everything in its place, indeed

the sudden, unexpected death of a remarkable young minister/teacher/mentor brings home the importance of living as he did, filling every moment with joy & doing the work he loved in a way that only he could do & being an incredible life force to all he touched.

it was pretty bold & brash, sending out my 2nd "state of the human" letter, opening a path for people to help us financially & making it easy for everyone to contribute substantially without spending a cent. but - post the jacob story, post charter day, post mauro - am taking that outreach BIGGER, contacting people who belong to the boards of our church & schools with a funky grant proposal.

my health seems to be questionable. i breathe heavily & tire easily. so, am more committed than ever to doing whatever needs to be done to make the contributions that i'm well suited to make to my church, my school & my community. where there appears to be an obstacle, i'll acknowledge it before giving it the boot. i'm not going to worry if people think i'm a kook or outrageous - if that's what it takes to make cyber access for the technically timid & a more welcoming experience at charter day & partnering programs between my local senior community and college a reality, then so be it.

the bottom line is that i've been over the top (hopefully in a good way) from my first breath. i seem to have been born with an out-sized sense of love & loyalty to my family, my church, my school. the affections that many people pour into friends, i poured into those three institutions - family, church, school. family, in its traditional sense of siblings, has receded into the background (but certainly not disappeared) as loving support of community has moved over the past 15 years into the foreground.

my dream is to help craft church & academy events such as the assembly & charter day where EVERYONE feels welcomed, visible & valued. how to craft such moments? first, by deciding HOW you want each participant to feel when s/he leaves the event. do you want your alumni - all of them - to feel a sense of excitement over where, say, the college is, as embodied by its students, its teacher/mentors, its leaders; to have a sense of their own place in its past & a thrill of anticipation over where its headed; to WANT to be part of that future, whatever their age?

it amazes me to look back over my life & see how my path has provided me with an unusual amalgram of experiences & skills, from my four years of doing faculty teas in college and the same number of ed council spreads (two per morning) as part of summer work to serving as NATIONAL coordinator of events honoring prudential healthcare's 50th anniversary, from adopting the anc classes of 2010~2011~2013 when they were in elementary school & tracking them through hs graduation to being bisys financial services 2000 employee of the year based on my above & beyond success at making the most demanding clients feel heard.

it feels as if this initiative is already a tangible entity, awaiting its big reveal. all i have to get out of the way are minor albeit pesky money energy issues - and that will happen. all i have to do is let everything be in its place, then see what arises.