A tribute to lightning rods and other heroes

Someone told me once you catch a lot of heat – you know, you don’t always have to be a lightning rod.

Yet somehow I do. Simply by being me it happens.

Understanding this – though not necessarily changing it – is ongoing work. Why the need? What purpose does it serve for me? What’s the current lesson? What, if anything, would I change in looking back? Did the most recent electrical shock serve some Good in the world? I sure hope so!

The details are too boring for a lot of attention, but it comes down to this: 1) being ‘real’ is absolutely necessary for me; and 2) dishonesty pisses me off. It’s not such a pretty self portrait, but it’s certainly true. I can be that way.

Most importantly, I believe with all my being that 3) all people are of equal value as children of God. To see undeniable and un-defendable injustice shakes my very core, and no amount of rebar can calm my foundation if someone is truly hurting. My earth quakes.

Having said that, it is also true I am not usually reactionary. Trust me – I have come to understand the difference between petty disagreement and a worthy fight. I know how to pick my battles.

I also believe at the cellular level that 4) the Good always wins in the end. And I sometimes find myself playing my perceived “called” role to usher along a just outcome, when it really matters.

Finally, I believe that 5) how we choose to battle any evil, the means, is as important as the end. I like the high road. I am, however, far from perfect.

A friend sometimes accuses me of playing God, but I have come to believe I am simply being who I am intended and shaped to be. If nothing else, it is an effectively self-righteous girl-scout defense. Frankly, it works.

That’s enough about me.

~~~

Let’s move on to some facts…

Lightning strikes somewhere in the world some 1.4 billion times each year.
A person’s chances of being struck by lightning are 1 in 500,000. The exception is a national park ranger who has felt the blow a dozen times. (I hope he isn’t self insured.)
There are many different types of lightning. Here is a sampling in alpha order:
- Ball lightning
- Cloud-to-cloud lightning [sheet and heat]
- Cloud-to-ground lightning [bead, ribbon, staccato and forked]
- Dry lightning
- Extraterrestrial lightning [!]
- Positive lightning
- Rocket lightning
- Triggered lightning [rocket-, volcano- and laser-]
- Upper-atmospheric lightning [sprites, blue jets and elves]
What is true for every type of lightning, every strike, is the cause: a discharge of energy, generally occurring as energy builds and then changes form.
Some lightning strikes change the character of the soil they hit. In sandy soil, these are called fulgurites, or petrified lightning. The heat actually fuses the sand grains into a root-shaped expression of the discharge of energy – a visual history of the strike. They are often found on beaches.

Much more can be said, and I am by my own admission not the person to offer scientific insight. What speaks to me most personally, however, is a wiki-fact I found last week: lightning is caused by the transfer of energy.

True to the principle that matter is neither created nor destroyed but simply changes form, the transfer of energy strikes me (pun intended) as a natural phenomenon.

Let me dumb it down for my own benefit. There’s some energy. It builds and builds…until the energy nearly exceeds the atmosphere’s ability to contain it. Complicating factors include positive and negative charges. And then it reaches the tipping point, and BOOM! – a flash of light, the transfer of heat and the ripple effect of sound waves into the atmosphere.

We have all had the experience.

~~~

And now some systems theory…

They say social systems – our families, faith communities and workplaces – hang like mobiles.

For the sake of having a shared visual, let’s say our mobile is a pastel array of happy animals hanging over a baby’s crib.

You’ve seen it. The lion, baby elephant, zebra, hyena and giraffe live out each day in padded interconnectedness. Individuals tied to a common string, they are a unit, a social system.

