The hallmark of a living system is change, for to change is to grow.\u00a0 If you’ve been a visitor to this site, you know that, to quote MisterRogers, “Everything Grows Together.”\u00a0 And therefore, change has to happen simultaneously.\u00a0 We can “think” we’re only going to change one thing.\u00a0 But when we do that, we’ve unknowingly created a ripple effect of changes.<\/p>\n
For example, let’s consider my desire to lose that bulge around my middle, and decide some regular exercise is what’s needed to accomplish that goal.\u00a0 However, with a herniated disc in my back, sit-ups are just too dangerous.\u00a0 The gym up the street has a great “crunch” machine, so I’m thinking I’ll go there for an hour three times a week.<\/p>\n
But wait! There’s more!<\/p>\n
First, I have to buy a membership.\u00a0 Then, I have to plan time to do this – do I go in the morning, or at night?\u00a0 Since I travel, perhaps it would be better to do it in the morning on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.\u00a0 Or, if I’m not yet home on Friday morning, then I’ll go Monday morning.\u00a0 But wait a minute – how “regular” is that?\u00a0 And to get there when they open, that means getting up an hour earlier, which means making bed time an hour earlier, and…<\/p>\n
You get the idea.<\/p>\n
One of the things I like to see is how things change over time, especially meanings of words.\u00a0 “Crunch” used to be a bad thing, since one was crunched for time, or someone’s car was crunched in an accident.\u00a0 Now, it refers to an exercise to strengthen abdominal muscles.\u00a0 Or how about the word, “swipe.” 25 years ago, to “swipe a card” meant to take an item from a greeting card store; now it’s what you do when you want to purchase something.\u00a0 With chip and tap cards, however, swiping might go away.<\/p>\n
As for the word “attend,” it comes from the Old French word, “attendre,” which means, “to heed.”\u00a0\u00a0 It’s what we should do to our “call” (from the Latin, “vocare,” vocation).\u00a0 Not just hear, but listen…”attentively.”<\/p>\n
While there are still several meanings to the word in the dictionary, the first one is the most commonly used definition today.\u00a0 Today, it means “to show up”…for class, for an event, for a meeting. The more original meaning was that one had to show up in order to<\/em> attend (what we refer to now as “pay attention”) to what is being presented (present – as in, “a gift that’s given,” “now” or even, “Here”).<\/p>\n So what does this have to do with Marketing?<\/p>\n 1) Attend something this Lent.\u00a0 Rather than just “giving up” something, rethinking what we’ve fallen into the habit of doing is what we’re actually called to do.\u00a0 Perhaps a weekend retreat might be a great change of pace.\u00a0 Maybe “unplug” for a weekend.<\/p>\n 2) Attend to what’s happening in your school.\u00a0 Pay attention to the things that you sometimes take for granted. What you consider to be ordinary may really be something quite extraordinary, and when their extraordinary, they’re remarkable.\u00a0 And remarkable things are marketable things.<\/p>\n 3) Just “attend” – be present to what God is saying.\u00a0 We can do all the talking and asking when we’re praying, but real prayer is communication with God.\u00a0 And if we don’t allow Him to talk while we listen, we’re not really praying.\u00a0 That might be something new and “out of the ordinary,” but it’s very appropriate since we’re not in ordinary time for a while.<\/p>\n And what you hear Him say might be life-changing.<\/p>\n That means it’s a change from the old, since He makes all things new, and change is the hallmark of a living system.<\/p>\n \u00a9 Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2005-2025 (Original Publication Date: 20050307)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The hallmark of a living system is change, for to change is to grow.\u00a0 If you’ve been a visitor to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MM-Purple.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2ggCS-attend","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2243"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7696,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions\/7696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}