We build our lives around permanency. Retirement savings is assumed to be permanent security. Homes and families are built on the human construct of permanency. Careers, income, and possessions . . . all create a sense of permanency.

 

I wonder why that is? We know that nothing is permanent. We trick ourselves into believing that stuff is permanent. But down deep we know it is not. We’ve seen it.

 

Everywhere, everything is dying. Flowers, grass, people, skin ... everything is dying and making way for new life. New life is only possible if things are in constant flux, constantly changing, dying. New creation and new life come from chaos and death. This is the way the world is designed.

 

Yet I cling to things sooo tightly, determined that if I hold tight, I can keep it. And if I can keep it, then it will be mine. Mine forever.

 

So I design my life in such a way that I cling … to people, to possessions, to career; convincing myself that it is the clinging, the grasping, the holding on that gives life and permanency, comfort and security, personal peace and affluence.

 

If I can just carve my own little place in this world, then everything will be OK …

as the world slips away.

 

I know that no matter how hard I hold on, things slip away … things most dear …

If I see clearly, I know that there is nothing on this earth that is mine. Absolutely nothing. I know that there is nothing I can keep forever.

 

Who am I to think I can own a piece of creation? And even if I could, it all turns to dust eventually. Then what has all of my clinging given me? … but dust. The taste of dirt in my mouth.

 

But we are Americans and we know the American Way.

 

We buy a façade and create the illusion of permanency.

 

We create a beautiful space in a beautiful woods …

We build a personal paradise in the suburbs …

We build another beautiful get-away in a warm climate or by a lake because we know surely that will make us happy.

 

Of maybe that new car will make us happy or that new wardrobe or that new computer or … or … or …

 

OK. Let’s step back a minute.

Permanency is an illusion.

So happiness cannot come from permanency.

Comfort cannot come from permanency.

Security cannot come from permanency.

Meaning cannot come from permanency.

Permanency is a lie we have been force-fed by this world since birth.

 

So what are we doing?

 

How then shall we live?

 

What are we left with . . . that is real???

 

We are given a gift each new day that is real.

 

We are given this moment, right now . . . that’s all that is real.

 

Tomorrow . . . my family may be gone.

Tomorrow . . . my home may be gone.

Tomorrow . . . my job may be gone.

Tomorrow . . . my mental stability may be gone.

Tomorrow . . . my financial stability may be gone.

Tomorrow . . . my health may be gone.

Tomorrow . . . my life may be gone . . .

 

But what I do have is what I am given anew each moment.

 

I have this present moment.

 

But what can I do with that???

 

Actually, this moment is the only thing I can do anything with.

 

The past is gone. The future is not here.

 

So I must learn to be present, fully present, in each and every moment of my life.

 

I must be fully present with each and every person with whom I interact.

I must be fully present with each and every decision I make.

I must be fully present with each and every task I do.

 

The present moment is with me all the time.

My whole life is determined in the present moment.

Everything happens in the present moment.

That is the ETERNAL NOW.

Within the ETERNAL NOW lies permanency.

This is where I am grounded.

This is where I root myself into the ground of my being, the Ground of all Being.

This is when, how, and where I connect to my Source.

This is where I meet my God.

This is where love flows from its Source into every action, interaction, and reaction.

We all find meaning in life in the same way: finding something we have to offer and giving it to others; finding something we are good at and doing it. When we see that we have made a difference by what we do, then, and only then, do we find meaning in life.

In the industrial age, based on mass consumption and convenience,
• We designed schools so that students just had to “sit and git”, pass a test, and then they were dubbed “successful”. So they dropped out in huge numbers. There was no meaning for them in education.
• We designed churches so that people have to join and then they could receive what it had to offer them. The worship celebration became a “service” to its members. The members heard it loud and clear, and came to the “sit and git” meeting to “receive” the “blessing” and feel good for the rest of the week. "Recharge their batteries?" Like a machine?
• We designed “services” to people with disabilities so that they would come to us as “consumers”. We actually call them that!!! “Consumers”. Then the professional tell them what to do and how to be safe. It is a good way to warehouse people, while isolating them from finding meaning in their lives.