There are a few principles of systems theory:

The pieces are necessarily interconnected.
Systems naturally seek homeostasis, and the entire group must work together to find a new way to hang in balance when it is stirred.
Moving one piece shakes up everything.
FAIR WARNING: no one likes a change agent!

~~~

Let’s put these principles into action…

For the sake of plot, let’s take the characters off the mobile and put them in the workplace: Ascetic African Antiques, in Savanna. It’s a simple, decent business.

Each character has its place at AAA. And, boy, are they characters!

Lion, naturally, is in charge. He da man. A natural saleslion, he greets customers and works the cash register. During lulls, he combs his mane and sharpens his claws, daydreaming about his profit margin. Because appearances are important, Lion is very well groomed.

His ombudsman and crummy little toady is Hyena. This cat, as it were, sneaks around in dark shadows keeping track of who spills feed on the lunch room floor and timing employee breaks. His job: AR, or animal resources.

The remaining three are the workers, the people one might say. Baby Elephant and Giraffe work the stock room in back. They are a team. Together they handle shipping and receiving as well as restocking and general cleaning on the sales floor. One short and the other tall, one agile and the other solid, they balance their skills to make things work.

Because of biology, Zebra is the natural fit to run the delivery wagon. Each day he hitches himself to his cart and makes the rounds hauling goods to lucky customers who have enough Savanna cash to pay for in-home transport.

Things are fine at AAA, so long as the characters stay in their respective roles.

One day, however, things change. (You knew this was coming.)

Lion expects some potential investors, and he’s eager to impress. Interested in sprucing up the place, he heads to the closest big watering hole for some purchases that will make the place less, well, ascetic. Lion leaves Hyena in charge.

Wouldn’t you know Hyena has been waiting for this opportunity for some time. He settles in at the cash register, snickering at the new-found power. He’s a laughing hyena, after all.

No longer confined to observing staff from dark shadows, keeping secretive logs of misdeeds and missteps, Hyena puts his AR work aside. Hyena da new man, and he’s eager to enact some change.

First on his agenda is the stocking team. The use of two animals for the same job has never made sense to him. Focus will help. Giraffe is kept at the front of the store. Her graceful good looks will help customers feel comfortable, at ease.

Baby Elephant, on the other hand, is relegated to the store room. She’s slow, intentional and frankly, a little heavy, not delicate enough for sales. Her looks really are the elephant in the living room, her value and place just so obvious.

The final change is minor. Anticipating a spike in sales from the lovely new salesgiraffe, Hyena hires a part-time driver to help Zebra with deliveries. That’s right, Zebra now shares a cart with some jackass from South Savanna.

The first day goes pretty smoothly. The biggest problem at AAA is Hyena’s laughing tic. Big cats walk through the front door, and his instinct is to laugh and laugh and laugh. Being a former AR guy, he knows how to keep it in check. Things move along.

By day 3, Giraffe is lonely. Baby Elephant was her partner for years. Their prescribed roles worked. Baby Elephant nudged large pieces of furniture and lifted heavy items with her trunk. Giraffe saw things from a birds-eye view. Her gift of insight allowed them to find solutions to space-efficiency problems. It also didn’t hurt that Giraffe could dust up high.

But no longer. Things are different. They call it progress.

In back, Baby Elephant suffers most of all. There is not a window in the place. Her days are spent pushing things to and fro, never making much headway.

At the loading dock, Zebra and Jackass share awkward silence. Sales are down, and there’s not enough work for one, much less two delivery animals.

On day 6, the investors arrive. Lion has not yet returned. The guests enter AAA to find it true to its name, ascetic. Hyena is sleeping at the counter. He is a sleep laugher – laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing.

A weary, depressed Giraffe has wandered to the back. She knows Hyena will doze for some time, and Baby Elephant needs her help. A team to the end, the two fall into their natural roles. Giraffe scopes things out from her lofty perspective and gives suggestions to her partner. They negotiate lifting and moving and soon have their stock in tip-top shape.

Up front, the investors are livid. There is no Lion. The fill-in manager is laughing at them. And there’s no help to be found. They leave an angry note for Lion and head back up to North Savanna. No partnership, no investment, no money, no deal. No sir!

This, of course, is purely hypothetical.

~~~

Wouldn’t you know Lion needs someone to blame for this. His choices are:

a) Blame himself for negligent management for leaving Hyena in charge; after all, he knows better: “You know how that guy is!”

b) Blame Hyena for stepping into Lion’s role, going beyond his delegated duty at the cash register; but this won’t work, either; Hyena has had Lion’s back many times before.

