Better Than Your Best

Please feel free to use these prayers for your own use in whatever context you feel they are appropriate. 

Invocation

Lord,

Help us to remain true to the self-evident truths so long ago proclaimed but existing from the beginning of time, that we are all created equal, and that we are endowed by You as our common Creator with certain unalienable Rights.

Imbue us with a renewed enthusiasm and respect for these, our mutual rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Cause us to know without doubt that from these rights issue forth genuine responsibilities to work for the common good so that all can truly experience the true fullness of freedom.

We pray the presence of Your Power to be within and among us this evening as we seek to manifest these truths within our individual hearts and within the soul of our nation.

We seek Your guidance as we again pledge our allegiance to the timeless proclamation of individual liberty and our uncompromising independence from any tyranny, foreign or domestic, that would seek to deprive us of any of it.

Steady us in these turbulent times, Lord, so that we will never waiver from our reliance on our faith in Your unyielding love for each of us.

Benediction

We now depart in Your love and with Your peace. But we are no longer the people who earlier gathered; we are now the people who leave to live with renewed passion, filled with infinite power and divine wisdom to be co-creators with You to make all things new.

We leave with deeper commitment to embody the words of the one in whose honor we have gathered this evening:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in . . .”

By Ken Wallace

After hours of frustration trying to get my drain unclogged, I finally broke down and called a plumber. Upon arriving, he asked where the problem pipe was located. I took him to the bathroom and, pointing to the open doors under the sink, I said, "There's your challenge, right there."

He spent a few moments surveying the situation and then took from his toolbox a simple pair of pliers and gently tapped the entire length of the curvy piping. After just a few minutes of inspection, he wrapped his pliers with a bright red bandana he took from one of the many pockets in his tattered blue overalls. With precise aim, he drew back and struck the pipe about halfway between the bottom of the basin and the point where the piping disappeared into the wall. 

It worked! The water flowed freely and all was right with the world. The entire visit lasted a mere five minutes. The plumber wrote on the invoice the following words: "House call . . . FREE; Knowing What to Do (Where to Hit the Pipe) . . . $75.00.

But knowing what and where is not enough. The noted comedian, George Burns, was said to have interrupted a person who was not quite finished asking, "What is the key to comedy?" with his answer: "Timing!" In addition to what and where, you must also know when.

There is such a thing as "putting the cart before the horse:" you wind up having to pull a load you wouldn't have had to were you to have done things in the proper sequence and at the right time. You cannot hope to reap without having sown or to acquire wisdom and solid character without making the daily choices to discipline your baser instincts.

Wisdom comes from understanding what you should be doing with your time. . . right now wherever you are. Getting to the place where your knowledge, skills and experience position you to "move the needle" and succeed faster is the essence of living in peaceful abundance. When you know you know you can make things happen, you become equipped with the power you need to achieve what you want. Furthermore, what you want becomes shaped by what you know you can accomplish rather than merely hoping for something you doubt that you can achieve.

This, indeed, is a peaceful – and powerful – life that emerges from finding your better Self.

Whenever I hear this phrase uttered, I think not of radical railing against the "establishment" but of what people with power actually look like. People with power are people with poise, purpose and peacefulness. When you possess power, you know it; and you also know how to use it, for that is the prerequisite of power – being the one in the room who knows what to do . . . next.

Power originates in perception and manifests itself within the individual. In other words, when you know what needs to be done for the benefit of others and are committed to getting it done, you are perceived to be powerful by others and are then able to empower them to help you accomplish that goal.

We all need power to get what we want for ourselves. We also need power to give what we want to others. Power is experienced when you know what you want to both give and receive and when you know that what you want is worthy of your better Self.

"Power to the people" is really power through a person to the people. Are you that person in your world? 

You can choose:

Where you live

Where you work

How hard you work

Who you are friends with

How much you want to earn

What to do with your spare time

To help others solve their problems

To think more about others than you do about yourself

_______________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

The last three lines are for you to fill in what you know you have personal choice over that are not mentioned in this list. Every choice you have means that the world is yours: you can make it what you want and get from it what you desire – depending on the kinds of choices you make. Choose wisely, choose well.

If we took $5 Trillion dollar bills and placed them end to end, how far would they go?

