Midweek Musings - March 5, 2025
Thermometers and thermostats; Martin Marty; When Ancient Texts Become Bestsellers; Robert Caro on Shutting Up; Dana Gioia on Writing; What Adolescents Want (to Watch); and, the Gift of Caffeine
There’s a world of difference between a thermostat and a thermometer.
While they’re aging at an especially accelerated rate these days [do any other parents feel that way?!] my children could tell you how frequently I would challenge them in the car, on the way to school, to “be a thermostat, not a thermometer.”
The expression isn’t original to me, but I honestly have no idea where I first heard it years ago. A quick Google search didn’t clear things up for me either. I’ve seen some form of it attributed to figures as divergent as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Roger Ailes. I’ll let someone else sort all that out.
But you get the idea. Most people live their lives like thermometers, simply reflecting the “temperature” around them. They mirror back the dominant mood, thinking, temperament, etc. And while much of the time that can occur with no real negative effect, it inevitably leads to an eventual crisis. If the temperature around you turns hostile or unhealthy, you better be ready to know it and adjust accordingly. Otherwise, the proverbial frog in the kettle becomes all too real [apologies for the mixed metaphors].
A thermostat, on the other hand, has the ability to recalibrate the temperature in the room. Of course, not every recalibration is for the good. We’ve all known or observed folks who have the ability to turn the mood or attitude in their surroundings in horribly unhealthy and dysfunctional ways. It may be a junior staffer, a student, or a CEO, but we’ve all encountered individuals who seem to have the unusual capacity to bring discouragement, anxiety, cynicism, or rage into whatever room they enter. When they do, you can almost feel your blood pressure changing. Literally.
The other reality is that most people are not one or the other. We’re some strange and unpredictable combination of the two, depending on any number of factors and circumstances. But I do think that a lot of life comes down to which of the two will be the dominant mode for an individual. And don’t be misled. Being a “thermostat” doesn’t mean a certain personality type. I’ve known quiet and gentle folks who are precisely this way. Through their calm humility and conviction, they have the ability to exert influence and lead others in a healthy direction. Conversely, I’ve seen big personalities who fill a room, but who really aren’t setting any tone but rather just mirroring the broader cultural or organizational moment. When everyone around you is raging, is the person who flies off the handle in fits of spontaneous outburst really changing anything?
So let’s assume for a moment that you want to actually engage with those around you more like a thermostat, influencing your context in healthy ways that lead to flourishing. I’d suggest at least two basic questions to ask.
First, How am I inadvertently changing the temperature in the room?
This may be the scariest question for most of us to face. It’s one thing to be self-conscious of how we affect those around us, even perhaps to intentionally carry ourselves in a certain way so as to influence the dynamics around us. For example, if I have to share hard news with a team, I don’t begin the meeting by cracking jokes. Everything from my body language to the first sentence I speak has to set the table, communicating that there is an appropriate gravity.
But that’s the easy part. The hard stuff is identifying the ways in which we do this in unintentional and perhaps unhelpful ways all the time.
Admittedly, some of this is temperamental and very much shaped by personality. I once knew a team member who, when asked how she was doing that morning, instinctively answered, “I’m hanging in there!” Now, I am pretty confident there were days she was doing far better than just “hanging in there.” But that routine response signaled something and had the capacity to deflate those in the work environment before the day had even started. And I don’t think she realized it.
Years ago, when our kids were very little, Jeannie had the good sense to help me see ways in which I was coming home from work in the evening with a less than constructive influence. I didn’t come through the door in a ball of rage or anything like that. But entering the door after a full day of work and stress, only to be immediately confronted by a wave of toddler and young children’s energy did not always bring out the best in me.
For my part, it sometimes meant taking a breath and saying a quick prayer in the few steps from the car to the door in our garage. But Jeannie also knew that if I got up to our bedroom and had just five minutes to change out of my suit and tie, I’d come back downstairs much more prepared to actually engage with our family in a healthy and helpful way. The temperature in our home would be all the better for it.
Of course, it doesn’t stop with small children. As parents, we are setting the temperature of our homes all the time, whether with teenagers or even with adult children. No matter their ages, our kids still want to know that we are present for them, that their concerns and burdens matter to us (more than the tyranny of whatever else may be urgent “out there”), and that we love them. That’s the temperature we all want to set, right?
By the way, this is why a good coach obsesses a bit over culture and the so-called “little stuff.” Do players run back to the huddle? Do they sprint to the line of scrimmage? Do they play hard to the whistle? Do they cheer on their teammates from the sideline? Do they respect the referees? Do they clean up the garbage they’ve left behind when the game’s over? Do they train hard or just go halfway? You get it. All of that sets the temperature and shapes the culture of a team.
