I'd rather work in reentry anywhere in Indiana but Marion County." -Anonymous My wife Nancy was asked to be the moderator for a panel discussion on faith-based reentry for the Marion County Reentry Coalition's very popular annual conference. In preparation, she met with a number of folks who work in reentry for the state. Since we don't have private offices at UNITE INDY and work at shared-workspace tables, I overheard one state employee tell her he'd rather work on reentry anywhere in the state but Marion County. I stopped what I was doing and started to listen. "Why?" She asked. He remarked that reentry organizations in Indianapolis "do not play well with others." He said, "Unlike other counties, they don't join with other organizations that work in reentry to tackle the larger problems we have. Take Fort Wayne, for example. There is a monthly luncheon where all the secular and faith-based groups get together. They share their succe...
I'd be half a man if I didn't help my neighbors"-Kenny VaughanAs forty-one inches of hurricane Irma's rain poured over the east coast of Texas and water filled the same homes that had only recently been rebuilt from hurricane Harvey, Kenny Vaughan was once again in his boat doggedly searching from house to house pulling out the aged, the children, and even swimming dogs. When asked why he keeps showing up and doing this, he gave the interviewer the simple answer above.His comment struck me. It reminded me of a meeting I had with a marketing person who wants to help us involve young people in volunteerism. She suggested we remove the cross from our logo. "Young people," she said, "are kind of anti religion." Well...maybe some are, but more than likely it reflects their lack of understanding of what the cross represents.When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the ten commandments, we were presented with just four rules to guide our rel...
Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" -Bob Seger Naïveté is a precious thing. Most of us can look back on times when life was great. We were loved, we were happy—maybe we were five, or maybe it was high school. But something happened and we learned that life is not golden all the time. We learned that the world can be difficult, even cruel. Bob Seger was just a kid of 10 when his alcoholic father left for good. The man had spent years in shouting matches with his wife in fights so hateful and loud, the the neighbors got involved. The tumult was finally over when he abandoned the family, leaving them in financial ruin. Seger had to grow up fast. He later wrote these words in a song called "Against The Wind." In April 1980 the song hit Billboard's Hot top 100 chart and stayed for 17 weeks, and while Seger's words reflected his own experiences with disappointment and heartache, they also hit home for multitudes of the dishear...
Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." -Henry Ford My wife, Nancy, and I took our youngest grandchildren to the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn Michigan recently. It was a great trip and we learned a lot about history and one of the men that made it happen. In the early 1900s "horseless carriages" were expensive toys available only to a wealthy few, but Ford envisioned an automobile for the masses. After his first effort with the Model A, in 1908 he introduced the fantastically popular Model T, eventually selling 16.5 million of them. You could have it in any color, said Ford, "as long as it was black." Initially, each car took nine hours to build, and the company couldn't keep up with demand. So Ford studied and constantly improved his assembly line methods until a Model T rolled off the production line every nine minutes. The problem was, workers could be unreliable and when one...
You cannot fight a battle you don't think exists." -John Eldridge Most of us live in peaceful neighborhoods, where gunshots don't awaken us in the night, but just because we don't hear the gunshots, doesn't mean they are not being fired. As I was driving north on College Avenue on Saturday, I was stopped by a line of cars following a hearse. The funeral procession was incredibly long. After seven or eight minutes, I swung into another lane and turned hoping to find a clear path home, but the procession had turned as well and once again, I was stopped. Literally hundreds of cars went by. I called out to someone stalled in the procession nearby and they held up a flyer with the name Albert Germany in large type. I offered a quick word of condolence as they drove off. Albert Germany, Jr. was killed on June 12, around 5:30 pm. Police have arrested Dallas M. Jones and charged him with murder. I doubt I would ever have heard the victim's n...
I never let my schooling get in the way of getting an education." -Mark Twain Graduation day is looming for many of our children—a time when we take a nostalgic look back wondering what they've learned, hoping they've learned enough. But in fact most of what they learn is not taught in the classroom, it is learned by example and by the words we speak to our kids over time. Rick Rigsby's 2017 graduation speech at the Maritime Academy at California State University makes that case. He spoke on the subject of his book "Lessons From A 3rd Grade Drop Out," about his father, who left school to work on the family farm at 8 years of age. It has been viewed on YouTube more than 9.6 million times. Rigsby's father had little, but taught himself to read and write. And read he did. He would quote Michael Angelo to his boys saying "I won't have a problem with you if you aim high and miss, but I'll have a big problem with you if you aim low and hit....
If you're only going to look for your keys under the street light, you're never going to find your keys."-AnonymousScientists and others refer to this as the "Streetlight effect" which represents a form of bias in searching for answers. It comes from a joke that was published in a Massachusetts newspaper in 1924 that goes like this:"A policeman is helping a drunk man search for his keys under a streetlight. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost the keys there. The drunk replies, "No, I lost them in the park, but I'll never find them there, this is where the light is".We all seek answers in our personal and professional lives, but we often look for the truth where the process of seeking is easy rather than where the truth actually lies. The problem is the keys are not there, and the answers to our most pressing problems cannot be known unless we are willing to get a little lost in the darkness of the issues to find...
When our thoughts are filled with hate against anyone, negro or white, we exist in a living hell that is as real as hell will every be."-George Washington CarverFor all of us who need reminding, George Washington Carver was born a slave in Missouri about 1860 and rose to brilliance and world-wide celebrity during the next 70 years. As slavery was abolished in Missouri, he and his brother James were adopted by his white former slave owners Moses and Susan Carver. "Aunt Susan" became both mother and teacher to the boys since the local school only accepted whites. Seeing a spark of brilliance in George, she encouraged him to continue his education beyond what she could provide.As a young adult, Carver homesteaded to raise money for school only to be turned away from the first college to which he was accepted when they saw that he was black. Undeterred, he entered racially integrated Simpson College in Iowa, eventually receiving a masters d...
My wife and I were happy for 20 years, then we met each other." -Rodney Dangerfield The late Rodney Dangerfield was a comedian whose career spanned the 60s, 70s, and 80s. He was a regular on The Tonight Show and had his own New York night club. For a man who built his entire persona on being a guy who "gets no respect," he was very successful. One of his jokes: "I once took my wife to the dog show. She won." Dangerfield was married three times. Abandoned by his father at an early age, he probably had no idea what a healthy marriage looked like. But whatever the cause of his marital problems, by the 80s, he was living in an apartment with his poodle. Most of us understand that a successful joke requires a seed of truth to be funny. His jokes about his wife were filled with those bitter seeds. No wonder behind the laughter there were real problems. The scriptures are filled with mandates for us to honor and respect each other. But mo...
How long will it take?I come to say that however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long because no lie can live forever."-Martin Luther King Jr., at the Alabama capitol in Montgomery, March 25, 1965Watch Clarence Moore, Northside New Era Baptist Church recounting King's speech at St. Lukes United Methodist Church, January 20, 2019That day in March of 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. was speaking before a group of supporters in Montgomery, Alabama, having just finished a 5-day, 54-mile march from Selma, at the head of a group of thousands of nonviolent demonstrators.King told the assembled crowd: "There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes."He asks, how long will it take? in an eloquent treatise on the inevitable victory of truth. In ma...