Take a guess:

1. From St. Louis to Chicago

2. From St. Louis to Hong Kong

3. From St. Louis to the moon

4. None of the above

The answer is 4. The line of bills would stretch 473,484,848 miles. That enough to encircle the earth 19,048 times. It would make it to the moon and back 991 times (it's 238,857 miles from earth to the moon).

The interest on $5 trillion dollars, using current rates, is almost $400,000,000,000 (count those zeros!) per year. That's over $1 billion per day!

This is for ONLY $5 trillion.

The Outstanding Public Debt as of 16 Nov 2009 at 09:53:02 PM GMT is: $12,006,580,141,918.41 (that's over $12 trillion). So the figures above need to be over doubled to account for our current debt and interest obligations. By the way, the national debt is expected to double in ten years, by 2019.
 
The estimated population of the United States is 307,299,348 – so each citizen's share of the November 16, 2009 (the date of this posting) debt is $39,071.28. Do have that laying around to give to the government? What this means is that the government needs to get this money from you in some form or fashion – the sooner the better. What are your plans to give the government what it has already taken from you – without asking you?

Another little tidbit of gloom: The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $3.85 billion per day since September 28, 2007!

For an up-to-the-minute tracking clock of the U.S. debt, click here.

A young boy found a cocoon. Each day, he held it up to the light to admire his discovery.

One day, a small opening appeared in the wall of the cocoon. He watched the tiny creature within struggle for hours to force its body through the tiny hole. Then it seemed to stop trying. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could go.

So the boy decided to help. He took a pair of scissors and opened the hole so that the butterfly could come out more easily. It quickly emerged. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.

The boy expected the butterfly to take flight at any moment. The longer he watched, the more he realized that the swollen body with shriveled wings would never fly. It was too bloated and weak, spending its pitiful existence floundering on the ground until it soon died exhausted from trying to start living.

What the boy did not realize was what the butterfly actually needed. It needed to struggle to emerge from its confinement because that is the way the fluids of its body are extended to its newly formed wings so it can fly as soon as it frees itself.

Although we may fear encountering them and believe that to have them is to admit weakness, struggles are not the true problems we face in our lives. To the contrary, they are very often the means of our freedom from that which seeks to cast our souls, minds and spirits into melancholic bondage and dispirited living.

The true problems we have are those that are caused by our insistence that we have no problems in our lives, and, if we do, that the solutions be quickly and easily found. When we attempt to circumvent the demanding (and sometimes longer-than-desired) process of honestly dealing with our difficulties, we wind up demeaning the significance of any resolution to those difficulties that eventually may ensue.

Struggling is something you must do in your own time, in your own way and for your own reasons. Always remember that to avoid struggle is to shun victory. There is a time to struggle and a time to let it go and assess the degree of victory your struggling has yielded. When struggling defines your daily living, you’ve lost the meaning of why you’re struggling in the first place. Struggles result in peacefulness or they simply serve to exacerbate existing despair.

When next you find yourself struggling with something in your life, know that it is a process at the end of which is a victory of unimagined proportions and benefits. In other words, “this, too, shall pass” – and it will pass into a state of being that now knows how to fly beyond it’s present state of spiritual and mental confinement. At the end of your struggles await peacefulness and wholeness – the home of your better Self.

Note well: the end of your struggle happens only when you realize that you no longer need to struggle to be your better Self. This, indeed, is good news!

My wife and I have been married almost seventeen years. It seems a much shorter amount of time. It’s been a good time even though times haven’t always been good.

We wrote our own vows, as many do. Even if you used the traditional vows from your religious organization, I’ll bet it has been quite some time since you have re-read them, even if you’ve only been married a short while.

Vows are considered sacred and solemn because they are promises made to another to be a certain kind of person who strives to serve the other in ways that help him/her become his/her better Self. As such, they are freely chosen boundaries within which we pledge to direct our personal growth in tandem with the other.

We live within boundaries. Other-imposed boundaries, like the laws of the land, are often non-negotiable and are established ostensibly to provide for the common good and welfare of all inhabitants. Other “other-imposed” boundaries include, depending on your spiritual perspective, the universal moral law of humanity given by the deity. This, too, can be considered non-negotiable, albeit debatable as to its true meaning and impact on human behavior.

The laws of nature, of course, are non-negotiable with absolute certainty because we have no choice regarding whether or not we abide by them. We cannot choose to exclude ourselves from the law of gravity, or chemistry or the time-space relationship that constitutes the backdrop of any personally-perceived reality.

