“Behold, I am of small account.” Job, Hebrew prophet

We can change the world. We can right Injustices. We can listen to what our patients are saying with their stories, root out and heal their ailments while helping them see the fullness of life beyond their own. We can create businesses that will outlast themselves through their employees, suppliers, customers and community. We can nurture that damaged and fearful child to a life full of confidence and joy. We can teach our students to share simply because their classmate is valuable regardless of the favor he might or might not return. We can win Martin Luther King’s double-victory over our oppressors. We can lead our parishioners toward intimacy with one another and God. We can write stories and make sculptures that inspire us to be our best selves. We can be diligent and disciplined in our commitments to value others even ahead of ourselves. However, sooner or later we will reach our pain threshold and we will realize like Job, that we are “of small account.” Without some of Joe Mukanwa’s “spirit,” whatever we do to change the world will be a childish and mostly futile exercise in painting by numbers.

parentspriestsgenerals.com

“Behold, I am of small account.” Job, Hebrew prophet

We can change the world. We can right Injustices. We can listen to what our patients are saying with their stories, root out and heal their ailments while helping them see the fullness of life beyond their own. We can create businesses that will outlast themselves through their employees, suppliers, customers and community. We can nurture that damaged and fearful child to a life full of confidence and joy. We can teach our students to share simply because their classmate is valuable regardless of the favor he might or might not return. We can win Martin Luther King’s double-victory over our oppressors. We can lead our parishioners toward intimacy with one another and God. We can write stories and make sculptures that inspire us to be our best selves. We can be diligent and disciplined in our commitments to value others even ahead of ourselves. However, sooner or later we will reach our pain threshold and we will realize like Job, that we are “of small account.” Without some of Joe Mukanwa’s “spirit,” whatever we do to change the world will be a childish and mostly futile exercise in painting by numbers.

parentspriestsgenerals.com

“We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.” Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

Our imaginations have been captured by the many stories we see and hear on a daily basis. We imagine ourselves in Script's song, on our way to the Hall of Fame. We imagine ourselves as Tom Brady, married to a supermodel and winning the Superbowl. We hope to experience the wealth and power promised by The Secret or the meaning and fulfillment of The Purpose Driven Life.

Literary critic, George Steiner, wrote, “ours is the long day's journey of the Saturday, between suffering, aloneness, unutterable waste on the one hand and the dream of liberation, of rebirth on the other.” Aslan goes farther than Sherlock’s or Schindler’s sacrifices for those they loved. Edmund had betrayed his actual blood brothers and sisters whom he truly did love. He sold out an entire kingdom for nothing more than a truffle. But Aslan chose a path sure to lead him to an undignified death on behalf of someone who had betrayed him and the people he loved. Elevating others over self, helping others to achieve more even if it means we achieve less, valuing every human equally simply because they are human, fighting the good fight – these are stories that touch on the most popular of all Hollywood themes - “Love Conquers All.”

Changing character happens as the listeners imagine themselves in the stories being told. I have a request from my daughters, that you who pursue your dream to change the world through art and entertainment will be careful to tell stories that they will be better for having imitated.

parentspriestsgenerals.com

“We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.” Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

Our imaginations have been captured by the many stories we see and hear on a daily basis. We imagine ourselves in Script's song, on our way to the Hall of Fame. We imagine ourselves as Tom Brady, married to a supermodel and winning the Superbowl. We hope to experience the wealth and power promised by The Secret or the meaning and fulfillment of The Purpose Driven Life. 

Literary critic, George Steiner, wrote, “ours is the long day's journey of the Saturday, between suffering, aloneness, unutterable waste on the one hand and the dream of liberation, of rebirth on the other.” Aslan goes farther than Sherlock’s or Schindler’s sacrifices for those they loved. Edmund had betrayed his actual blood brothers and sisters whom he truly did love. He sold out an entire kingdom for nothing more than a truffle. But Aslan chose a path sure to lead him to an undignified death on behalf of someone who had betrayed him and the people he loved. Elevating others over self, helping others to achieve more even if it means we achieve less, valuing every human equally simply because they are human, fighting the good fight – these are stories that touch on the most popular of all Hollywood themes - “Love Conquers All.”

Changing character happens as the listeners imagine themselves in the stories being told. I have a request from my daughters, that you who pursue your dream to change the world through art and entertainment will be careful to tell stories that they will be better for having imitated.

parentspriestsgenerals.com

“The aim is to postpone frailty, postpone degenerative disease, debilitation and so on and thereby shorten the period at the end of life, which is passed in a decrepit or disabled state, while extending life as a whole.” Aubrey de Grey, author of Ending Aging

Encouraging the patient to value life above all else will leave her in pain, likely alone, and most certainly afraid. Doctors help slow life’s deterioration. That’s not what we patients need, nor is it what Hippocrates intended with his oath. What we need is a foundation such that in the face of our pain, we will not be overcome by fear. We need reassurance that there is more to being alive than just the length and quality of our own lives. In our vulnerability, medical professionals are maybe “the patient’s only familiar in a foreign country.” The doctor is the example for the patient – living a life lost in those he serves and leading them to life beyond themselves.

