{"id":31228,"date":"2023-03-13T15:00:13","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T22:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=31228"},"modified":"2023-03-13T17:11:57","modified_gmt":"2023-03-14T00:11:57","slug":"wake-up-mr-frodo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wake-up-mr-frodo\/","title":{"rendered":"Wake Up, Mr. Frodo!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our family is a “Lord of the Rings”<\/a> family. Some families are more “Harry Potter.”<\/a> No judgement from me, except that you are wrong, and we are right. There, I said it. Cancel me.<\/p>\n

When all the kids, and by “kids”<\/em> I mean grown young adults, are home, and by “home”<\/em> I mean the place Denise and I occupy contently as “empty nesters,” there is sure to be an ensuing Lord of the Rings marathon. Yes, extended editions. Yes, on DVD.<\/p>\n

As I read Simon Walker’s “Leading Out of Who You Are” I could not help but think about the mythological world of J.R.R. Tolkien<\/a>. The books various diagrams and map-like illustrations smacked of Middle Earth<\/a>, replete with “The High Peaks of Leadership,” “The Cliffs of Derailment,” “The Standing Stones of Moral Authority,” and “The Fallen Stones of Personal Pain.”<\/p>\n

All that was missing was “The Shire of Shaping Ego,” and “The Undefended Leaders of Rivendell.”<\/p>\n

I have to wonder if Walker, European as he is, also had Middle Earth, and the journey of Frodo Baggins<\/a>\u00a0in mind.<\/p>\n

IT’S A DANGEROUS BUSINESS<\/strong><\/p>\n

“When someone is willing and able to give away what they possess, they find that it is given back to them transformed into something greater.” He calls this journey an “act of consecration” in which the leader becomes aware of her\/his “vocation” (Walker, 157).<\/p>\n

This sounds an awful lot like Frodo’s treacherous trek to Mordor<\/a> to destroy the Ring. Bilbo Baggins<\/a> said to Frodo, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Borrowing from the words of Simon Walker, Frodo’s journey was fraught with “isolation, loneliness and intolerable strain. He cannot share any of the issues he is struggling with inside, because no one will allow him to” (Walker, 16). Except, perhaps,\u00a0Samwise Gamgee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Everyone needs a Samwise.<\/p>\n

Many would think of Frodo as the singular leader in Tolkien’s story, but I would insist that we include Samwise. Walker says, “I am defining a leader as one who takes responsibility for people other than himself. They care about the welfare of the other person or people. They carry other people’s feelings; they are what is called ’empathically open’ people” (Walker, 17). In Samwise we see a high degree of trust, and a secured ego. He is an undefended leader.<\/p>\n

CONNECTING MAPS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. David Rock in “Your Brain at Work” says “Understanding a new idea involves creating maps…that represent new, incoming information, and connecting these maps to existing maps in the rest of the brain” (Rock, 34). In this case, Walker’s pen drawing map of “Undefended Leadership” connected in my mind to Tolkien’s map of Middle Earth, which in turn is connecting to a map that I am currently drawing for my unfolding NPO regarding diminishing joy and courage in lead pastoral ministry.<\/p>\n

Walker asserts, “the leader finds herself pursuing the lonely path…of being isolated, being a voice crying in the wilderness, traveling alone, ahead of the crowd, on the margins, in a distant land, feeling a sense of belonging but also a sense of alienation” (Walker, 17). He would attribute these feelings to idealization<\/strong> (the action of regarding or representing something as perfect or better than in reality), idealism<\/strong> (forming or pursuing ideals), and unmet emotional needs.<\/strong>\u00a0Of the three, it’s the later that most resonates with me as a senior leader. Just last night (as of this writing, which by the way, is at 3:35 am), I asked my wife two questions that I will vulnerably share out of a growing trust for you as my peers:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What do we need to do differently to stay emotionally healthy?<\/li>\n
  2. How long can we do this (senior pastoral ministry), before it kills us?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    She is my primary Samwise Gamgee. Thankfully, she’s better looking too. Much better.<\/p>\n

    I don’t have the answers to these two questions yet, thus the passion for my NPO. But what I do have is a deep appreciation for the journey and those that are on pilgrimage with me; past, present and future. \u00a0Like that of Walker (and, yes, Frodo too), my “route to growth lies [in] finding meaning in it and recognizing that it has not been a solitary journey but one on which we have been accompanied, known, loved and understood. It is then we can begin to find meaning and healing in the story we have told, and the freedom to face the future. It is then that as leaders we find the freedom to ‘lead out of who we are'” (Walker, 148).<\/p>\n

    Wake up, Mr. Frodo!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Our family is a “Lord of the Rings” family. Some families are more “Harry Potter.” No judgement from me, except that you are wrong, and we are right. There, I said it. Cancel me. When all the kids, and by “kids” I mean grown young adults, are home, and by “home” I mean the place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[563,2310,558],"tags":[2635,2634,2636,1592,1845,1718],"class_list":["post-31228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure-mystery-sci-fi","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","category-drama-2","tag-frodo","tag-lofr","tag-samwise","tag-tolkien","tag-undefended","tag-walker","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31228"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31809,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31228\/revisions\/31809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}