But the height of freedom, maturity and successful living is to choose your own personal boundaries within which you will direct your thinking and behavior. This is a requirement of human life, whether consciously exercised or not. You may choose wisely or witlessly.

However, choices need to be made. If not done intentionally and with careful and honest deliberation, the necessary realm of self-imposed boundaries will be filled with boundaries imposed by others. More often than not, these boundaries are merely manifestations of their own desires in their relationship with you. Trying to live within the confines of others’ selfish expectations means that you will live as if you were someone other than yourself. This is not your better Self. It is, rather, a “second self” that experiences life more as a spectator than as an actor.

Outside those that are non-negotiable, you must choose those boundaries that define and declare your character or they will be chosen for you. You have the power to channel your energy and focus your personal resources in ways that will manifest your worthy aspirations. If you don’t choose your own boundaries, you will never realize what you most ardently desire.

The vows that my wife and I exchanged are unique in the words we chose to use; but, like your own vows, I believe they express the universal intention to be bounded in certain ways that would build each other up and bring out each other’s better Selves as we journey together through life.

I came across our vows recently as I was cleaning out a “storage” room in our house. As I read them again, I measured my seventeen year performance against those words of promise made long ago. How have I done at living up to them? Have I remained true to both the letter and the spirit of their expression? Has the reality of our lives together fleshed out the intention of the language?

I must say that we have done pretty well. However, by reviewing our vows I have silently, yet firmly renewed them in my conscious efforts to make them even more real and meaningful in our on-going relationship. The distance between promise and reality is as close as the beneficial boundaries you set for yourself that help you choose daily to live by the promises you make.

Here’s our vows. I hope when you revisit yours you will find that you have chosen well both the words and the boundaries that provide the means to make them a living reality within your marriage.

I, Ken/Mary, take you, Mary/Ken, to be my wife/husband
To love with the power of life God has given me.
This day I give you all that I am and all that I will be.
I will help you become what you feel God wants you to be.
I will encourage you to grow and to learn in all you do.
I will be patient and gentile;
I will be honest and trusting;
I will seek to understand you;
I will listen to you because I believe I can learn from you.
No longer will we face life separately, but together.
In our marriage, I will strive to grow in my love for you.
In the name of Jesus.
God is my witness.

Presidential historian, Michael R. Beschloss, quoted by Dan Balz in an editorial in the August 18, 1998 edition of the Washington Post (“Rebuilding Credibility Key to Clinton’s Effectiveness, Legacy”) said: “It’s possible that you could devise a scenario that since the core of Clinton’s authority is political management, not character, there is some way he can tunnel through this (crisis) and get on to the two last years and show presidential leadership. But that depends on how people react (to Clinton’s August 17th speech) and what they hear about his testimony and what is in the Starr report.”

What jumped out at me from Beschloss’ comments was his phrase “. . . since the core of Clinton’s authority is political management, not character . . . .” This really is the issue at the heart of the current and all preceding Clinton debacles. He seems to value any authority he has as president as a natural result of his formidable political finesse. At the same time, he also appears to believe (public rhetoric notwithstanding) that nothing else (like character) need be involved in securing that authority. Although I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate the nomenclature, “Slick Willy,” I’m equally certain that he enjoys being referred to as the “Comeback Kid.” However, given his lack of moral authority due to personal character weaknesses, it could only be that he could come back as many times as he has because of his “slickness” at managing the political process and those who are part of it. Beschloss is right: for Clinton the process is more important than any content of the process. Paraphrasing Martin Luther King in order to ask a pertinent question: Shall we judge Clinton solely on the “color” of his politics and not also on the content of his character?

The answer that is being offered by a majority of Americans is, “it depends.” It depends on how well the economy is doing, or, more particularly, how well I’m doing in the economy.

Presidential biographer, Robert Dallek, in the Washington Post article, commented, “Few politicians have proven as resilient as this president, and there are strengths to draw on as he begins to rebuild. One is the economy, despite the current wobbles in the stock market and the Russian and Asian problems. He has to tie everything to his strength, which is the buoyancy of the economy, of the country. It’s got to be the linchpin of what he does as he goes forth, but it’s not easy.”