In these contexts, designed after systems of consumption, people cannot find meaning in life.

Until we move (personally, spiritually, and professionally) from being consumers to being contributors, we will see people “dropping out” of society in mass numbers; in particular those that are seeking a meaningful life.

This morning at Oakdale Park Church, the pastor began his sermon describing the need for the paradigm shift from consumer to contributor. This was a topic that really stood out to him at a conference in creating an inclusive environment in churches that he participated in at Hope Network this past week lead by Cindy Holtrop, a member of the Make a Difference Learning Circle.

He specifically applied this concept to church members and the importance of creating a giving community. But he was struggling to integrate the concept of “leadership” into this though. Below is my email to him describing what I have learned:

I loved your sermon today, Pastor Bill. It resonated very deeply. The change from "consumer" to "contributor" is a huge paradigm shift in this consumer society based on mass consumption and convenience. No matter what area of life we look at, this is the fundamental shift that needs to happen.

I coordinated a county-wide program for youth with disabilities a few years ago. This program was designed around extensive research on what actually improves the outcomes for at-risk youth and youth with disabilities. THE PRIMARY FOCUS WAS DEVELOPING YOUTH LEADERSHIP.

The concept of leadership is something that I've struggled to understand for about 8 years now. But now I see it as simply another way of saying "contributor". In order for anyone to be a leader, personal leadership must come first. I would describe it to youth and teachers like this:

Scenario One: A student "sits back" at school, slumped back in his chair asking, "what are you going to teach ME today???" while board and yawning.
Scenario Two: A student "sits forward", listening intently because something resonates with his life. In "leaning forward" his posture and his voice asks the question, "WHAT DO I DO NOW?"

Leadership is pictured in Scenario Two. This describes in a very simply way the paradigm shift between consumer and contributor. Nobody has ever made a real difference in life by sitting back and waiting for others to serve them. Neither have they found meaning in life by waiting for it to be given to them.
Meaning comes from within.
Meaning comes through contribution.
Meaning comes through giving.

Leadership starts with personal leadership, taking charge and initiative in one's life and then moving forward to make a difference. Other words that describe this is self-determination and advocacy. Leadership can be from the front, from the side, or from the back; from the bottom or from the top of any organization or community. Anytime the actions of a person is moving others forward in life, this is leadership.

This is a concept that should be the core of all teaching in schools, churches, non-profits; in all communities.

Culture change begins with language change!!! We must be careful to use words very intentionally, because our words and actions create our world.

And I guarantee that organizations, whether churches, non-profits, or schools, that take the lead in creating this culture change, this paradigm shift, will take the lead in their communities; demonstrating a tangible increase in moving people toward meaningful lives in community.

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
John C. Maxwell

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
John Quincy Adams

“Leadership is action, not position.”
Donald H. McGannon

“Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average.”
Jim Rohn

“Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.”
Thomas J. Watson, Sr.

“A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not.”

Tribute to Buddy

 

Last night my dog Buddy passed away after become tremendously ill over the weekend. He was only 5 years old and had been very healthy so it was very unexpected. And it is not until after he is gone that I’ve realized how perfect the name my daughter Myka gave him truly was.

 

I was blind-sided by emotions . . . I didn’t think I was all that attached. I guess I was. It took a long, long time to stop crying. It is interesting, the things that expose my vulnerability . . . my fragility. So if I am to live an authentic life, I must face my vulnerability and fragility, embrace it, and learn from it.

 

What was it about Buddy that I can learn? First of all there was his loyalty. He was there by my side for the past four years through depression, divorce, loss of my kids (to half-time, joint custody), foreclosure of my home, loss of job; everything I went through he was by my side, felt my pain, and gave me comfort right on time, right when I needed it. He sat quietly observing me and then stepped up at the time that I needed a bit of touch. Consistency was another trait I need to learn from him. There was NEVER a question of how I was going to be greeted. He was ALWAYS delighted to see me, unconditionally welcoming me into our home. He had a presence I could feel. I felt it very distinctly last night on the way home as I thought of coming through the front door, even though he wasn’t here anymore. I felt it throughout the house. His presence was open and accepting of anything that I did or said. No matter what, I was OK in his book. Just because I am me.

