window washing, commercial building power washing, house siding and whatever else needs to be cleaned. Mike told me he was bringing his power washer to our house to clean our sidewalks. And he did. Fifty-plus years of grim, dirt, stain gone! Other than the cracks and unlevel cement, the sidewalk looks new!

It is startling. Our son took one look and exclaimed, “When did this happen?” I admire the work. I wonder what I’m supposed to do with a clean sidewalk. It might be clean enough to eat off it. There is such a change perhaps I should alert the media.

Moving toward growth mindsets will attract as much attention and awareness of obvious change. That change will become evident. Years of inferior and inadequate decision making and living below expectations and desires. Dr. Carol Dweck says: “How we can learn to fulfill our potential in parenting, business, school, relationships” will take on a new feel and look.

Lewis Howes emphatically reminds us mindsets are connected to what he calls our Meaningful Mission. His latest book, The Greatness Mindset, drives the necessity of discovery and then making decisions based on our purpose. In my study, this is very helpful. The first 50-pages gives the insight into different functional perspective.

Dr. Daniel Goleman captures for our era the heart habits in Emotional Intelligence. (Bantam, ©1995)

• Self-Awareness,
• Self-Control,
• Self-Motivation,
• Empathy,
• Self-Management.

Watering the Roots means to make choices based upon mindsets and to primarily nurture them with study, reading, thinking, interaction, application of Scripture and prayer. Do that and Holy Spirit will grow produce for the public to notice and for their benefit. Look at Goleman’s list. Which, if any, would be a mindset to produce love? Joy? Peace? Do you feel comfortable with the statement that concentrating on mindsets that are biblical will allow biblical fruit to inevitably grow? Don’t focus on joy. Put your energy into which mindsets will produce joy.  

I am committed to serving my wife. I want to build an environment where she will experience joy. She is sorta OCD on keeping her kitchen counter relatively clean and clear. She has expectations that I will wipe excess peanut butter off the knife. Serving her produces good feelings for both of us. Serving family, friends, associates—empathy and paying attention opens the joy valve.

There are connections between growth mindsets and mental health. What mindset(s) could you focus on that would flow through “the branch” to mitigate anxiety, depression, and lack of clarity? Holy Spirit will grow peace.

“The joy of the Lord is my strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).

I’m currently focusing on the following Roots—that make Growth Mindsets operational. I will “water” and nurture:

• Redemption—How extensive is my personal redemption? Alignment with God’s Life and plan. Healing, Alignment, Deliverance, Controlling my spiritual environment/atmosphere.
• Reason—Purpose, Calling: Who? Why? What? Where?
• Resilience—Experience, Planning, bouncing back.
• Resourcefulness—Mentors, Teachers, Competence, Business, Income streams
• Respectfulness—Life, Ethnic, Minorities, Women, Authority
• Relationships—God, Mate, Family, Friends, Tribe, Mentees.
• Restoration—Rest, Exercise. Attitude, Diet

Seven might be overwhelming.

Mindsets and worldviews determine so much of our lives. Few people examine their own. If we are living for God’s pleasure and glory, self-awareness is healthy and a necessary trek.

©2023 D. Dean Benton

Resources:

• Think Learn Succeed, Dr. Caroline Leaf, ©2018, (Baker Books) Text & Workbook
• Mindset—The New Psychology of Success, Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D—(Ballantine Books, © 2006, 2016)
• Pandemic Population, Dr. Tim Elmore, (Growing Leaders-Poet Gardeners) ©2020
• The Greatness Mindset, Lewis Howes, (Hay House, Inc.) ©2023
• Mind Your Mindset, Michael Hyatt, Megan Hyatt Miller ©2023, (Baker Books)