When donkeys fly.
Let's take back our power by listening to that still small voice that says, "What!!!?" "What were you thinking?"
Remember when we got excited when a President told us that we would send a man to the moon and bring him back safely before the end of the decade? We didn't know how in the world we were going to do that, but smartness rose to the occasion.
We had a vision.
We developed space travel when a leader told us we could. I remember when Sam Shepherd, the first man in space, did a quick up and down, only going into orbit. And I remember Shepherd while suited up and sitting in the space capsule regretted his morning coffee and needed to go to the bathroom. The crew discussed the problem and finally told him to wet his pants.
Remember when John F. Kennedy conceived the idea of the Peace Corps?
Kennedy, arrived in Michigan at 2 am in the morning, not to speak, but to sleep. When he found himself surrounded by 10,000 students he spoke extemporaneously. Kennedy challenged American youth to devote a part of their lives to living and working in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a way to foster goodwill and peace.
Their response was immediate: within weeks students organized a petition drive and gathered 1,000 signatures in support of the idea. Several hundred others pledged to serve. Enthusiastic letters poured into Democratic headquarters. This response was crucial to Kennedy's decision to make the founding of a Peace Corps a priority. He executed it by executive order, and three days later appointed R. Sargent Shriver as the Director?
Maybe you don't remember, for this was March 1, 1961.
Maybe you weren't born yet--that's the reason you need old codgers like me to tell you.
From the podium that March 1, 1961 came these words from President Kennedy:
"How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world?"
"On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend on the answer whether a free society can compete. I think it can! And I think Americans are willing to contribute. But the effort must be far greater than we have ever made in the past."
By 2018, 141 countries had hosted more than 235,000 Peace Corp volunteers.
I once witnessed the far-reaching arm of a Peace Corps volunteer:
I was part of a training session. One of the group, a Caucasian young man raised in Africa, was deep into his feelings of being alone. not wanted, grieving for what he had lost. He lamented that once in Africa, he knew friendship where boys would happily walk down the street with their arms around each other, and think nothing about it. He had no such friends in America.
From the back of the room came a voice in Swahili.
We didn't know what it said, but the boy did.
Neither did we know we had a former Peace Corps volunteer in the group. The voice said, "Welcome, brother."
The kid fell apart, and so did we as soon as we knew what had happened. We were leaping from our seats, hugging the kid and each other, crying and laughing all at the same time.
Once, Abraham Maslow a psychologist, said: "Stop studying the ills and look to the positive way things work."
What a concept.
Spiritual life, as Maslow puts it, is an instinct. One hears it from the voices that arise from within. However, two forces are pulling at the individual. One pulls us toward health and self-actualization, the other towards weaknesses and sickness.
Geesch, big decision.
Self-actualization
(Maslow's term) is not an endpoint or a destination.
It is an ongoing process in which people stretch themselves to achieve new heights of well-being, creativity, and fulfillment.
Maslow believed that self-actualizing people contained several characteristics—self-acceptance, spontaneity, independence, and the ability to have peak experiences.
Peak experiences are high points where the individual is in harmony with himself and his surroundings. Some would call that one's spirituality.
Peak experiences are moments of love, understanding, happiness, or rapture, during which a person feels whole, alive, self-sufficient, and yet a part of the world. They are more aware of truth, justice, harmony, and goodness.
Religious or spiritual values are not the exclusive property of any religion or group. Self-actualizes are religious in character, attitudes, and behavior.
"Spiritual disorders" tend toward anger or a loss of meaning. Sometimes, it is grief or despair regarding the future. There is often a belief that one's life has been a waste and that finding joy or love is impossible.
I'm
attempting ever so carefully to pull myself out of media whitewashing of the
Present President. although tears are appearing in the fabric of his mighty plan, and people are peering through its holes. It's like:
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I'm sorry civilization creeps along slowly. We make giant strides ahead, only to lose some. It wobbles. We oscillate between elation and depression.
It's easy to have slogans like, "Make America Great Again." All you need is a good ad writer.
What we need is people in the trenches, like my friend Bill Fisher, the former Peace Corp volunteer, who one day called out in class to a lost boy: "Welcome Brother."