So Lion does the only thing that makes any sense at all to him – he blames GIRAFFE. That’s right – the damned Giraffe.

Who does she think she is, defying the order of her fill-in manager and working as a team player? If she had been up front where she belonged when the investors arrived, none of this would have happened. She’s just like that – always sticking her long neck out to help someone. She’s the one people go to naturally, and for that reason, simply by being who she is, she has cost AAA, and dearly.

Such is the way of systems. Giraffe is now the most feared of all Savanna creatures: the scapegoat.

~~~

Let’s review the basic principles of systems…

The pieces are necessarily interconnected.
Systems naturally seek homeostasis, and the entire group must work together to find a new way to hang in balance when it is stirred.
Moving one piece shakes up everything.
FAIR WARNING: no one likes a change agent!

In this case Giraffe was not the actual change agent at all, but that’s a detail for later.

~~~

Here’s a review of where we are:

– Systems are the who, what and where – the plot and character development of life.

– Lightning is the how – the way in which energy is transferred among members of the system as one little change begets another change, and another, and…BOOM! (That was Giraffe getting hers.)

Now let’s move on to those lightning rods…

My introductory sentence set up lightning rods as naturally negative in the minds of many. They are things that attract negative attention; they get burned.

Our friends as Wikipedia helped me reframe this notion.

It seems lightning rods are but a subset of a larger category of tools – lightning protection systems, or LPS. That’s right, there’s a whole industry focused on lightning protection, complete with self-important acronyms. Some of these systems act as buffers while others attract. Some channel, and some prevent. The science of LPS is complicated. Each type is required for a specific situation, at a specific point in time.

~~~

Remember the statistics on lightning – more than 1.4 billion strikes each year. Of these, only a few are noteworthy, newsworthy. They start fires and ground airplanes.

The vast majority of lightning strikes, nearly all, are every-day occurrences. They are nothing special, just pent-up energy doing its thing – often transforming matter from one time and place into more meaningful or appropriate matter. They are portals to new ways of being.

Likewise, most lightning rods and other LPS are everyday folks.

~~~

Some LPS are chosen for elevation, called for their roles and hailed across the globe. Here are a few you know…

In the world of American Civil Rights there is a man with a dream and a little girl who simply got dressed and went to school. There is a woman who sat down and would not be moved. This store clerk just got tired, and it stirred in her activist soul a voice that said, “No, not today.” Four little girls went to church and didn’t make any choice at all. Instead their choices were stolen forever by bullies in a fated act of cowardly hate.

Their stories are legend. We honor them, and rightly so.

Across the world there are more, including a student who stared down a tank, and a repressive government. There’s the humble man who inspired the man with the dream.

These people took a great deal of heat. They shifted entire social structures, lifting undue burdens on some and placing justice and civic responsibility on others.

None of them intended to become a target or to step into the spotlight. It happened by virtue of their values and choices. Each proves the life-changing power of simply getting out of bed and deciding in the moment, as called, to do something different, to do what’s right.

By doing so, they shook up their entire social structures, their mobiles.

As a result of these collective actions, over time, the whole world changed. None set out to attract a lot of negative energy, or attention.

