The Train
January 21st, 2009Are You Going to Finish Strong? Nick Vujicic
January 20th, 2009Embracing Differences
January 19th, 2009
embracing differences
comic by Chan Lowe @ www.list@myucomics.com
Jerome Green
This is a year of embracement and a very exciting time in our world. Come Tuesday, we will have a new President, but more importantly, we will have a new lease on life, increased hope and a plethora of new possibilities. The election of Obama came on the heels of a new wave of energy and spirit. This is the year that we will learn to embrace everything around us and this learning will be crucial in dealing with the issues of the economy, our families and life itself.
At Henry’s (my spiritual advisor) annual New Years Eve gathering, he discussed the principle of embracing others – even if you don’t get along, can’t give them what they want or don’t agree with them. Embracing someone is all about how much of your heart and luvv you are willing to give.
As I embraced this idea, I took a fresh look at several areas of my life. I examined how I interact with the many homeless people and beggars on the street. I thought about the times that I am asked for spare change and how I sometimes give it and others time don’t. When Henry was speaking on New Year’s Eve, he said that “Giving someone money doesn’t mean you have embraced him or her. You can give someone a strong embrace and it will do more for them than the little bit of cash you give them.”
I realized that if I give or don’t give money, that there are very few times that I have actually embraced the homeless. I may say hello or I speak to them, but most of the time I just get a little annoyed or wish they wouldn’t approach me. Years ago, Henry said to me “The more you luvv, the more alone time you will have.” People feel the power of luvv. Most people don’t want that much luvv coming their way so they leave you alone.
Henry’s comments about embracing others hit home for me. The embrace is not a hug. Hugs can be full of fake energy and can shut you and the recipient down. An embrace is the exchange of your heart to someone else’s heart. I saw this in action the other day. For the past year I’ve had a person I used to do business with call me and leave messages. As I was no longer interested in doing business with this person, I never returned his calls and I figured that he would “get the message” and stop calling me. The last time he called, I could hear the conscience speak to me and say “What did you just learn about embracing someone? Oh, by any chance would this be the time for an embrace?” So I called the person back, spoke to him and told him about embracing people more than ever this year. I confirmed that I was no longer in need of his services, but wanted to reach out to him. The next day I received a phone message and he spoke specifically about feeling the embrace and how important embracing was going to be for him this year.
In less than twenty-four hours we are going to have a new President. There is the anticipation of great change ahead. How you will direct the changes in your own life? How will you answer the call for change that President Obama has asked of each person in this country? It is our responsibility to do our part to lift our country out of its depression and to bring about more spirit and production. As we look upon this day, no matter what political, racial or economic affiliation you have, focus on who you owe. Embrace them and begin to bring your luvv to them. Some of it can be done “in the silence” or through your thoughts. The beauty of embracing others is that you don’t have to agree with them – just learn to luvv them and hold them in your heart. It will greatly assist us during these difficult economic times and will assist with the rebuilding of the worth of each individual in our country and the world.
Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the nation after his second term as President, had this to say:
“To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing aspiration. We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
This is too funny
January 14th, 2009The Weight Is Not Over
January 13th, 2009
The Weight Is Not Over
Jerome Green
I had to laugh at myself tonight. Here I was returning from the gym mixing a Glycemic shake for weight loss and my 17-year-old son was mixing a Protein shake for weight gain. How funny life is! Here he is trying to gain 5 lbs to get to 137 and I am trying to lose 50 lbs to get to 185. I had to really laugh at just how ironic life really is. It can seem that we are always at the opposite end of things – searching for the ideal situation.
Similarly, we have complained about how high gas prices were, how much clothing and other goods cost and the inflated prices of buying a home. Now, gas prices are down, goods and services are at bargain prices and homes and cars are priced within reach, but many of us can’t take advantage of it because we either don’t have the cash flow or can’t get a loan.
A lot of the changes we are seeing in our surrounding community, country and world are more about bringing a greater focus to our spiritual connections and the ability to find the victory when the news is promoting despair. This past Christmas I was able to shop for a few presents. My decision was based upon much money I had, but more so, my discernment and my willingness to really allow myself to feel Christmas – and not feel that I had to give physical presents to everyone.
We had a wonderful Christmas night dinner with some companions and my wife Gail came up with a Christmas gift exchange activity that was a lot of fun. So many of our companions expressed great joy in the exchange and the fact that they could really feel Gail’s luvv in the gifts. Luvv needs to become part of the GNP. The paper is not holding up. It’s disappearing as fast as it’s printed. It is crumbling around us and no matter how many Bail Out Plans the government comes up with, in the end, it’s going to take a lot of government work projects to get us going in our new direction.
