More Than Maintenance

I know a lady with bright red hair - she is absolutely beautiful.  Her house is in a conservative, modest but well kept neighborhood.  She has lived there a long time; her daughters are grown; her husband has passed; and she is still vibrant and funny.  I absolutely love spending time with her.

Her yard is beyond compare.  The fescue grass is more traditional to the south than the noveau riche "bermuda" invasion.  It is green, full and bordered by beautiful beds of flowers, plants and exotics on all sides.  She has a garden house that cost less than the average home depot "barn shed" and it fits the architecture of the main house well.  It probably isn't much more than half an acre of exposed yard but from the front to the back, it is rich, warm and clearly well kept.  I intend to learn from her.

Whether you live in a cluster home or on 5 acres of land, you will have property to "take care of" - that is - to maintain.  Maintenance isn't bad, for even the most passionate and innovative plans and efforts must be maintained.  The second law of thermodynamics can be stated formally and informally:

Physicist Lord Kelvin stated it technically as follows: "There is no natural process the only result of which is to cool a heat reservoir and do external work." In more understandable terms, this law observes the fact that the useable energy in the universe is becoming less and less. Ultimately there would be no available energy left. Stemming from this fact we find that the most probable state for any natural system is one of disorder. All natural systems degenerate when left to themselves.

Entropy is the dispersal of energy in a closed system that is no longer available for use (as in the definition above).  For those like me, entropy is classically stated as things that were in order moving to disorder in a closed system over time.  What that means is that if my red headed friend does not input energy into the order of her yard, it will move to disorder over time.  It means that, if she does not trim the border, weed the lawn, trim the trees, refresh the dead plantings and sweep the walks, that the garden will look more like most of the yards in America.

I know that engineers are cringing all over the world but really, the second law is really observable all around us.  People die and the process cannot be reversed.  Whatever it is that keeps them alive runs out.  Living and non-living materials decay all around us and as a result we buy replacements, build walls and go for the tummy-tuck.  So it is with leadership and life.

I admire my red headed friend for she is doing more than just minimum maintenance.  She is maintaining her yard at a most excellent level and not allowing it to decline.  She is maintaining the beauty that has already been innovated.  So many leaders of churches, organizations and businesses simply take over and "just keep it going".  They walk too long in the "yard" of their work and do not notice the slow, ever constant decay as they only put in enough energy to keep it stable.  But entropy is part of their lives as their efforts decay and, thus, the energy input into maintenance decays and what was once most excellent moves to disorder.

There are times where we do lead and are required to maintain but remember, without attention and sufficient investment you will end up maintaining a yard by only cutting the grass in a crisis and just getting by to please the homeowner's association.  In times of maintenance, more than maintenance is needed to keep order and beauty.

Just as my red headed friend.