Any one of the incidents individually might have had much less impact. As a group, however, each in its right time, BOOM!

~~~

I adore regular ‘ol people [in any income bracket], the Giraffes and Baby Elephants of the world. Here are some less known but no less powerful energy transfers, sparked by lightning protection systems I am proud to know…

BEING CHANGE

Time was a person walked what he believed. Less talk, more action. In 1942, a couple set out to demonstrate their values. With friends they bought a farm and went to work living their beliefs. That’s it! The rest is history.

Action

I often cite this radically unassuming act. I’m fairly sure my retrospective interpretation is wrong. To honor truth, I will quote source on this one.

“Koinonia is an intentional Christian community founded by two couples, Clarence and Florence Jordan and Martin and Mabel England, in 1942 as a ‘demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God.’ For them, this meant a community of believers sharing life and following the example of the first Christian communities as described in the Acts of the Apostles, even amidst the poverty and racism of the rural South.

Clarence Jordan held an undergraduate degree in agriculture from the University of Georgia and wanted to use his knowledge of scientific farming ‘to seek to conserve the soil, God’s holy earth’ and to help the poor: most of Koinonia’s neighbors were black sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Jordan and England were ordained ministers and professors (Jordan held a doctorate in New Testament Greek) and part of their vision was to offer training to African American ministers living in the area. For the first few years or so of the Koinonia experiment, Jordan, in particular, was welcomed to preach and teach in local churches. Though the demands of farming in those early years did not allow time for formal training of others, he used these visits to both black and white churches to offer guidance. They envisioned an interracial community where blacks and whites could live and work together in a spirit of partnership.

Based on this radical call to discipleship, Koinonia’s very presence confronted racism, militarism and materialism with its commitment to:

Treat all human beings with dignity and justice.
Choose love over violence.
Share all possessions and live simply.
Be stewards of the land and its natural resources.

Soon other families joined them, and visitors came to ‘serve a period of apprenticeship in developing community life on the teachings and principles of Jesus.’ The community grew and friendships formed as the Koinonians, their visitors, and their neighbors farmed together, ate meals, attended Bible studies and held summer youth camps. From the beginning, the community emphasized equality and fellowship among all. When resources allowed the hiring of seasonal help, black and white workers were paid equally. When the community and its guests, neighbors and friends gathered for a meal, everyone was invited to sit at the table to regardless of color.

Koinonia’s Struggle during the Civil Rights Movement

These efforts to live the gospel were a break with the prevailing culture of the time and were fiercely challenged by many citizens of Sumter County, many of whom attempted to destroy the farm and scare off its residents. As a way to survive in hostile surroundings, Koinonians began shipping Georgia pecans and peanuts around the world by mail order. The business evolved to include treats made in the farm’s own bakery—the mail order (and online store) business which still generates a large part of the farm’s revenue today.

Through the 1950s and early 60s, Koinonia remained a witness to nonviolence and racial equality as its members withstood firebombs, bullets, KKK rallies, death threats, property damage, excommunication from churches, and economic boycotts. Koinonia and its members suffered greatly. But Koinonia survived.”

[www.koinoniapartners.org]

Impact

I will surprise none who know me in stepping out there to say Koinonia did not survive, it thrived. It is a modest example of the infinite momentum of goodness, the so-called “ripple effect.” The Good it begat will literally never end.

Quantitative measures are useful. Nearly 200 homes were built just down the road. Others were repaired. This project of Koinonia is but one outreach to Sumter County, GA across nearly 70 years.

The first ripple out from rock in the pond is the founding of Habitat for Humanity International. You know I have a lot to say about this one. I will refrain except to offer these statistics, as of June 2011:

– More than 400,000 homes have been built worldwide.

– More than 2 million people live in safe, beautiful, affordable homes.

– Untold numbers of volunteers and other contributors have been involved.

And the hell of all the math is this: the real benefit is not about numbers at all. That’s right, I said it; the facts ain’t all that.

Everyone gives, and everyone receives in this modern-day demonstration plot of the equality and innate value and dignity of each and every human being, without regard to any external or societal marker. It is the Great Equalizer. All are one; all are equal. And each of the people who has been impacted in any way shares this transforming love with their friends, and so on, and so on, and so on. (It’s like the old shampoo commercial if you’re of [at least] a certain age.)

Goodness infinitum. (Thank you, Koinonia!)

+++

RECONCILIATION, GROUNDING, SPARK

This is a very short story in three parts. The premise is that organizations, like people, have developmental lives. Secondly, like people, agencies and their leaders are imperfect. It is universal and inevitable. One such institution had some trouble.

Action

Some good people were hurt. They sought reconciliation, conversation in Truth. Justice with mercy. The jolts kept coming. It wasn’t yet time.