Indeed, it’s not easy. Many people have a sense that the health of the economy really has little to do with Clinton’s economic policies and programs. The sense is that the economy, at some point within the past several years, has begun to run itself. Many remember that Clinton took over the presidency at a time when the economy was actually gaining strength indicating that Bush’s economic approach was finally beginning to be vindicated. The motto that James Carville, Clinton’s first presidential campaign director, had plastered everywhere Clinton could possibly look was a reminder of the single thing to focus on in order to win the election: “It’s the Economy, Stupid!” Nothing else mattered — just the economy. If it got better whoever was in the White House would benefit no matter what he did (or didn’t do) to make it better. Clinton made more believable promises; the economy got better; Clinton’s approval rating stays high and is tied to the strength of the economy more than to the his lack of strength of character. And so the majority of the American people seem to have implicitly modified the campaign motto to, “It’s the Economy, Stud.”

To emphasis that point, in the August 17, 1998 SALON online magazine “Under the Covers” article, “Monica 2: This Time It’s About Getting Paid,” author James Poniewozik reports: “Clinton’s troubles, like everything else nowadays, are business news, and they have been linked repeatedly to the wild swings in the stock market. Here’s how Carl Cannon of the National Journal summed up regular folk sentiment, echoed throughout the weekend in polls and call ins, in a National Public Radio interview: “The economy’s never been better, the stock market’s never been better. I’m working, my wife’s working, my idiot brother in law who hasn’t had a job in two years he’s working. I got a new boat. I’m building onto the house. And you want to put all this in jeopardy over sex?”

In the Washington Post article, Balz cites a congresstional Democrat’s assessment of the mood of lawmakers on Capitol Hill: “They are singularly focused on the politics at the moment, and the politics is: If some 70 percent of the public doesn’t want to know about this, who are they to raise it?” This is the sort of political weathervane approach that gets people elected and re-elected and has nothing to do with moral leadership. If to get to the top of this game you must be better at it than anyone else, then it’s no wonder that Clinton is known as the “Comeback Kid.”

The mea culpa speech on August 17th was not nothing of the sort. It was a political shifting of blame for moral perpetude to the Special Prospecutor’s investigation into “private” matters. That is a terrible thing to do, suggests Mr. Clinton, because private matters need to be respected and not pried into, even if those matters are being kept private from everyone because of shame, embarassment and fear for having transgressed ehtical and moral boundaries and maybe even law or two. It’s a form of “attorney-client” privilege that involves possible admission to each other of wrong-doing and an expression of a cavalier attitude toward their actions with each other.

At some point in my college career, a person whom I can’t now remember thought I had committed some sort of transgression (which I also can’t now remember). Having investigated what he thought I had done and discovering that, in fact, I was innocent, I do remember what he said to me: “You may not be guilty of that, but you’re guilty of something.”

I suppose my accuser was right: we’re all guilty of something. Often we ourselves don’t know what that may be or, if we do know, we take careful measures to ensure that others never find out. The attitude of assuming that everyone is guilty of something leads to a society of suspicion and a culture of condemnation. Ultimately, it leads to incessant innuendo and investigation until something is uncovered that justifies the initial suspicion of guilt. If, indeed, everyone is guilty of something then in such a society guilt will be discerned and confirmed but never vindicated or absolved.

The former Southern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church had an intriguing approach to recruiting and selecting pastors. Twice each year a group of seasoned local church ministers representing various administrative and supervisory committees would travel to the various “official” seminaries throughout the country. There they would interview prospective candidates for professional ministry. Their purpose was three-fold: 1) to encourage seminary students to actually enter full-time professional ministry, 2) to identify those students whom they would like to invite to become a part of the Southern Illinois Conference and 3) to maintain contact with students from the southern Illinois area.

On one such visit in the mid-seventies, my supervising pastor asked me, “Do you want to return to Illinois to take a full-time church?” Before I tell you how I answered that question, I must fill you in on the reason I think it was asked.. It would appear to be a pretty innocuous query; but I believe there was more to it, as I think you’ll agree.

Part of the tradition of the bi-annual visits was that the student would select a nice restaurant for an evening meal with the traveling dignitaries. With a smug sense of iconoclastic irony, I chose the “Top of the Sixes” restaurant in downtown New York City. You have to picture this: a group of long-time Methodist pastors having dinner at the top of a New York City building whose address is “666.” Somehow, I think that this experience (although the food really was “heavenly”), prompted the question I was now faced with answering the next day.

