Your “spirituality” is not measured by how much you (or I) read the Holy Scriptures, sing hymns, pray, clap your hands, run around a sanctuary with a purple flag, dance to contemporary religious music or reject those who do.
It’s not determined by how much you visit your place of worship or how much money you donate to its causes.
It’s not affirmed by your title (if you have one) or the ornate design of your robe (if you wear one) or the position you hold in the hierarchy of your faith tradition (if you’re part of one).
But, it is affirmed by your willingness to take responsibility for your life, your choices, and the good use of your skills and talents.
A biopsy of the validity and integrity of our faith and spirituality is revealed in how we treat people, especially loved-ones and strangers; how we love our enemies, offer hospitality, respect, regard, love those who reject our beliefs.
Do you clean up after yourself? Are you wisely generous to a fault? Do you love those who are different from you, whose lives might be in direct conflict with what you believe? Do you love others by listening?
If you take full responsibility for yourself, become extraordinarily generous with what you have, embrace diversity, and love others by listening, you will fast-forward your “spiritual” growth. Actually, you will put it on supercharge.
It’s not your title, the reach of your authority, or the crowds who respect and adore you. Rather, it’s how you respect and love and respond to those who don’t.
Lead yourself, first. Lead yourself, only. Everything else will fall into place and grow.
Regard leadership for what it is. It is a function, something the leader does. Know what it is not: a place of power or status. The “leader” who seeks power or status will take himself/herself and the organization (church, hospital, school, political party, soccer team) nowhere worth going.
Authentic Leaders develop leaders without even trying. The authenticity is so novel and attractive others find it compelling and will naturally want to follow and learn.
Authentic Leaders give away, delegate, spread opportunities so others may grow without fear of being outdone by those to whom they delegate.
Authentic Leaders have a set of pre-decided principles and values that are in place before they are needed.
Authentic Leaders are constantly engaged in doing their homework and self work and family work because they know all sectors and compartments of life spin off and influence and drive each other. A leader can fake it for only so long until the parts of his or her life that are “out of integrity” will come crashing and cashing in.
Authentic Leaders are focussed on strength and freedom, not on anxiety and weaknesses (of self and others).
Authentic Leaders select their emotions, choose their responses, and are in charge of their reactions. Those who are not are a danger to themselves, their families, and to the organizations which they claim to lead.
“I am in my early thirties and my parents’ only child from my biological mom and dad. My dad left my mom and fathered three sons with three women. Those boys are 25, 21, and 18. My mom has three sons, now 24, 22, and 16, by two men. The first two are from the same dad (not my dad). I am a ‘big’ sister to six brothers. I live away but I go ‘home’ to my mom and dad and I know all the boys. They all live near each other but are not as familiar with the brothers from ‘another mother and father.’ I feel responsible for my brothers. How can I be a good sister in such a complicated set-up?”
Your question reveals the beautiful truth of invisible loyalties. Loyalties run deep in families and can escape reason. You can be a great “big” sister by being responsible to your brothers, not for them. They are indeed not your responsibility but you probably can build unique sets of relationships with each of them. A text and a call here and there. Birthday cards. Inexpensive gifts. Reach out to them not as a group but as individuals. Seek friendship at their pace. These efforts they will treasure and remember.
I think my disdain for the sheer evil was discerned early on in my military basics when a breath-reeking dirty-mouthed two-striper screamed into my face from such proximity that I could smell and see his back teeth.
Mixing Afrikaans and English he proclaimed with anger that by the time he was finished and done, “finished and klaar,” with me, me specifically, I would be a real soldier, an “ordentlike soldaat.”
He said I would be able to march, not walk, march, in those shiny boots right over my mother’s dead body and feel nothing, nothing at all.
I gathered my thoughts.
He waited.
He expected the routine.
He waited for me to jump to attention and scream, “Ja, Bombardier. Bombardier is always correct, Bombardier,” in Afrikaans.
This response was expected, an individual response when addressed as an individual, or blurted in unison if addressed as a group. There were times it reminded me or 7-year-olds singing their times tables for a teacher.
“Do you know that you are stupid, and you are for nothing good?” would be said to all of us.
“Ja, Bombardier. You are correct, Bombardier. Bombardier is always correct, Bombardier,” we had to reply but in Afrikaans.
Agreement was essential no matter what insults were hurled.
This particular insult, that we were for nothing good, I found amusing. The “for nothing good” is a direct translation from Afrikaans and the bombardier would have had no idea how stupid he sounded in his desire to parade comfort in both official languages.
This time was different.
This was no routine insult.
He was screaming at me about my Mother, a woman he did not know, a woman about whom he knew nothing.
He was addressing me, a man he did not know.
A man about whom he knew nothing.
A man he had spent no time trying to know.
He was shouting so all could hear and be impressed by his evil aspirations with words tailored for me.