The agency conscience, a gentle and wise guy (double entendre intended) served faithfully as a grounding device. He answered a call as buffer that led to an early death. Once again, it wasn’t time.
Finally, a strong, independent soul was struck. She refused to take on another’s sin, simply saying instead, “No thank you. Not me. Not this time.”

Impact

What the three encounters share is this: each was just right in its own time. Good always wins in the end. The thing is the timing of the win can’t be ours. It is God’s time, kairos, and it is always just right.

Bottom line: organization refined (first by fire, then by love) and then restored.

The other thing our friends across time share: for each of them it was extraordinarily difficult. Not a one of them did any harm. Each was caught in an evil s/he did not create. The first group caught the local spotlight of being first. The last had her name disclosed to the media; people harassed her – for simply being “chosen” and for drawing a clear boundary to protect herself. The buffer died; he lost his life. I will never forget a conversation we had shortly before his death in which he said, “I of all people understand the relationship between thinking and disease.” Being the conscience of an organization is tough. I think a lot about this. I regret not asking some questions. I thank him for this message every day.

One of these LPS posted this just today on Facebook, and I can’t help but include her words. (There are no accidents, you know.)

“Leadership is not magnetic personality – that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people’ – that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” (Peter F. Drucker)

I love an unlikely leader. (Way to be True to you, Spark!)

+++

RELATION AND REVELATION

There’s a tune that proclaims, “You will light a stranger’s life by letting yours unfurl.” No truer words were ever said. This story goes 360 degrees – generosity and good karma in all directions.

Action

Once upon a time there was the nicest nicegirl. She turned lemons to lemonade and started an online journal. To her surprise, people read it. Her new friends offered gifts: openness, youth, connection. One gave a lifetime gift in the form of a simple e-mail. (best*note*ever) It was classic give and take on all parts.

Impact

Classic give and take continues, both online and in life. All are made better, elevated, by a stirring of relationship and revelation across the globe. It stands witness to the benediction by William Sloan Coffin, “[give us grace to remember] that the world today is too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love.” The relationships are love in action in a most personal and unlikely way.

Two songs sum it up: 1) On and On It Goes (Mary Chapin Carpenter), and 2) Echoes (Dar Williams).

It’s not so bad being nice, or known. (I’m grateful!)

+++

THE REVOLUTIONARY

This is Norma Rae. She’s the stuff of movies, the hero we love to love, the underdog. The problem with this model is it so rarely works out for the Good in the short term. But sometimes, just sometimes, justice is known in a person’s lifetime, in exactly the place where she stands. This is not made possible by luck, but through deep and abiding faith.

Action

At the opening credits, we already know the plot. Our heroine is the only noble character. She is wronged, very badly wronged. Usually this happens for some reason that has not a thing to do with value. She has inside information that makes her a threat. She is thought to be expendable, easily discredited.

It looks tough for a while. Heck, it is tough for a while. Her persistence and insistence on fact and truth create an unintentional revolution. Faith abounds. Good wins.

Impact

More a tornado than a single flash of lightning, the momentum and pressure changes that are set in motion clear a wide path of justice. She began the accused and ended the victor. She changed the landscape.

Pulling out a favorite Habitat card, here are some words from Jimmy Carter:

“What does the word reformation imply? Literally to re-form, to change in a way that is dramatic and total, closer to revolution than to evolution…But I know from personal experience that moral and spiritual reformation of a society or of one human heart is not easy to bring about. It often takes both a crisis and the inspiration of another person…to show a society or an individual the need for change and the path that must be followed to achieve it.”

Re-formation indeed. (Thanks for helping me believe in ultimate and penultimate ways!)

+++

STRAIGHT-UP TRUTH

My all-time favorite example is the Truth Teller (T2). The T2 type minces no words. This is the lightning-protection equivalent of the church steeple or the lone cottonwood tree on the prairie. It is a likely target. The Virgo T2 is especially True, therefore especially vulnerable. She is also especially strong.

Action

There’s a community leader in Southwest Central Somewhere. She came home with a Ph.D. and a fire for making things right again in the place where she was raised. In the process of getting things done, things got off track. Someone sold out. Someone seized power. Intent strayed. I don’t understand the nuances, but the final act was certain. This woman looked a Certain University directly in the eye and said her One True Thing: That place ain’t nothing but a damn plantation.

Impact

She was shunned faster than 1-2-3. She got sick. Distance was created in the name of giving her space to recover, only the space was as deep and wide as a canyon. She retreated. She hurt, and healed. Mama Cottonwood took time off for the first time in decades, focusing only on herself. The example she set for her protégés set a tone of self care without guilt that carries forward in her town. In this way she helped her neighbor while limiting her own energy transfer to the outside. It’s karmic.

Mark Twain said, “When in doubt, tell the truth.” (Keep speaking, D!)

