Leadership
Writer Author Richard S. Adams
Christian Article
:
Christian Living
- Fiction No
The older I get the less I know, I mean really know. There is a part of really knowing something that not only takes up permanent residence in your spirit, but it actually becomes who you are. No, that's not right. You become that thing, for lack of a better word. You become that thing you really know, that thing that took up permanent residence within your spirit.
Curiously, as I discover all the things I really thought I knew begin to crumble, I grasp to find a life preserver, a life line that will connect me to something permanent, something that will save me, my sanity, my life. Of course I can always dismiss this all as nonsense and bury myself in all the noise and distractions of life ... for a while.
Many of us spend a lifetime buried under the noise and busyness of career and ministry, using learned and taught time management skills to bring order to our busyness; certainly not to reduce it, but to be more focused, more efficient, so we can cram more and more busyness into this thing called life. Does your purpose, your mission interfere with your relationships? Do your relationships interfere with your mission and your purpose in life?
Is your mission all about acquiring and accumulating so you can enjoy the fruits of your hard work? You worked hard all day and deserve to settle back with a beer and a good Blazer game, put on your sweats and tone that body, put on 3-D glasses and enter a world of make believe or maybe just browse the shelves at Fry's, looking for that special gadget that will help you be ... more efficient. Everyone wants to stand out, to be above the crowd and if there is a new toy, a new gadget to help us do that, than shouldn't we? However, what do we accomplish if everyone does it?
What is it that you really know? Science changes daily. Our solar system recently changed. Education is struggling to keep up with all the changes, moving from the classroom, now called ftf, to the internet to make education more available (i.e. to fit into the schedule and geography of more and more people) so they can do what, know what, be what?
There is an absolutely ugly elegance to this trajectory of 'being' that in the act of 'being' we actually deny our 'being.'
Managers attempt to control this ebb and flow, to master it for their own purposes or the purposes of those who employ them, those who recognize their gifts to rise above the rushing crowd.
Where are our leaders? They are under the turmoil and under the crashing hoofs of the crowd, the herd that rushes toward ... toward what? Leadership has a voice, but its voice is unrecognizable in all the noise. Leadership has a face, but it is invisible, indistinct in a plethora of electronic impulses of all forms, shapes and sizes. The real leaders are the ones who struggle to make a difference in this one, that one, someone over there. What, may I ask, is the goal of these so called leaders, these invisible faces with their whisper like voices?
Their goal is that we would learn to be, to know, and in that knowing we too would leave the quest to control the ebb and flow, to be recognized as something, someone fleeting on a page of history and instead, we might seek to help this one, that one, someone over there.
Leaders are the manure of tomorrow's flowers, forgotten maybe, but critical if tomorrow is to be a possibility.
As what I thought I knew and what I thought was important begin to crumble, as wrinkles and fading eyesight devour the last vestiges of youth my heart begins to know what's real. Everything has become a distraction to the reality of life which is this one, that one, someone over there.
Getting older is a time for leadership, not retirement.
Editor's Comment:
About the Writer Author
State:
Portland
Country:
Oregon
Email:
rsaofyap@yahoo.com
Website:
www.yukonangelproductions.com
Profile:
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