I waited.
I did not jump to attention and scream “Ja, Bombardier. Bombardier is always correct, Bombardier.”
I did come to attention and yelled, “Bombardier!”
Then, rather quietly, having now gained his full attention, I told the depraved man, in my faulty Afrikaans, as faulty as his English, that despite all of his efforts, I would indeed never, not ever, not in a thousand years, would I be that soldier.
I talked quietly and I was clear.
The bombardier appeared taken aback that I would dare reply with an unanticipated response.
He backed off.
In his retreat he did not send me or the whole squad running to the fence or make all of us do 30 push-ups. He moved away, stepping backwards, losing eye contact for brief seconds as his eyes darted seeking back-up from fellow bombardiers.
I did not drop my gaze.
I gave him all the eye-contact he ever could want.
Somehow, waiting to reply had knocked him off balance, stopped him in his tracks.
His peers made no moves of support.
He was alone in this and he knew it.
Perhaps it made him think of his mother but I will never know.
A violation had occurred and I refused to cooperate with pure evil.
He kept his distance.
He limited his involvement with our particular squad and seemed to forever regard me with suspicion mixed with a dose of fear and healthy respect.
That’s all I wanted; a lot of respect for my Mother and a little respect for me.
And, I wanted not to be that soldier.
Not ever.
So, I told him.
I wanted him to know I would never be that soldier.
When people discover I was “in the army” they usually express disbelief.
I’m perfectly fine with it.
If a war-story is told or I am asked directly about military service in the SADF my default reply is that I was a terrible soldier.
It is true.
I was.
Even visualizing myself as a soldier is a stretch.
But, I was one, really.
I was conscripted into the South African Defense Force like all white South African boys my age.
There is a lot more to my year in the army which I usually reduce to “terrible soldier” but I do avoid when-I-was-in-the-army stories.
I will not pretend it was a good season for me.
Real war stories told by real soldiers and sailors who fought in brutal wars can be tiresome and there is already enough that is tiresome, told, and retold, and exaggerated, without my adding my two bits.
On the occasion I seek reminding about the horrors of war and the evils of which we humans are capable, I open Wilfred Owen’s 1920 poem, Dulce et Decorum est and I’m satisfied.
Fully.
Owen warns against the glorification war and I never came close to one.
Like Owen, I too have seen human evil, thankfully not to the degree he recounts, but I do know it requires no uniform.
I’d rather leave war stories to war heroes and those who are able to hold an audience.
My dad was a war hero.
For him it was frighteningly close.
Extraordinarily personal.
How much closer, more personal can it be than knowing your two best friends (my brother has their names) were killed in an upper-deck explosion while you scrambled off the side of a kamikaze-wounded destroyer into the Indian Ocean in the hopes of finding safety as your ship disappeared from beneath you within 8 minutes?
Able Seaman 67799 EWG Smith was 19 years and 4 months old when he took to the water searching for life and safety.
There is nothing like a good listener for feeding the soul.
A good listener determines there will be no distractions — no phones, text checking, no dings or app notifications or glances to see the time — and will offer complete and uninterrupted and undiluted attention to the speaker.
A good listener listens, says very very little except may offer occasional brief words of encouragement like “tell me more” or “go back to the beginning if you want” or “go into as much detail as you think will be helpful” or “could you tell me that again so it’s clearer for me.”
The good listener knows listening and any attempts at multitasking — even the most subtle — distract the speaker and obliterate listening. A good listener gets all the potential impediments to listening out of the way before sitting down to listen.
The good listener knows a listener’s inner-noise —- things the listener is refusing to hear or address from within — will emerge and sabotage attempts at hearing others and so addresses unresolved personal matters as much as possible so others may encounter a clear-headed listener.
The good listener does not formulate replies or develop counterpoints while listening and does not one-up the speaker with the listener’s own experiences whether they may appear to the listener to be helpful or not.
A good listener sees, hears, knows, acknowledges the speaker by listening — the most powerful and tangible expression of love.
I devised a list of how to participate in the healing of men and women who have been hurt:
Be willing to listen, even if what is being said is what you’d prefer to not hear. Try not to re-engineer (re-frame, recast) what you have heard so it is more fitting with what you’d really like to hear.
Resist understandable attempts to short-circuit growth by trying to ease necessary pain, by offering false affirmations, and by accepting empty excuses for irresponsible behavior. Pain is a very good motivator for change. Resist the urge to remove it when it appears to be helpful.
Offer your presence, not your answers. “I am with you” is more helpful than “let me help you fix it.”
Welcome silence. There are ways to communicate that do not include words. Resist the understandable urge to chase healing and learning away with the incessant use of words and stories.
Avoid minimizing (“it’s not so bad!”) or rationalizing (“What else did you expect?”) or normalizing (“Anyone would have done that!”) the issues that resulted in pain. Do not rob necessary pain of its usefulness.