Learning how to be Happy is becoming another essential skill to have. Being Happy is really about going beyond the creative forces that try and tell us what happiness looks like and feels like. Happiness is in the inner joy that permeates our being and allows the joy to flow with or without the material objects. Being Happy doesn’t mean that you have to be poor or wealthy. It simply requires an open heart, a warm embrace and the ability to not get caught up in the images projected by Madison Avenue that try and tell us how we should be or what we should look like.
In my struggle to lose weight, I sometime catch myself looking back at how I use to look, or feel, and while I want to get back to that person, I will never get the years back or look like I used to. I have a novel thought that just maybe I can actually be better than I use to be. Maybe not run as fast or jump as high, but actually, by using what I’ve learned and getting in both physical and spiritual shape, maybe get in the best shape of my life. The same can be said for the country and the economy. The more we try and capture the past, the more depressed we’ll become. There is no going back to the way it was. For centuries, we, as people, have always lamented on those words “the way it was.”
I know I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward. GE, CEO, Jeff Immlet has talked about a
“Business Reset”, where businesses are spending time trying to go back, but must go forward or they will not prosper. Specific industries will be restructured within the next 6-12 months, and the intersection with government and business in the U.S. and Europe will change for at least a generation. “That companies need to stand for something beyond the bottom line is profound”, said Immlet, “we are in an emotional, social and economic reset”.
As I continue to drink my Glycemic shakes in search of the lbs leaving me, I also have to look at all the other extra weight I might be carrying. This is an ideal time to streamline and, as in my son’s case, build up. Building more character, charisma and purpose are going to be very good traits to have and develop. No matter what the government does, it won’t absolve us of individually developing our own Super Powers to combat the forces of malaise that took over the collective conscientiousness of a country for the past decade or so. We are Super People, with super abilities and we are all being asked to put on our Super Hero uniform and advance our world – one family at a time.
“It will not come easy or happen overnight, and it is altogether likely that things may get worse before they get better. But that is all the more reason for Congress to act without delay. I know the scale of this plan is unprecedented, but so is the severity of our situation. We have already tried the wait-and-see approach to our problems, and it is the same approach that helped lead us to this day of reckoning.” –President-Elect Obama on American recovery and reinvestment
My weight, like our issues, will not go away over night. Shucks, it took me 15 years to put this weight on. It will take resolve, dedication, clear thought and discipline to reduce my weight, and to build a new America.
The Conscience is Ironic
January 9th, 2009
catherine Donnelly
This picture was taken in 1985 at Catherine Donnelly’s graduation from Princeton. With her are her mother, Alice Brown (left) and grandmother, Martha Thompson.
Sometimes the Conscience has a humorous interplay with our lives. It was 24 years ago that a white family decided that their little girl couldn’t and wouldn’t room with a black girl. Little did they know that that black girl would grow up to become the first-lady in the White house. The Conscience is irony in action.
Reported on 4/12/08
www.AJC.com
Michelle Obama speaks last week at Winston-Salem State University. When Catherine Donnelly saw her on TV news reports, she thought she looked familiar. She walked into the historic Nassau Inn that evening and delivered the news to her mother, Alice Brown. “I was horrified,” recalled Brown, who had driven her daughter up from New Orleans. Brown stormed down to the campus housing office and demanded Donnelly be moved to another room. The reason:
One of her roommates was black. “I told them we weren’t used to living with black people — Catherine is from the South,” Brown said.
Today both Donnelly, an Atlanta attorney, and Brown, a retired schoolteacher living in the North Carolina mountains, look back at that time with regret. Like many Americans, they’ve built new perceptions of race on top of a foundation cracked by prejudices past — and present. Yet they rarely speak of the subject.
Barack Obama’s run for president changed that. When the Democratic senator from Illinois invited more dialogue on race last month, Shock to the stereotype. The acceptance letter from the Ivy Leagues was really the culmination of two peoples’ hard work. “My mother was thrilled,” Donnelly jokes, that she got into Princeton. Donnelly, now 44, captained the basketball and volleyball teams. She was the homecoming queen. And she racked up science and math awards, often with the help of her mother.
But the “Three R’s” weren’t the only thing Donnelly learned from an early age. There was a fourth one. Her mother and grandmother filled her head with racist stereotypes, portraying African-Americans as prone to crime, uneducated and, at times, people to be feared. Brown, 71, explains that she was raised to think that way.