 

Over the last 6 months, the connection between us deepened. Daily, I would catch him staring at me. He would stare until I looked back into his eyes. Our eyes would lock together affectionately. Actually, his affectionate gaze would just pull me in. When he did that it was more than just looking at each other. It was looking into each other. It was a heart connection. Don’t tell me animals don’t have souls . . . We consistently met, soul to soul. His gaze asked for nothing in return. It didn’t even demand a return gaze, although it often pulled me in. It was simply Buddy giving me his full and deep attention . . . he was fully present with me. Words are irrelevant and shallow where hearts meet.

 

On his death bed, he often looked past the kids and their mom to me. As I moved around the room, he would follow. Asking nothing. It wasn’t a look of “help me” or “save me”. It was a look of total presence. Of drawing in the best of life in the last minutes of his life by that connection he made to my heart through his eyes. To him, that is all life really was. It was those moments of connection . . . of presence . . . of connecting heart to heart, soul to soul.

 

It seems to me that Buddy lived the true essence of life. What else is there but our connection to those that we love? What else is there? Outside of that, there is absolutely nothing.

 

Truth comes from anywhere and everywhere if we are open to learning from life.

 

My greatest desire in life is to simplify my life to these basic things that Buddy taught me life is all about. I want to learn to be the “buddy” that Buddy was . . . to my kids . . . to my friends . . . to my family . . . to anyone that I am privileged to connect with each and every day of my life for the rest of my life.

This is my prayer.

 

Now, this is my question.

Why did he have to die for me to see, truly see, these things he had to teach me??? What else in my life do I not see? What else will require a disruptive event for me to see? Or can I learn to live life with open eyes, an open heart, an open mind, an open will, so that I do not miss the very essence of life?

“There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didn’t have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didn’t have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. That’s it.” (Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, p. 7)

 

“Living a long life, the conventional wisdom at the time said, depended to a great extent on who we were—that is, our genes. It depended on the decisions we made—on what we chose to eat, and how much we chose to exercise, and how effectively we were treated by the medical system. No one was used to thinking about health in terms of community.

 

(In finding the answer to this mystery of health) they had to look beyond the individual. They had to understand the culture he or she was a part of, and who their friends and families were, and what town their families came from. They had to appreciate the idea that the values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.” (pp. 10-11)

 

Can living in community dramatically affect the physical health of a whole town?

 

The Roseto Mystery

 

“Roseto Valfortore lies one hundred miles southeast of Rome in the Apennine foothills of an Italian province. In the style of the medieval villages, the town is organized around a large central square.” (p. 3) A group of Rosetans immigrated in 1882. They called their new settlement, Roseto, Pennsylvania.

 

“Stewart Wolf was a physician. He studied digestion and the stomach and taught in the medical school at the University of Oklahoma. He spent his summers on a farm in Pennsylvania, not far from Roseto—although that, of course, didn’t mean much, since Roseto was so much in its own world that it was possible to live in the next town and never know much about it.” (pp. 5-6)

 

Wolf recalls, “One of the times when we were up there for the summer—this would have been in the late nineteen fifties—I was invited to give a talk at the local medical society. After the talk was over, one of the local doctors invited me to have a beer. And while we were having a drink, he said, ‘You know, I’ve been practicing for seventeen years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of sixty-five with heart disease.” (p. 6)

 

“Wolf was taken aback. Heart attacks were an epidemic in the United States. They were the leading cause of death in men under the age of sixty-five. It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease. Wolf decided to investigate.” (p. 6) “The results were astonishing. In Roseto, virtually no one under fifty-five had died of a heart attack or showed any signs of heart disease. For men over sixty-five, the death rate from heart disease in Roseto was roughly half that of the United States as a whole. The death rate from all causes in Roseto, in fact, was 30 to 35 percent lower than expected.” (p. 7)

