Paying the price

Spiritual leaders understand that commitments come with a price....and they are willing to pay that price, whatever it may be.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet and visit with a retired BYU professor, Dr. Neil J. Flanders, who gave a speech at BYU on August 13, 1999 entitled The Search for Moral Harmony.

As I have pondered on his counsel I have been reminded of some words that are not only worthy of memorizing and pondering, but that should also be written upon the heart and lived by every leader who desires to be a spiritual leader and make a difference for our diverse learners.

The first are the lyrics of the song The Impossible Dream from the movie, The Man of La Mancha:

To dream the impossible dream

To fight the unbeatable foe

To bear with unbearable sorrow

To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong

To love pure and chaste from afar

To try when your arms are too weary

To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest

To follow that star

No matter how hopeless

No matter how far

To fight for the right

Without question or pause

To be willing to march into Hell

For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true

To this glorious quest

That my heart will lie peaceful and calm

When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this

That one man, scorned and covered with scars

Still strove with his last ounce of courage

To reach the unreachable star

The other words come from a letter written by Archbishop Tutu to Tim Wise, the author of White Like Me: (you can visit Tim's site at: http://www.timwise.org/ )

"You do not do the things you do because others will necessarily join you in the doing of them nor because they will ultimately prove successful. You do the things you do because the things you are doing are right."

Thomas Merton words provide similar counsel:

Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

Last of all is a scripture that comes from an epistle written by Mormon to his son, Moroni, found in the Book of Mormon:

"And now, my beloved son, notwithstanding their hardness, let us labor diligently: for if we should cease to labor, we should be brought under condemnation; for we have a labor to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay....." Moroni 9:6

And added words by Albert Einstein to ponder: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds"

A Spiritual Leader Writes

Dr. Festus Obiakor from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee gave a presentation at BYU called Let Your Work Speak.

In order to have one's work speak, a spiritual leader will take time to read, ponder, reflect, and write. In other words, if spiritual leaders are to make a difference for diverse learners, they must think. Albert Einsten said, "The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking." If the dismal education world for diverse learners is going to change, there must be a change in thinking.

Benjamin Disraeli said, "The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it." Well, it may not have to be a book, but it at least needs to be a journal article (even if it is rejected!) or it may be no more than a "Letter to the Editor" or a personal journal entry.

This writing must not be done to please others, but it must follow the counsel of William Wordsworth, "Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart....." One of the greatest writers of all time, Charles Dickens, learned this lesson. It was when he remembered and reflected upon his own life--the difficulties of his life--- and combined the images of the present with the past that he experienced an enormous burst of creative energy that subordinated all his problems, including his own depression and the possibility of financial ruin. The result of that burst of creative energy was the magnificent story, A Christmas Carol, which has blessed so many lives.


We learn from this incident in the life of Charles Dickens that not only does writing clear the cobwebs out of one's own head, but "The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think" (Edwin Schlossberg) and "But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think" (Lord Byron). And I would add, feel.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton eloquently expressed the impact writing can have on those who do the writing as well as those who read it: "The pen is mightier than the sword."