I worked for a small domestic energy company early in my career and managed reservoir engineering. Three employees worked for me: two female administrators and one reservoir technician. Once a week, we had a team meeting in my office. The group worked well together, and we discussed our team goals …
Office Life
In the early 2000s, I worked on a project team that integrated US energy trading, based in Houston, into global energy trading, based in London. One of my tasks was to redesign the US trading office so that US energy trading worked together in one building. It was decided to relocate US hydrocarbon …
Bragging
When I was growing up, my parents would say, “no one likes a showoff.” The phrase, bragging rights, was not exclaimed before or after a competition as it was considered bad manners to brag. Winners usually said kind words of praise and encouragement to the losing side. If someone danced or …
Stamina
One of my God-given gifts is stamina. I have the ability and discipline to expend energy over long periods of time. The dictionary defines stamina as the bodily or mental capacity to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity. Another definition of stamina is the moral or emotional strength to …
Tocqueville (Religion as a Counterbalance to Individualism)
I try not to write about politics. America is polarized, and I would prefer to concentrate on our common values rather than divisions. I seek unity rather than separation. The reason I chose this Tocqueville series was its relevance to our post-modern world. Individualism, taken to extremes, can …
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Tocqueville (Individualism in Democratic Countries)
I held leadership positions when I was employed and upon retirement, held leadership nonprofit positions. One of the main leadership attributes that I tried to exhibit was not using the singular pronoun “I” when discussing the work performed by the team I led. I wanted to uplift the contributions of …
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Tocqueville (Religion in America – Part II)
I discussed Alexis de Tocqueville’s (1805–1859) writings concerning religion’s influence on American democracy in my last blog (Part I). He believed that religion maintains democracy by preventing laws that diminish democracy and placing moral boundaries on the nation. “Tyranny may be able to do …
Tocqueville (Religion in America – Part I)
One of my favorite weekend readings is Lunch with the FT. Each week, the Financial Times (London) interviews a notable person over lunch. This past week, the FT interviewed Franklin Graham (Evangelical leader Franklin Graham: ‘Americans realize Trump is not pastor-in-chief,’ Derek Brower, July 26, …
Tocqueville (Introduction)
During the summer months, I like to write a series of blogs on a prominent theologian by diving deep into one of their publications. Previously, I wrote blogs on Moral Man and Immoral Society (Reinhold Niebuhr, 1932), Christ & Culture(H. Richard Niebuhr, 1951), Christianity and Civilization …
Leisure Sickness
I ran my first marathon just before my thirtieth birthday and my last marathon a few months before I retired. I don’t know the exact number of marathons that I ran but the total was around twenty-five. After the first couple of marathons, I researched training methods and eventually settled on a …