 

“Wolf brought in a friend of his, a sociologist from Oklahoma named John Bruhn, to help him. ‘I hired medical students and sociology grad students as interviewers, and in Roseto we went house to house and talked to every person aged twenty-one and over,’ Bruhn remembers. This happened more than fifty years ago, but Bruhn still had a sense of amazement in his voice as he described what they found. ‘There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didn’t have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didn’t have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. That’s it.’” (p.7)

 

“Wolf’s profession had a name for a place like Roseto—a place that lay outside everyday experience, where the normal rules did not apply. Roseto was an outlier.” (p. 7)

 

Next they studied the dietary practices expecting to find an answer. They found that the Rosetans were cooking with lard in stead of the much healthier olive oil they had used in Italy. They ate high fat meat and too much sugar. 41% of their calories were from fat! They smoked heavily and struggled with obesity. They were not prone to exercise either. Next they studied their genetics to see if there was a connection. Other people from the same region of Italy did not share the remarkable good health. They studied the region of Pennsylvania to see if there was something environmentally that would influence such outcomes. “Wolf combed through two (local) towns’ medical records. For men over sixty-five, the death rates from heart disease in Nazareth and Bangor were three times that of Roseto. Another dead end.” (p. 9)

 

“What Wolf began to realize is that the secret of Roseto wasn’t diet or exercise or genes or location. It had to be Roseto itself. As Bruhn and Wolf walked around the town, they figured out why. They looked at how the Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. They learned about the extended family clans that underlay the town’s social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof, and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to mass at our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted twenty-two separate civic organizations in a town of just under two thousand people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy form flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.” (p. 9)

 

“’I remember going to Roseto for the first time, and you’d see three-generational family meals, all the bakeries, the people walking up and down the street, sitting on their porches talking to each other, the blouse mills where the women worked during the day, while the men worked in the slate quarries,’ Bruhn said. ‘It was magical’”. (p. 10)

 

“When Bruhn and Wolf first presented their findings to the medical community, you can imagine the kind of skepticism they faced. They went to conferences where their peers were presenting long rows of data arrayed in complex charts and referring to this kind of gene or that kind of physiological process, and they themselves were talking instead about the mysterious and magical benefits of people stopping to talk to one another on the street and of having three generations under one roof. Living a long life, the conventional wisdom at the time said, depended to a great extent on who we were—that is, our genes. It depended on the decisions we made—on what we chose to eat, and how much we chose to exercise, and how effectively we were treated by the medical system. No one was used to thinking about health in terms of community.

 

“Wolf and Bruhn had to convince the medical establishment to think about health and heart attacks in an entirely new way: they had to get them to realize that they wouldn’t be able to understand why someone was healthy if all they did was think about an individual’s personal choices or actions in isolation. They had to look beyond the individual. They had to understand the culture he or she was a part of, and who their friends and families were, and what town their families came from. They had to appreciate the idea that the values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.” (pp. 10-11)

 

People are the solution to the problems that confront us.Technology is not the solution, although it can help. We are the solution -- we as generous, open-hearted people who want to use our creativity and caring on behalf of other human beings and all life.

Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals who can go it alone.

We humans want to be together. We only isolate ourselves when we're hurt by others, but alone is not our natural state. Today, we live in an unnatural state -- separating ourselves rather than being together.

We become hopeful when somebody tells the truth. I don't know why this is, but I experience it often.

Truly connecting with another human gives us joy. The circumstances that create this connection don't matter. Even those who work side by side in the worst natural disaster or crisis recall that experience as memorable. They are surprised to feel joy in the midst of tragedy, but they always do.

We have to slow down. Nothing will change for the better until we do. We need time to think, to learn, to get to know each other. We are losing these great human capacities in the speed-up of modern life, and it is killing us.

The cure for despair is not hope. It is discovering what we want to do about something we care about.

 

Margaret Wheatley (2002)

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.