Promote “future thinking.” Ask questions focused on future wellness and success.
Try to avoid searching for the genesis (the cause) of what has led to pain. Where something comes from is not nearly as important living your way out of it.
Most USA schools are back in full swing…… at least around here they are:
Hats off……
Hats off to teachers and coaches who love the world and its peoples and whose zeal for both results in empoweing students of all ages.
Hats off to teachers and coaches who love their subjects and sports and whose passion for their work opens vast vistas of opportunities for their students.
Hats off to teachers and coaches who are as tough as nails over matters of integrity but are easy sells when it comes to listening and attempting to understand students and their home-lives, peer, and social struggles.
Hats off to teachers and coaches who know their students well enough to be able to anticipate and address problems before unnecessary escalation.
Hats off to school administrators who have the courage to support teachers and coaches in the face of often difficult parents and who have the courage to listen to all parties before they act.
Hats off to school administrators who aspire to serve rather than be served, who understand the power of humility, and who see their essential role as empowering coaches and teachers and students to get the very best from each other.
Hats off to parents of students who seek to respect and learn from their children’s school teachers and coaches and administrators rather than demand rights or seek to chastise or correct.
Hats off to Librarians, Musicians, Counselors, School Security Teams….. and all who work daily to keep our students motivated, kind, and safe.
Andrea Neal, Jay Sherrill and so many others who regarded Thulani and Nate as their own.
Israelite-Nathanael gets an invitation to meet Nazarene-Jesus and responds rather snarkily:
Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
This exchange, recorded early in the Gospel of John, intrigues me and, as a result, I’ve always loved the person and name Nathanael.
He questioned, appeared playful and unintimidated.
On meeting, Jesus greets Nathanael by name, interprets his name, tells Nathanael He had seen him before Nathanael was aware of being seen by Jesus.
In modern parlance Jesus saw through the Israelite, welcomed everything about him, called him into a life-changing journey and Nathanael readily responded
Nothing takes the Son of Man by surprise: Jesus saw Nathanael coming and New Testament Nate more than met his match.
Jesus saw my Indianapolis-born son coming, too.
I didn’t. I had to decide blind.
Privacy laws permitted limited information – African American Male, Date of Birth, Full Term – was all I could know.
Pondering names for my son, whom I was yet to meet, the no guile or nothing false in Jesus’ description of Israelite-Nathanael wrapped it up for me.
Enroute from the courthouse to the hospital, custody papers in hand, with a stop at the K-Mart on Lafayette Road to pick up a few baby-essentials, I named a baby and formed a living link with a favorite character from the New Testament.
“Thula, Thula” I’d sing, following the maid around the house as she sang the prayerful lullabye. I could be on her back, tied with a blanket, listening to the Thula Thula song. The song was about a child urged not cry because the father will soon return from work on the gold mine. The song soothed and reached deeply into me, especially while tied to a maid’s back. There was not safer realm. Theres was no place warmer or more comfortable.
At 10 or 11 years old I learned from teenage boys and men named Thulani who came regularly into our dad’s tea-room the name means peace and stillness, to be quiet and comforted.
Temba means hope.
It is the name my adult Zulu friends called me once I reached adulthood and tried to unlearn so many things of childhood.
Although no one said it or taught it, I learned not to reveal excessive interest in the lives of the young men who came daily to the shop but rather to proffer indifference. I knew I was not to walk to the street corner too often in the evenings where they played lively music on guitars, hand made from wood attached to emptied cooking oil containers. No-one had to tell me of the barriers that came with my whiteness. I knew I was not to enjoy watching the young men dance and smoke the loose cigarettes – purchased from me at the tea-room, 2 cents each for unfiltered Lexingtons and 3 cents for filters – and laugh and rough-house bare foot on white suburban corners. The kitchen-boys’ or garden boys’ uniforms, white coarse red or blue trim v-neck shirts marked them legitimate workers in white suburbs even until late at night or at least until dad’s shop closed at 9.
They’d drift off to a concrete block room at the farthest corner of the yard of the property where they worked. The young men washed their master’s car and weeded the master’s yard, helped The Girl in the kitchen. I learned, although no one taught it or said it, to hide my interest. I wanted to join in and enjoy the lively music and playful antics and raucous laughter and the loud conversations which I could not understand.
But, I learned, although no one said it, to turn my desire to belong into a supervisory stance or glare which carried censure of the noise made by African young men in our white neighborhood where they were fortunate we allowed such antics.
Thulani and Temba were embedded into me by women who were our maids and who most certainly but unknowingly provided complete comfort, peace, solace for the living load tightly strapped to her body, riding her back and, everything I ever wanted for my infant son was provided unintentionally for me some 40-something years earlier when they sang his name.
“Choose something easier. Something American,” said a friend, “no one will remember it.”
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