Second, How can I intentionally set the temperature in this room?
I’ve been in some strange and bizarre meetings and gatherings in my life and career. Some of them are so strange you would not believe it. Sometimes that’s meant being nothing more than an observer, taking notes and keeping a poker face. Other times, it’s demanded that I lead the agenda or actively participate in the proceedings. In those cases, I’ve had to go into it all with a very clear sense of the tone and emphasis that matters.
But what strikes me as most crucial is at the level of the soul. It’s possible for leaders to expend an inordinate amount of energy and effort trying to develop better organizational psychology insights and to master some of the skills of effective communication. All of that’s fantastic and it can indeed yield some real positive change. But even there it can only go so deep. To become the kind of person who sets (and resets) the thermostat in your surrounding environment in ways that accord with wisdom, that lead to flourishing, and above all else are animated by love of God and love of neighbor requires a kind of shaping of the soul that is deeply spiritual and predicated upon divine grace. That means a lot of prayer. A lot of confession of sin. A lot of repentance and storing up Scripture in our hearts and mind through memorization and meditation. It demands the kind of work of Word and Spirit that, in God’s economy, actually changes us from the inside out. When that happens, it turns out that our capacity to change the settings around us is predicated on the degree to which our own souls have been transformed by the redemptive work of Christ.
And the good news there? That kind of work, that miracle of grace, is available to all who seek it.
Be a thermostat, not a thermometer.
Reflecting on Martin Marty
Shortly after publishing last week’s edition of Practicing Resurrection, I learned of the recent death of Martin Marty at 97. It’s hard to overstate how significant Dr. Marty’s influence was within the world of academia and mainline Protestantism over the past five decades. His life was shaped by his Lutheran background and his work inseparable from the University of Chicago Divinity School and outlets like The Christian Century. Not only was he an exceptionally prolific researcher and author, with a list of publications that puts almost anyone else to shame, but he was an active churchman and cultural commentator as well. He did not hide his viewpoints or convictions, even when they sometimes came with an edge. Intellectual honesty is in short supply these days and Martin Marty was something of a dying breed. There was no masquerade with him. Martin Marty was an unapologetic mainline Protestant, uncomfortable with the resurgence of more traditional or conservative expressions of evangelicalism and fundamentalism. But he did not cloak those judgments in double-speak.
I only met Dr. Marty once, when he and his wife Harriet hosted me and a small group of colleagues almost 14 years ago. That visit in their apartment in the John Hancock Tower was unforgettable in ways both expected and unexpected. A group of us, all conservative evangelicals, sat with one of the dons of mainline Protestantism and had an honest and gracious conversation about theological education, local church life, and the shape of global Christianity. Our disagreements were evident, even if not needing enumeration, but Dr. Marty could not have been more gracious or hospitable.
The obituaries published over the past few days have made for wonderful reading. One of my favorite anecdotes comes from Dean Lueking, a longtime friend of Dr. Marty as shared with RNS:
“Marty had a well-ordered sense of time; every minute counts,” remembered Lueking. “He got up in the morning at 4:44 a.m. and started writing before breakfast. He was remarkably productive. He could take a 10-minute power nap and be completely refreshed.” Lueking told of a day when a caller reached Marty’s assistant at the divinity school, who explained that the professor could not be interrupted because he was working on a book. To which the caller replied, ‘He’ll be done soon, just put me on hold.’”
As usual, Sam Roberts’ obituary in the New York Times is worth reading as well. It captures a range of reflections on Dr. Marty’s impact, as well as some direct quotes from him. For example: “Asked by the University of Chicago Magazine in 1998 how he’d like to be remembered, he said: “That I was a good teacher.””
One of the textbooks I assigned when I taught Church History was Marty’s Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America. Somehow assigning Sydney Ahlstrom’s 1,200 page A Religious History of the American People to M.Div. students seemed a bit much. So I compromised and had them read a good chunk of Marty’s much shorter 500 page tome. Does that make me a good teacher?
Ancient Texts Become Bestsellers
It’s not every day that a new translation of a 2,000 year old text hits the bestseller charts. But that’s precisely what’s happened with Tom Holland’s new translation of Suetonius’ account of the lives of Julius Caesar and the first 11 Roman emperors. Here’s how The Guardian describes it all:
The book is a collection of 12 biographies covering the rule of Julius Caesarand the first 11 Roman emperors. On hearing that it was in the charts, Holland was “delighted for Suetonius, to see the lad is capable of getting on the bestseller list after two millennia”.
The book, published on 13 February, comes 18 months after ancient Rome became the centre of a major internet pop culture moment, when women began asking men how often they think about the Roman empire, and posting their responses online.
