Yo-Yo: Extending Yourself

Here is my message from Sunday. The scripture was

I’m guessing that most of us have probably seen an image something like this outlining the life cycle of organizations. It seems like just about every leadership seminar or workshop I’ve gone to, and definitely those that want to talk about revitalization, have used this image. Basically it says that in the beginning there is lots of energy, new things happening a great vision and direction which leads to growth, and continued climbing of the organization, but then things start to change, energy is lost, the vision gets a little less clear or a little less striven for and so the organization reaches maturity and then bureaucracy starts to set in, and it then begins a downward slide which can eventually lead to its death. Now, the reason this comes up in leadership workshops is to talk about the fact that you can stop that downward slide, give new vision, create new energy, and you then cycle back and you can start the cycle all over again, with growth, then maturity, then downward, and hopefully new vision, new energy and do it all over again. And while there is a lot to be said for that as an idea, I do think that it glosses over too many things, makes it too simple, too easy both to explain and to do, and the toy we look at today is a great illustration of what’s missing here.

But before we get into that, a quick recap of the toys we have looked at in our toy box that can teach us something about leadership and life. Although it wasn’t technically a part of this series, for New Years we did talk about the etch-a-sketch and the fact that if you have made a mistake you can simply shake it off, create a new screen and start again. And then we looked at play-doh and the reality that we are molded by the things with which we surround us, and so we need to form ourselves with the right things and the right people, and for us as Christians baptism should be our primary mold. Then we looked at the slinky-dog which is a great illustration of leadership and change. First as a leader you have to take ahold of the string of leadership and pull, and when you do that, the head of the slinky dog will move forward, but the hind end stays where it is, which means we have to be patient in our change, and also listening and watching, and preparing for the tail end to catch up, and then start again. And then last week we talked about Lego and the need for connection and building connection so we can build community. What Lego also show us is that sometimes we want to lock things into place, to glue them together, and on the organizational lifecycle that is represented on the downward slide, and so we also have to live into being open to change and trying new things, of being creative. And so today we then move onto the yo-yo.

Now the yo-yo is actually a very interesting toy, not to say that the others aren’t. but in the study of these things, it is believed that the yo-yo is the second oldest toy in the world, with the doll being the oldest. It is possible that it got it’s beginning in China around 1000 BCE and then was brought to the west by traders, or it’s possible that it originated in several places around the same time and spread. But we do have evidence, or apparent evidence for it very early. This is a vase from Greece dating to the 5th century BCE which appears to show a young boy playing with something that distinctly looks yo-yo like. And that means it’s possible that Jesus may have played with a yo-yo when he was a boy. They were made out of clay, wood or metal. In the 1700’s in France it was called the jou-jou, which could be where the name yo-yo comes from. In England it was called a bangelore, and was a favorite toy amongst the royalty. In the US, the first patent was given in 1866 and also called a bangelore. And then in 1928, Pedro Flores, and immigrant from the Philippines opened a factory to manufacture what he called the yo-yo, and in Tagalog, a Pilipino language that means come-come, and he was the first to trademark that name. Flores’ toy took off, and in 1929 he was approached by Donald Duncan who offered to purchase the factory and trademark, and in 1932 he incorporated the Duncan Yo-Yo company with which most of us are so familiar. Duncan also used Flores’ marketing which involved sending people out into the community to demonstrate the yo-yo, and also to hold yo-yo contests to encourage people to learn tricks and gain more interest. And it was the Duncan yo-yo which was adopted into the national toy hall of fame in 1989.

So what does the yo-yo teach us? Well first is that a yo-yo just by itself isn’t much fun. Even if it’s in your hand but not doing anything, it’s sort of boring. To be effective, to be fun, the yo-yo has to be extended. It has to go beyond your hand in order to be what it is intended and called to be. And so, the first thing about the yo-yo is that you have to be willing to extend yourself, you have to be willing to move past your safety zone, which in this metaphor is your hand. But you have to be committed to it. If you just open your hand and let it fall, it will fall, it will leave your hand, but won’t have enough energy to be able to return, and therefore you are missing the whole action of the yo-yo which is basically release, revolve, extend, rewind, return, and things can go wrong at any of these points. But, what is true about the yo-yo, is true about life. You have to be committed to it. If you commit to it, you put energy behind the release then you are less likely to have problems at the other points. You have to be committed to extending yourself to have any real chance at succeeding, and that means we have to move past any fear or trepidation about being beyond our safe zone. Because nothing magic happens in our safe spot, there are no miracles in a safe spot, we have to move beyond that, we have to extend ourselves, to see, experience and participate in God’s miracles.

So, think of that passage we heard from Mark this morning, which is the first miracle that takes place in Mark and comes immediately, and that’s a big word in Mark, after Jesus has called the first disciples. He says, “come follow me”, and Simon, Andrew, James and John all immediately drop their nets and follow Jesus. They throw themselves into this idea of discipleship, committing themselves, putting their energy and their lives into extending themselves beyond who they were and what they did to become disciples. They could have just as easily staid on the sea of Galilee fishing. In fact, it would have been even easier to have stayed where they were, but the responded to the call and set out, and in that they are sort of like the Slinky Dog as we talked about. And then they make their way to Capernaum, a city on the northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee, maybe they’ve been there, maybe they haven’t, but its certainly not their normal stomping grounds, nor Jesus’.  And then Jesus walks into the synagogue and teaches with authority, which is perhaps an indicator that something different is happening, something new. And one of the devotions I read by Rev. Steve Garnaas-Holmes he said that perhaps the spirit causing the man the convulse and cry out is the status quo fighting not to give up. He said, “power tightens it’s grip. There are recriminations. Harsh words. Withdrawal symptoms. Letting go of old habits, slipping torturous comforts, shedding false assurances, inner bullies—they drag their hooks on the way out.” I think that’s not just a great thinking about change, but also about what happens to us, personally and from others, when we seek to move beyond out comfort zones and to take others with us, because sometimes others will respond, and sometimes they want to dig in their hooks and try and damage those who want to change. But this is also what Jesus shows us just as the yo-yo does.