parentspriestsgenerals.com

“The aim is to postpone frailty, postpone degenerative disease, debilitation and so on and thereby shorten the period at the end of life, which is passed in a decrepit or disabled state, while extending life as a whole.” Aubrey de Grey, author of Ending Aging

Encouraging the patient to value life above all else will leave her in pain, likely alone, and most certainly afraid. Doctors help slow life’s deterioration. That’s not what we patients need, nor is it what Hippocrates intended with his oath. What we need is a foundation such that in the face of our pain, we will not be overcome by fear. We need reassurance that there is more to being alive than just the length and quality of our own lives. In our vulnerability, medical professionals are maybe “the patient’s only familiar in a foreign country.” The doctor is the example for the patient – living a life lost in those he serves and leading them to life beyond themselves.

parentspriestsgenerals.com

Foster and Kaplan’s 2001 book, Creative Destruction, showed over the previous 50 years, the life expectancy of firms in the Fortune 500 had declined from 75 to 15 years. Those firms that do remain have only done so by adapting so drastically that they barely resemble the firms they were 15 years prior. General Electric has been around for 123 years. By 2001, the financial arm of GE accounted for 41% of its profits. Under twenty years of Jack Welch’s leadership, the behemoth of industrial manufacturing had become almost as much a financial institution as a manufacturing concern. Because of the 2008 financial crisis and GE's Lehman Brothers-level of financial risk, Welch's successor is on a trajectory to reduce financial services to only 10% of GE's overall business. The GE of 123 years ago has changed drastically, but the team members, customers and community still carry the weight of its values, for better or worse. 

parentspriestsgenerals.com

“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products… Short-term profits should be allied with an increase in the long-term value of a company.” Jack Welch, Former CEO, General Electric

A business leader interested in changing the world develops a vision like “organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.” She hires people with shared values. Her occupation is story-teller for this business undergirded by its values, helping create habits of behavior, leading self-sacrificially, making and delivering on commitments and supporting others as she asks them to do the same. These values end up infused into all the activities of the business and as a result into the psyche of the stakeholders. This is the gospel of leadership according to gurus of business. What most gurus don’t realize is the outcome isn’t a longer lasting, more successful firm, but character change in stakeholders that outlasts the firm itself.

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“A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.” Henry Kissinger

It is not surprising that with all the commitment of resources to this work, the United States regularly fails miserably at identifying and supporting effective leaders around the world. Nowhere is this failure starker than in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Belgian government continued to subjugate the Belgian Congo until 1960. The United States inserted itself into the independence movement in the Congo in 1960 to back a junior Congolese Army Officer who would become President. To facilitate this, the United States was at least complicit in killing the popular nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba. President Mobutu Sese Seko would rule in his stead until 1997 while amassing a personal fortune estimated at over five billion dollars. Mobutu was a clown whose distinguishing style was his Leopard-print Fez hat. He and his family and friends all drove expensive new model Mercedes and built multiple Versailles-like residences around Congo while the common people died from starvation, disease and war. President Reagan referred to Mobutu as “a faithful friend to the United States for some 20 years,” describing their relationship as “based on shared interests and perceptions.”

We could have avoided empowering a brutal dictator like Mobutu in Congo. A Just engagement would have approached these based on a value for the other at least equal to Americans. The resulting support would have been conceived out of long-term relationship; invited by, not forced upon, the recipients; driven by empowered local leaders of character; designed in the interests of the local people as determined by the local people.

parentspriestsgenerals.com

“A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.” Henry Kissinger

It is not surprising that with all the commitment of resources to this work, the United States regularly fails miserably at identifying and supporting effective leaders around the world. Nowhere is this failure starker than in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

The Belgian government continued to subjugate the Belgian Congo until 1960. The United States inserted itself into the independence movement in the Congo in 1960 to back a junior Congolese Army Officer who would become President. To facilitate this, the United States was at least complicit in killing the popular nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba. President Mobutu Sese Seko would rule in his stead until 1997 while amassing a personal fortune estimated at over five billion dollars. Mobutu was a clown whose distinguishing style was his Leopard-print Fez hat. He and his family and friends all drove expensive new model Mercedes and built multiple Versailles-like residences around Congo while the common people died from starvation, disease and war. President Reagan referred to Mobutu as “a faithful friend to the United States for some 20 years,” describing their relationship as “based on shared interests and perceptions.”

We could have avoided empowering a brutal dictator like Mobutu in Congo. A Just engagement would have approached these based on a value for the other at least equal to Americans. The resulting support would have been conceived out of long-term relationship; invited by, not forced upon, the recipients; driven by empowered local leaders of character; designed in the interests of the local people as determined by the local people.

parentspriestsgenerals.com