She recalls hearing her grandfather, a sheriff in the North Carolina Mountains, brag about running black visitors out of the county before nightfall. And Brown’s parents held on to the n-word like a family heirloom. In fact, upon learning that her daughter had a black roommate at Princeton, Brown’s first call was to her own mother. Her suggestion: yank Donnelly out of school. alive and well on a prestigious campus in the Northeast. The university’s private eating clubs, host to frat-style parties, were largely white. The social scene for many minority students, including Obama, revolved around an activity building called the Third World Center. ‘I was inspired …. I was envious’ When Donnelly first saw Obama’s wife on TV, she was struck by how tall and graceful she looked. Then she studied her more closely. Michelle Obama looked so familiar, down to those long fingers. Could that be Michelle Robinson? A Google search gave Donnelly the answer. Obama was far more than a first-lady hopeful. She had gone to Harvard Law School, had been an associate dean at the University of Chicago and rose to vice president at the University of Chicago Hospitals and was making over $500,000.00 at the Chicago Hospital plus receiving $51,000 as a director of Wal-Mart and the associate dean salary was unknown.
“I was inspired,” she says. “I was amazed. And I was envious of all she had accomplished.”
Donnelly called her mother, who in turn phoned the friend who had traveled with her to Princeton all those years ago. The friends had stayed up that night calling everyone they knew with a connection to the university, hoping to get Catherine moved out of the room.
“We thought this is so ironic,” Brown says. “[Obama] could be the first lady, and here we wanted to get my child out of her influence.”
Some empathy for lingering anger Living as a gay woman has made Donnelly far more aware of what it’s like to be judged by a trait beyond your control. “Being gay is such a small part of who I am.” Now she wishes she had reached across racial lines at Princeton. “I don’t think I ever set foot in the Third World Center,” she says of the popular hangout for minority students. “It’s like this mystical place.” When Brown heard about Barack Obama’s former pastor — his angry rants against white America — she didn’t like it. But she understood. “If I had been treated the same way blacks have been treated,” she says, “I’d be resentful, too.”
Dirt off Your Shoulders
December 9th, 2008This is a great blog article from my buddy BrooklynRon
check it out.
Carlos and I need a Bailout too!
December 9th, 2008
Henry Ford, talking about the banking system, said on February 11, 1934:
“Let them fail; let everybody fail! I made my fortune when I had nothing to start with, by my own ideas and myself. Let other people do the same thing. If I lose everything in the collapse of our financial structure, I will start in at the beginning and build it up again.”
What a novel idea that Henry Ford had. I wonder if the Big 3 read this before they starting whining like spoiled brats. Some upper manager at Ford must have read the above quote in a Ford Company History Book and decided that it would be hypocritical to go against their founding father’s wishes. So, Ford says they can make it, as long as the other two get some assistance.
In exchange for accepting federal aid, the automakers would be required to submit to significant government oversight. A cabinet-level “Car Czar” appointed by the White House would oversee the companies’ recovery efforts, with veto rights over any transaction totaling $25 million or more.
The average Joe and Jane don’t have a bailout option coming in the foreseeable future. Hey – I could use about $500,000 and I’ll be fine – pay all my bills, grow my businesses, buy a new car and have some change left over. Wouldn’t a bail out of Jerome be paramount to stimulating the economy? I would think so. I would pay it back with interest and I will accept an oversight of a government task force. They can even veto any transaction over $50,000. (I know how to spend $49,999 x 10 very easily.)
I understand that by bailing out the Big 3, we are keeping people working a few days more so that they don’t become homeless, especially during the holidays – but really. How can the Big 3 even fix their faces to ask for a bail out, when they don’t have the infrastructure to restructure, realign their business models, and keep employees working?
I can tell you who else needs a bail out since we seem to be so free at giving them out these days. How about my mechanic Carlos? He’s a great guy, does a fine job fixing cars and is experiencing upper management depression. When I asked him if he was going to make his traditional Christmas pilgrimage to Mexico, he said, “No, not this year, I can’t afford it.” This is critical. Carlos has gone to Mexico for 2-3 weeks every year for the last 10 years. This is a travesty and we need to call an emergency session of the lame dick Congress to make sure that Carlos doesn’t suffer any more. Carlos went on to tell me that on top of having fewer clients, he is also dealing with increasing cost for material and parts, which mostly come from…yes, you guessed right, the Big 3!