Holland cites several reasons for the continued fascination. Rome has “always” been the ancient civilisation that people in Britain and the west have been most interested in, partly because Britain was part of the Roman empire, and the English alphabet is Latin. “We feel closer to the Romans, perhaps, than we do to the Egyptians or the Assyrians.”
Like many, I’m a big fan of Holland’s work and while Suetonius was not high on my planned reading list this spring, things may need to change. The book’s release is a bit delayed here in North America (April 29), so now’s the time to get those pre-orders in.
Waiting for Caro
Like many of you, I’m a big fan of all things Robert Caro and among those who are awaiting the fifth and final volume of his epic biographical series on Lyndon Johnson, a publication that now seems almost eschatological in its “no man knows the day or the hour” mystique.
So seeing an extended profile on Caro in this month’s Smithsonian was as enjoyable to read as I expected. Much of the material will already be familiar to Caro’s readers (the use of the typewriter, the daily log of word count, etc.). But there’s some new stuff here too. This caught my attention, early in the article:
“I haven’t seen these for, like, 50 years,” Caro says. He is sitting at a table in the reading room of the New York Historical, surrounded by boxes of his past. There are currently around 120 boxes in the collection, an estimated 100 linear feet of material, and he still has more to hand over. The item in front of him now is a notebook from one of his interviews with Robert Moses in 1967 or 1968. Written in capital letters in the middle of the page are two words Caro would sometimes write down as a message to himself: “SHUT UP!” “I learned the importance of silence,” he says. “People have a need to fill up silence.”
Most of us would do well to learn from Caro here. Even in interviews, perhaps especially in interviews, listen more and speak less.
Dana Gioia on Writing
It clocks in at over three hours, so you may need to digest it in pieces. But David Perrell’s conversation with Dana Gioia on How I Write is worth your attention. There’s a lot in there about Gioia’s own life, his experience as an author and business executive, navigating family dynamics and his roots as a California native, etc. But this reflection on his current life in Sonoma, California, stood out to me.
“Up here, I spend two or three hours a day in the morning doing physical labor—just to keep the natural landscape healthy around me. Then I'll work for a couple of hours, have lunch, do a couple more hours of physical labor, and then I'll work. If I'm really pressed on a deadline or something, I'll have dinner, then I'll work in the evening.
In New York, it was office work and literary work. Here, it's physical work and literary work.
I learned something when I came here. I'll be working on something, and I'll come to an impasse. I'll say, “I don't know where this poem is going.” Or let's say I'm writing the libretto for an opera, and I won't know what these two characters are going to do.
I'll go out and I'll prune a tree for an hour, cut away the dead wood—and things like that….And while I'm doing that, my unconscious works it out. Then I'll come back here and it's solved.
What I've learned here is the benefit of physical labor and the benefit of shutting off your rational mind and keeping yourself busy—so your unconscious can work. For a poet or for a literary writer, that's invaluable.”
If you’re a writer, sometimes the best thing you can do is put it down and go pick up something heavy.
Teens and Screens: What They’re Watching & What They Want
Recently, my colleague Tom Halleen alerted me to the “Reality Bites: Teens and Screens” report issued by the Center for Scholars and Storytellers at UCLA. The survey captured data from respondents ranging in age from 10 to 24 (what the report terms “extended adolescence”).
A few data points stand out. For one, adolescents reported a surging interest in stories within fantasy worlds and a declining interest in stories tied to personal life or relatable issues. It may be that they’re looking for escapism from challenging times and circumstances. Or it may be that it tells us something about every human heart’s yearning for the transcendent. Maybe both.
It’s also noteworthy that respondents claimed that going to a movie theater during opening weekend is still their top choice for an activity (music concerts and new video game releases were second and third respectively). If the movie theater business is doomed to extinction, it seems adolescents haven’t gotten the memo.
Lastly, how do American adolescents decide what to watch? Well, they reported advertising and influencer recommendations as their least likely to shape how they choose what to watch. Instead, they claimed that plot of story and ease of access to content were the most influential. So if you want to reach the next generation, tell a really good story and make it easy for them to access.
Thanks for the Caffeine
It’s not every day that a generous reader reaches out with a word of encouragement and then proceeds to inform you that they operate a coffee roaster and would like to send you some of their beans as a token of appreciation. But that day finally came.
Thanks to Aaron Catlin and the good folks at Torch Coffee, our home has had an extra buzz about it this past week. Get to know this outfit from Clay Center, Kansas and order that Thunderhead blend. It’s superb.
What I’m Reading
Nigel Biggar, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (William Collins)
Charlie Peacock, Roots and Rhythm: A Life in Music (Eerdmans)