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At the University of the South there was once a legendary sports trainer who served the school’s football team for over forty years.  At his retirement he was asked what he considered to be the team’s best season.  “The team’s best season,” he replied, “is the one coming up.” 

During the years of raising our children I would often seek my mother’s wise counsel when difficult parenting issues arose regarding one or the other of our two sons.  After listening to me for a while she would always tell me the same thing.  “Ah, he’s going to turn out fine.  He’s a good boy.”  She was right, of course; for today they are both fine responsible men with families of their own.  But how did she know? 

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” retells the biblical story about Joseph who because of the favoritism shown to him by their father was betrayed by his jealous brothers, only to rise up and become a powerful figure in the Egyptian kingdom who would one day rescue those same brothers from starvation.  The brothers, as you can imagine, later feared retribution from their deceived younger brother, except he said this to them:  “Don’t be afraid. . . .You meant to harm me, but God intended it for good.” 

The legendary sports trainer was not necessarily predicting a winning season when he said “the team’s best season is the one coming up”.  Nor was my mother’s remark, “ah, he’s going to turn out fine” meant to condone our children’s misbehavior or our parenting mistakes.  Rather, both recognized, as Joseph did, that “God intended it for good” – that God can make good of anything; for indeed God does make good of EVERYTHING.  God is good, as they say, all the time.    

For that reason I’m certain that your best season ever is “the one coming up.”  How do I know that?  Because God intends it for good.  My prayer for you is, may it be so.

Abundant Living will return January 3, 2011.  Merry Christmas, and blessings to all!!

Beautiful faces are they that wear
The light of a pleasant spirit there;
Beautiful hands are they that do
Deeds that are noble, good and true;
Beautiful feet are they that go
Swiftly to lighten another’s woe.
– from McGuffey’s Second Reader

Oswald Chambers once wrote, “No man is virtuous because he cannot help it; virtue is acquired.” To understand what Chambers is saying all one has to do is observe a tiny baby. Babies are born into the world completely helpless and totally dependent on someone else for their every need, and because of that – in spite of how much we may love and adore them, especially our own – they begin their little lives as the most self-centered beings on the face of the earth. That is their first instinct; everything from there must be acquired.

As grandparents of two two-and-a-half year old little girls we have front row seats from which to watch this very drama being played out; for with the exception of potty-training everything their parents have been teaching them since they began to emerge from infancy involves undoing the idea that they are the center of the universe. (Of course to us they ARE the center of the universe which is why grandparents are allowed only bit parts in the play.) In other words, a child’s education from toddler to adulthood is about interacting in a world of fellow human beings. It is about learning good behavior and concern for others.

“Moral education – the training of heart and mind toward the good – involves many things,” William Bennett reminds us in his book, The Book of Virtues. “For children to take morality seriously they must be in the presence of adults who take morality seriously.” As we discussed last week, “mankind should be our business”, and that includes teaching our children the business of mankind, for “no man is virtuous because he cannot help it; virtue is acquired.”

“You were a good man of business, Jacob Marley . . .” Scrooge exclaimed in a ghostly encounter with his late business partner who had emerged from hell weighed down in chains to warn Scrooge of his own impending fate.  “Mankind should be our business, Ebenezer,” Marley interrupted before Scrooge could finish, “but we seldom attend to it!” 

Considering how in recent times greed was the culprit that toppled many of the major financial institutions around the world costing hundreds of thousands of jobs, the ripple effects of which are still being felt, it would seem that society has learned little since Dickens published his popular novella, A Christmas Carol, back in 1843.  Scrooge types seem to dwell among us today as much as they did then, only nowadays most are powerful executives found inside huge institutions that employ thousands of people – honest, hard-working people with real lives contending with real life issues, much like Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s unappreciated near-impoverished clerk.  And notwithstanding the recent financial collapse some still might say of these executives, “you are a good man of business” when as we all know “mankind should be their business”. 

Fortunately, though, and of much greater significance are those living among us in our neighborhoods and communities whose business is mankind, unsung heroes like the ER nurse and her husband I read about recently who after caring for a young man injured in an automobile accident, a total stranger, took it upon themselves to drive him hundreds of miles so he could be with his family for the holidays.  There are countless others who responded to 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti, and many lesser known crises – all people whose business is mankind. 

The greedy will always be among us I suppose, the desire for wealth and power being one of the great human frailties.  Some will even be praised as “good men of business.”  But “mankind should be our business”.  It is, after all, the only business that really matters.

How willing are you to ask yourself the BIG questions or to allow someone else to ask you the BIG questions?  What do I mean by BIG questions?  They are the types of questions that force us “to sort through the differences between our real feelings, which are often secret, and our official feelings, those on the record for public display,” as Julia Cameron describes in her book, The Artist’s Way. 

In my executive coaching practice I sometimes do a little exercise with new clients the purpose of which is to help them identify the goals they need to work on during our coaching engagement.  An interesting byproduct of this exercise is that inevitably the BIG questions will emerge – inevitably I say because so far it has never failed to occur.  And how do I know when it is a BIG question?  I know when the client sighs sheepishly and admits something like, “If I don’t take care of this one the others don’t matter.”  The others, you see, are the official goals, the ones comfortable to be on the record for public display.  But it’s the BIG question that identifies the real goal, the real issue. 

Remember last week when I told the story about the business owner who asked when I thought the economy would turn around?  Afterwards I wish I had responded instead by asking her what she is doing to turn HER economy around, how she is keeping her own business afloat.  Hers is an example of the official question, the one on the record for public display.  It’s no secret, everybody’s asking that one.  The BIG question, though, is the one I wish I had responded with, the real one that neither she nor I had the courage to ask. 

Official questions are not unimportant.  Asking when the economy is going to turn around is not a trivial matter.  Neither are the official goals unimportant that clients identify in the exercise I put them through.  But real solutions and real success result only when we have the courage to ask the real questions, the BIG questions. 

 What are the BIG questions you need to be asking?

A business owner asked me the other day when I thought the economy would turn around, as if I have some insights she doesn’t.  I simply shrugged my shoulders in response indicating that I have no idea, which I don’t.  Afterwards I wish I had responded instead by asking her what she is doing to turn HER economy around, how she is keeping HER own business afloat.  What innovative ideas has she experimented with?  What unique opportunities has she identified in her market niche?  How has she encouraged and inspired her staff and employees to offer up ideas and try new things? 

If you are waiting for the tide to rise to get your boat out of the mud, I wanted to say, you may be stuck there a while, just how long that will be no one can predict.  And when the tide does rise again you may discover that the entire landscape has changed, changed by the inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs too busy experimenting and developing new products, services, and markets to be concerned or inhibited by the state of the economy.  While you are waiting for the tide to rise, I should have warned, they are digging new channels so that when it does rise again the water will flow toward them instead of you.  

When the business owner asked me when I thought the economy would turn around she seemed to think I might have some insights, which I don’t.  What I do know, however, is that the economy never just miraculously turns around by some force of nature like the sun coming out after a thunderstorm.  Rather, unlike the weather the economy is manmade, a collection of human endeavors, and it is through the collective efforts of human ingenuity that it will eventually turn around.  Indeed it is the only thing that ever does. 

So, the critical question is, what is the business owner doing to turn HER economy around?  What are you doing to turn YOUR economy around?  And what am I doing to turn MY economy around?  When each of us focus our efforts on the solution to that question, that’s when the tide will rise again.