~~~

In honor of Mama Cottonwood Tree, here’s a question: what’s so scary about the Straight-Up Truth anyway? It is the most simple, common and responsible way to shake up the mobile in which you hang. It can even be done with compassion and mercy, or with an added sprinkle of justice, of course.

Here are a few realities about truths and lies.

The most dangerous lies are those we tell ourselves.

Denial is a beast, an ugly, green, three-headed demon. Most of us deceive ourselves in small or large ways every single day. When it becomes habit, our default, and when we are not kept in check, The Lie can take over and fool our minds. We believe anything we need to believe. We lose control. Ironically, our attempts to regain control through power and struggle only serve to feed the three-headed beast of self deceit. Round and round we go.

They say the truth hurts. They are correct.

I know someone who says, “Life is a Rorschach.” We project onto the world our own unique values and intentions in everything we think, say and do. Truth serves as a mirror to our deep, inner selves. If we don’t like what we see – our souls – it can be frightening! Someone who can’t sit still to gaze in his own mirror, to look himself in the eye, is someone I choose not to know. Similarly, the act of holding up a mirror to show someone else’s real self is often an act of sharing ‘inconvenient truth’ – the thing we all know is not serving Good in the world, perhaps even hurting people, yet we choose not to resolve it. For this messenger, there is no combat pay great enough to warrant making this hazardous delivery.

Finally, truth forces change.

It is inevitable that calling out a thing for what it really is sets us up to make things different. Change is a bitch. I might have to carry more weight, fulfill my position instead of leaning on my peers. Why, they’re doing such a fine job of my job! Perhaps I carry less weight and allow someone to step up. It works both ways. Maybe I just do something different. That’s all.

I have my own truth I don’t often tell. I like a neat house. But when it isn’t tidy, it’s really bad. Balance eludes me here. [Whew – doing well so far.] I’m the least likely relative to be invited to a family reunion or holiday event. I know about Thanksgiving and Halloween. Christmas and Easter, too. The occasional meal or visit. [Wow – this is really freeing! Now we’re all lighter, less burdened. I don’t know about you, but it’s working for me!] There’s this one relationship we ignore. And a person or two we have scapegoated for the sake of keeping the peace, yours truly included. (This makes us White Sheep – nicegirls to the end.) That’s really about it. I keep it simple.

That wasn’t so hard.

~~~

A slightly different angle of the telling of the truth is more thought on the exposure of a lie. Like our old friend Lion, we often find ourselves focused on the presentation of a pretty picture. Appearances matter, after all. When the surface matters at the expense of substance – or any reality at all – the integrity gap screams for attention. This goes for the lies we tell ourselves as well as those we sometimes weave in desperate attempts to convince the world. Just as Good wins in the end, untruth and Truth are eventually sorted out. Sometimes peeling back the layers is our responsibility. Other times the Universe handles it herself.

In “Inherit the Wind,” playrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee offer the following conversation between two attorneys, Cates and Drummond. The setting is the 1925 Scopes trial in Tennessee. What’s on the line is the the teaching of science, specifically the reach of the law in legislating creationism vs. evolution in the classroom . The deeper message of the play, written in 1950 but not released until 1955, is resonse to the McCarthy-era threat to intellectual freedom.

In the near empty courtroom Drummond says, “‘Golden Dancer.”

“What did you say?” asks Cates. Drummond explains.

“That was the name of my first long shot. Golden Dancer. She was in the big side window of the general store in Wakeman, Ohio. I used to stand out in the street and say to myself, ‘If I had Golden Dancer I’d have everything in the world that I wanted.’ I was seven years old, and a very find judge of rocking horses. Golden Dancer had a bright red mane, blue eyes, and she was gold all over, with purple spots. When the sun lit her stirrups, she was a dazzling sight to see. But she was a week’s wages for my father. So Golden Dancer and I always had a plate glass window between us. But – let’s see, it wasn’t Christmas, must’ve been my birthday – I woke up in the morning and there was Golden Dancer at the foot of my bed! Ma had skimped on the groceries, and my fathere’d worked nights for a month. I jumped into the saddle and started to rock – And it broke! It split in two! The wood was rotten, the whole thing was put together with spit and sealing wax! All shine, and no substance! Bert, whenever you see something bright, shining, perfect -seeming – all gold, with purple spots – look behind the paint! And if it’s a lie – show it up for what it really is!’”

