Click Here for the Official Countdown to the Re-Launch of www.jdwalt.com

The Rev. Paolo Padrini, a consultant with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said Friday the free application will be launched in July in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Latin.

more. . . ..

HT to Omar Al Rikabi

The post is called “Raising a Church-less Child.”  I’d ask them. . . . What’s right about this conversation? (note I’m not saying what’s wrong with the author or their perspective) What’s wrong about it? How might this conversation be re-framed or re-set? What kind of story/parable or analogy/metaphor  might Jesus offer in the midst of this conversation that could reorient it.

Then I’d ask them to write a paper on it, only the paper would consist of your interlineated responses to each one of the 272 comments and you would be graded on your ability to reframe the conversation

There’s nothing really new here, but there needs to be something new added to it. ??

My quick take– the Christians are getting slaughtered here and for all the wrong reasons.

ps. i’d especially like to see how one of my favorite faculty friends would respond.

This one’s making the rounds, but if you haven’t seen it– it’s worth your 5 minutes. It’s stuff like that this that makes the internet truly worth it.

Question: Who’s the real linchpin in this group?

Examples????

Free prize for the best example.

Speaking of McDonalds…….. they now sell everything Starbucks does minus overpriced coffee tumblers plus chicken nuggets and THEIR INTERNET IS FREE! When Mcdonalds starts selling your product, your on your way to becoming something like “krill” in the proverbial food chain. Be assured, the killer whale known as Moby-(wal)- Mart is on it’s way.

In times like these (as well as in other times), the secret is to sing your own song better than you’ve ever sung it before and to think about how you might make it easier for others to sing it too. Don’t let the retail sharks lure you into their game.

I fear this is what happened to Starbucks. They let hard times steal their song. They didn’t set out to be an upscale drive through sno-cone stand. Starbucks created an experiential environment around a cup of coffee- and they franchised it! Slightly above average coffee, exceptional experience; so much so it became something of a village pub for addicts and social drinkers alike.

So instead of trying to compete with Wal-Mart by delving deeper into the retail abyss, why not amp up your song Starbucks? Here are a few tunes I would be glad to sing with you.

1. Start Happy Hour (only call it Coffee Break)  every day from 2-4. Have someone cruising through the store, press pot in hand pouring refills for free. (coffee only and only in-store.) Send someone around with free snack samples too. (some of that food u didn’t sell at breakfast). Tweet out the coffee and cookie featured every weekday at 2.
2. Instead of putting all those overpriced unsold tumblers on-sale create a reward for loyal customers. 20 drinks (on a swipe coffee club card) and your 21st comes in a tumbler. Only don’t tell on what cup the free prize comes. Let it be a surprise. At 30 give a lb of coffee that isn’t moving too quickly. At 40 . . . . . . . . U get the point. Give me an ipad on my 1,000th cup. Reward loyalty and you’ll get loyalty.
3. Ditch the “Tasters Choice” (aka via) and create a subscription service for your unique seasonal coffees or special international varieties. Better- do 3 subscriptions: Standards (pike, Verona, French roast) at $12/mo per lb., Premiums (International + seasonal coffees) $15/mo per lb., Boutiques (roasted this week) $20/mo per lb. Buy a cheap warehouse in Arkansas next to a college campus for a Fulfillment center and hire students at 20 hrs a week at a buck over minimum wage. Give them a grinder for joining. It’s a cash cow.
4. I know this one will be complicated, but how about a NightCap Session 8-10 every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. Get Rachel Ray or Paula Dean to create a Starbucks signature pie and sell slices of that pie only during the nightcap session.  (think food network partnership) I’m not recommending this, but maybe Bailey’s could be in order. Close down the drive through. Expand your outdoor seating into the parking lot. Maybe try a local singer-songwriter on a stool and see what happens. Starbucks should  have a federation of singer-songwriters who would readily play nights like these for a song. (it would be their own version of a “house concert.”)
5. Work a deal with Apple to give you 7 ipads per store for customers to use for free while in store. Think of the win-win-win on that one.
6. And for crying out loud, never make me pay for the Internet again! Create a Friends of Starbucks club where I give you my email address and you give me free Internet.

If I ran Starbucks I’d start reading playbooks from the company who actually does make the best cup of coffee in the world.

Now, I’m thinking about how this kind of thinking might impact my own business and brand? I’m in higher education and the implications seem myriad. Seriously, what is your song and how can you help other people sing it?

Each morning I cycle through 2 or 3 sites to make certain I practice my own advice. I start with the Writer’s Almanac, a site run by the great Garrison Keillor. It’s also fun to listen to this as a podcast takes 5 minutes. Next I check a site called Poetry Daily. Finally, I look at The Poetry  Foundation’s site, which is a veritable treasure-trove of resources. I click on their poem of the day link.

Just this morning, I read the cover story of the current issue of Poetry Magazine (which they publish). The short article, “In that  Great River:  A Notebook,” shares a bit of the inner life of one of the great poet-mystics, Anna Kamienska. (whom I never knew before). It’s a collection of sayings like the following,

“Poetry is a foretaste of truth. It is the vestibule of faith. It is contemporary poets who have turned it into smoke and mirrors.”

I like that.

In response to my regular counsel, people regularly tell me, “I just don’t get poetry.” And that’s precisely the reason we must be reading it. Reading poetry reconnects us with words in their primal creative essence. Poetry strips us of our need to “master” words and meanings and leads us into the possibility of submission. So take off your “I’ve got to pin down the meaning of this poem and get something out of it” hat and put on your “I’m going to practice poetry as an act of surrendering to the mystery of art” hat.