“Do you want to return to Illinois to take a full-time church?” I was having the time of my life away from home and responsibilities to anyone else. How could I answer that question now? I changed the subject: “Did you see I got the Greek New Testament Award and the Senior Honors Grant?” Then the wise pastor said to me, “people with natural talent who don’t have to work very hard to achieve good grades, etc. often find it hard to discipline themselves to achieve outstanding results in their lives and careers. It’s because many things come so easily for them that they become complacent with being one step ahead of most everyone else that they fail to realize they could become several steps beyond where they naturally are now.”

At the time, I realized only partially the wisdom of the truth he spoke. I know it power today from years of having tested it and discovered the sting of its truth. It has taken me a number of years to gain a self-perspective that would allow me to discipline myself– which also has meant self-denial and doing things I would rather not because they were difficult and sometimes painful. But it is only with this discipline that I hae been able to do more than I was naturally capable of doing–and that was very good, but not good enough.

I think that is probably a good description of bill Clinton. Much of what he has done and accomplished seems to have come easily for him so much so that he has grown used to getting what he wants without much effort — or without as much effort as most other people would have had to exert in order to accomplish as much.

This has led to an “honest arrogance” that says, “I can do anything I want and am entitled to the results I want from my endeavors (whether they involve great of little effort, the results are expected to always be great). I don’t think he has honestly assessed his arrogance in the context of how other people live their lives and what they must do daily in order to achieve half the results in their lives that he has achieved. This is why many Americans both respect him and loathe him at the same time. My DS’s assessment of my own capabilities in this regard caused me some introspection and, over time, I grew to realize that I must actually work harder and become more honest with my abilities and shortcomings if I was ever going to achieve what I felt I was created to achieve. If I hadn’t I would have wound up another terrific starter in life but one who failed to learn the lessons of endurance, persistence and faith when times were tough–because I would hae never experienced though times–life would have been easy and “charmed.”

The issue at the moment is: not what Clinton has done with Lewinski but how the country will react over the long-term to what he has admitted he did: sexual misconduct, infidelity, gros abuse of the power of his office with a powerless intern, and bald-faced lying to the people and his family. Babyboomers has grown up rejecting their parents’ values and have brought up their children to “choose their own” values whether they were like their’s or not–that’s okay, we said. I remember telling my son, “You can do anything you want.” Unfortunately, he misunderstood: he thought I said, “You can do anything you want without limits and without conscience.” That’s not what I meant but it’s what he wanted to hear and how he interpreted my words. This is what the Babyboomers have harbored in their minds throughout their lives: we can do anything we want regardless of boundaries and laws. All that stuff was made for the other (Helmsley: little) people who need that sort of rule to live appropriately and “happily.” But we don’t need it: we are destined for greater things–things that we’re entitled to because we not only can do anything we want but are entitled to receive everything we want, regardless of whether we’ve worked for it or not.

What Clinton has done will cause us to evaluate, however briefly, if we truly believe that anymore. If the long-term reaction is to blithely pass over the indiscretions and call them just that, then we can expect the moral compass of the US to lose itself on the beachhead of the invasion of privacy even when it has become public and what the public now knows is that the acts were repulsive–even in private. If the American people won’t let this go, regardless of whatever world affairs seek to divert attention, and seek an “honest apology” and an on-going discussion about how American government should proceed and upon what moral foundations, then what has happened will be a milestone in American history (the financial markets would call it a “correction” to a long trend of increasing popularity of valuing something which has become over-valued — in other words, what we value (independence, situational morality and ethical relativity based on our personal sense of “worthiness” destiny and entitlement)–has become overvalued (less valuable than we have thought) as a means of directing and living our lives together as a country.

In my recent book, “Your Better Self: A Simple Guide to Where You Want to Be,”I cite Benjamin Franklin’s 13 Virtues as being an excellent beginning for your journey toward manifesting your worthy aspirations and becoming your better Self. I’d like to share now Ben’s friend, Thomas Jefferson’s, 10 Rules that helped guide him to the astounding achievements credited to him.

Let me know if you think there is value to how he lived his life. Do you think you can benefit from organizing your life around the following?

1. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend money before you have earned it.
4. Never buy what you don’t want because it is cheap.
5. Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6. We seldom repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How must pain the evils cost us that never happened.
9. Take things always by the smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, count a hundred.

Click here to read Paul’s comments on what has recently happened in America.

Please comment on his blog – and here, as well.

Ken