~~~

There’s lightning by truth telling, revealing a lie, mixing it up, reconciliation, spark, tornado and more. How do you know you’re doing the right thing? That’s a really great question! There is not a really great answer.

During the emergence of the Civil Rights movement in the deep South, the children of Koinonia were caught in the firestorm simply by being born into their radically truthful families. The Jordans’ daughter tells a story of coming to disagreement with her dad over joining a demonstration in town. The guy who had faced down the Klan told his young daughter that if she and her friend were arrested at the march, he would not get them out of jail. That’s right, the most radical farmer in history said this. Her emotions in telling this story are still so palpable. His premise was this: you never fail to rise to the occasion, never leaving a Right thing undone. Yet you never set out to create trouble.

It has me wondering if he would say the same thing looking back from 2011. I can’t speculate. It is not my story or my life. But the confusion it creates for me underscores the one thing I can guarantee, The Right Thing is only known to the people involved in their time and based on their current assumptions. It might be easy to judge from the outside, but judgment is also wrong.

What can be done?

– Pray.

– Listen. (Really listen.)

– Seek only to serve the common good.

– Make world look more like God’s kingdom on Earth.

– Try the Rotary Four-Way Test

Is it the truth?
Is it fair to all concerned?
Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

There may not be a clear path, but these things will help you on your way. (Start where you are!)

Danger

Even the most noble path doesn’t always work. I have been burned a time or two. No one is perfect, but I speak with integrity in saying at least one of those times I did most everything right. FAIL. In fact, I didn’t even do anything, no proactive creation of harm per Mr. Jordan. But I stuck my neck out to protect a baby elephant and took one for the team. This is where time heals. Our wins and especially our failures are best seen from the long view, God’s time. Even when we fail, it is only right and salutary to give thanks. We are still richly blessed.

~~~

The infinity of Good set in motion cannot be overstated. And it’s just as easy to do something right as it is to foul it up! It’s also so much easier to smile, to be nice. The ripple effect of our thoughts and actions carries across air, time and space. It enters the realm of hope, and that changes everything.

Whether a tweak in a habit, the shaking of a system or a downright righteous revolution, transformation brings life. That’s right – life tends toward life. Lightning clears the air. It purifies. It brings rain, the blessing of sustenance and renewal.

Note: this message is endorsed by sparks, cottonwood trees and other every-day heroes.

God bless the lightning and the lightning rods. They purify.

~~~

My final words on the world’s transformers are from Clarence Jordan, part of his interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, which he called the ‘Lesson on the Mount.’

“Men of peace and good will are God’s people, and will be known as his children. They who have endured much for what’s right are God’s people…You are all God’s people when others call you names and harass you and tell all kinds of false tales on you…Be cheerful and good–humored, because your spiritual advantage is great, for that’s the way they treated men of conscience in the past.”

~~~

Have faith. Sit. Look. Listen. Seek only the Good. Set your sights on the long haul. Take a chance, shake things up. Clear the air. Never fail to meet your own responsibility, and never set out to do harm. When in doubt, tell the truth. Even if you fail, give thanks. Most of all, believe in God’s time and God’s plan. Good always wins in the end (and sometimes sooner).

Be the lightning you wish to see in the world!

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Some resources for the enLIGHTENed:

www.koinoniapartners.org