Now back to my bail out. I really need one, since I was at Carlos’s garage in the first place because my fissure valve (little round thing that helps hold all the fluids in the engine in) was cracked and I need to have it replaced. I am not even sure how much it’s going to cost. Carlos is always been fair in his pricing, but I am not sure now because he might be thinking about that trip to Mexico.
Carlos went on to say.
“People use to come in for preventive maintenance, it’s now just more or less the emergency or required fixes.”
I sure wouldn’t have been there today if I could have figured out how to keep my coolant from running out of the engine the minute I put it in. I tried lame duck tape but it didn’t work. Where is my bail out? I looked around his lot, and there was room to park my car pretty much anywhere. Just 3 months ago, I would have had to squeeze by big 1989 Lincoln into a corner somewhere, but today, I could park wherever I pleased.
I would have thought that the car repair business was recession proof, but I can now see why it’s not. There are more people who are stretching out the oil change to 5,000 miles or not at all, or doing it themselves. New tires? People will probably wait until the ones they have just blow out. More people are holding on to their old cars. Mine is a beautifully running 1989 Lincoln that I call “Hombre”, that is a paint job away from being a new car. When gas prices where up to $5.00 a gallon, it required a lot of faith to take a 10 mile trip. Now with prices down to $1.80, I can feel a little bit more freedom to drive around.
The thing that strikes me the most about Carlos is that, unlike the Big 3 and Wall Street, he is not making me feel bad because he can’t take his trip to Mexico this Christmas. He is upbeat and positive. His customer service has always been very good and he stands behind his work – which is something that not many businesses do even in prosperous times. I must say that Ford did a pretty good job with my 1989 Lincoln and it runs very well, better than their current cars, which is part of the Big 3 problem.
If the Big 3 are getting a bail out, Carlos and I should get one too. Oh, hell, let’s just become socialist and bail out the whole country. Wouldn’t that be European of us?
Man-Man
December 8th, 2008
I don’t wanna play basketball, yea baby, ’cause I’m too small to hoop,”
–Rapper-Imajin
If you’ve ever been told that basketball is for people 6’0” or taller, or you believe you are too small to play basketball, I invite you to go down to Inglewood High School (home of Paul Pierce) in Inglewood, California and watch 5’0”, “Man-Man”, real name Gerald Evans, who is in the 11th grade. I first saw Man-Man last year when he was a sophomore, when his team played Santa Monica High School.
Man-Man caught the attention of several people in the stands and some were even laughing about how small he was. One person commented that he must be the team mascot, manager or coach’s son. But, I have scouted talent for over 30 years, and I knew he was a contributing member of the Inglewood team. This 5’ 0” had a swagger about him. Sure enough, four-minutes into the first quarter, this little bullet shot up off the bench and was at the scorers’ table. Prior to Man-Man coming in the game, Inglewood was playing pretty flat and Santa Monica was having their way with them. Well, in comes Man-Man, and like the movie “Gone in 60 seconds”, all of Santa Monica’s Mojo shifted to Inglewood. Inglewood went on to win the game as a result of Man-Man’s energy and Dashawn Gomez’ outstanding play down the stretch that sent them into overtime. But it was Man-Man that shifted the tide and the game with his infectious energy.
I don’t even know if Man-Man even thinks of himself as a small player. He plays big, plays every possession and never quits. The minute he comes in the game, you can see how much he lifts the spirits of his teammates and the fans. I have never seen him not make an impact. If you are a player on the short side, or the large variety, you need to see Man-Man play. Not only is he quick and fast, but he also knows how to take advantage of everything he’s been given. Imagine being an opposing guard with average handles and then having to deal with this guy who is up in you, giving you no breathing room, and here you are trying to run the offense. It’s a daunting experience! A year after seeing Man-Man have an impact in a big game, I got to see him, once again, bring verve with a resolute spirit and acuity of ability to the floor that very few players have.
Man-Man has a huge heart, some above average athletic ability and an “I won’t quit” attitude. I don’t know if Man-Man will play at the proverbial “next level” that we all talk about, but who cares? There is so much focus on the “next level”, that I think we often forget about the level the players are at right now. There is a risk as a player, coach or parent of getting too far ahead of the moment.
Play hard, work hard, and bring your heart in each moment and let that determine what the future holds. The biggest trend in basketball is to go for size, and yes, the game is getting bigger and stronger. But if you really have a passion for the game, why not go as far as you can, for as long as you can? Basketball is an activity that can be played for a long time if you take care of your body, stay in shape and don’t have too many injuries. Who knows, the “next level” for you might just be the White House!