Now when you throw a yo-yo down, when it meets the end of the string, it can either come right back up or you can also make it stay spinning at the end, which is known as sleeping. But you can only make it sleep for so long. The world record for a sleep is an amazing 30 minutes 28 seconds. But let’s name that’s the extreme outlier, you can be out there for a little while but to keep the energy up, what do you have to do? Come back to the hand. Jesus does the same thing, because what we see often is Jesus going out, expending himself, his energy, his ministry, and then what does he do? He goes off to a quite place by himself, or with a few disciples, and he prays and he rests. He is 40 days in the wilderness before he begins his ministry, and after today’s passage he will go to Simon’s house where he does a bunch of healing, and then he goes off to the wilderness to be quiet, and pray and rest and recover so that he can then go out and extend himself, give himself for others, to spin back into the world. And so, the yo-yo is a great metaphor for that moving beyond the ordinary, the stationary, extending yourself out, doing new things, trying new ideas, going out into the world to encounter, and then rewinding to return, again it’s release, revolve, extend, rewind, return. And if you don’t do that you will run out of energy, burn yourself out and not actually be able to lead or to do whatever it is that you are doing. You don’t have the energy to be effective, and just this week the head coach of Liverpool FC, which we would call a soccer team, who is one of the best coaches in the world for that sport, besides for Ted Lasso, just said he was stepping down because, in his words, he doesn’t have the energy to do the job right now and so he’s taking a year off to recover. As a leader, or even as a follower, we need to expend energy, but we have to have enough to come back to our safe spot, not to burn ourselves out, so that we can then go out and do it again. Remember the purpose is not just about extending ourselves forever, but being able to continue again and again, which means resting in order to gain new energy to do it again. So, we can’t stay in the safe space and we cannot stay in the place that extends us forever, it’s about finding that balance.

Which leads me back to that graphic with which we started. The problem with this graphic is that it seems to imply that these are linear, straight lines. Everything leads to growth, or everything leads to decline. Except that is not how things work right? The yo-yo shows us this too, and it’s true in business, in leadership and in life. It looks more like this, with its ups and downs. The problem is when things are going up, we tend to overlook the down turns, and when things are going down we tend to overlook or discount when things turn up. But the reality is we will have both, ups and downs, and we have to be prepared for both, and recognize both, and live through both, and learn what we can and take advantage of both.

But let me close with this last thing we can learn from the yo-yo, and that is everyone starts at the same point of learning to throw it down, release, revolve, extend, rewind, return, and then you might build from there. Because let’s face it, just doing that over and over and over again can get boring pretty quickly and then you either put it down and go off to something else, or then you start to learn tricks. And how Flores and then Duncan first helped sell yo-yos was by sending out people with tricks and holding competitions, which means moving way past the basic of use of a yo-yo. And so that means keeping our eyes up and open and paying attention to what others are doing, and learning from them, and just about every yo-yo trick starts with learning to sleep your yo-yo. And while there are definitely things, tricks, you can learn yourself, walking the dog and around the world, are not terribly complex, but others like rocking the baby or the Eifel tower, which we showed on an earlier slide are much harder to do and involve learning from others, of sitting at the feet of the masters as it were. And they take practice and patience and more practice. So, it’s knowing what you don’t know and being willing and able to admit it, which is a characteristic of all great leaders, and when lacking a key in all terrible leaders. And then seeking out those who can help to make you better, which is seeking our mentors

Mentoring is needed for leaders, no matter how long they’ve been doing it, to be learning from others and then also to be passing that knowledge on to future generations and simultaneously allowing those new generations to do new things, to extend themselves in new ways and to do new tricks which everyone can then learn from. I have been personally gifted by several mentors in my ministerial career, and most of them have been women. My last mentor retired and I miss that interchange, and so I’ve been looking for a new mentor. But, I have also told the cabinet that if there is someone new or newish to the ministry that you think I could help that I would definitely be open to that, to pass on what was given to me and allow them to be better than otherwise and also to learn some new tricks because the world and the church have changed a lot in the last 20 years. And let me just say that you are never too old to be a mentor, or perhaps too retired to be a mentor, because everyone has something, some acquired knowledge, some new trick, they can teach others, as well as knowing that no one is too old to be learning new tricks themselves from others

So, what the yo-yo teaches us is the need to extend ourselves by trying new things and being open to new ideas, of being creative in what we do because miracles don’t happen in our safe spaces. But, we also have to know the need for those safe spaces so that we don’t burn ourselves out, spin all our energy out, so that we are not useful to anyone, including ourselves. That the yo-yo is about release, revolve, extend, rewind and return. So that we can then go out and do it again. And just like with most of these toys, it’s better when we do it with others, watching and growing and learning from others so that we can learn new things and be better, and then to also pass that information on to others and to continue to learn from them. And that takes work, trial and error, and practice, but when we do that, when we learn to be miracle makers with God be being extended into the world, then the Kingdom of God comes one step closer to being a reality. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters.