“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”

• Proverbs 11:2 

Sometimes I think back on those early years struggling to support a wife, two kids and a mortgage on not much income.  While we did usually manage to have one decent family car, about all I could afford to drive back then was an old junker.  Most memorable was an older model Volkswagen Square-Back, sort of like a Beetle with the engine in the back, except it was a station wagon.  I had purchased it from a work colleague for a mere five hundred dollars, but even at that I still had to borrow money and make payments to the bank.  The biggest problem with the car was that it had no first gear which required learning a delicate technique of manipulating the clutch in order to start off in second, a particular challenge when going uphill.  Yes, those were lean times.

Although it did break down occasionally, for the most part that old VW actually served me pretty well as far as getting to and from work every day.  The problem was not the functionality, rather it was the embarrassment of not appearing to be very prosperous – which, of course, I wasn’t.  But I wanted to look prosperous, you see, like a young executive on the move – which, in retrospect, I was except for the rather meager salary I was making.

Humbling as it was, driving those old clunkers sort of kept things in perspective for me.  I didn’t like it much at the time, but looking back I realize how important humility was in my development.  How desperately I longed for reasons to be cocky like some of my peers at the time, some of whom actually drove fancy new cars!  Humility, though, taught me many lessons such as empathy and patience toward others, things I may not have learned had I not been relegated to driving those old jalopies.

Fortunately, my living standards are a considerably higher now than they were then – including the cars in my garage – yet in some ways things haven’t changed all that much; for there always seems to be something humbling that occurs whenever I start to feel a little overly proud.  I still don’t like it very much, but then I realize that humility continues to play an important role in my ongoing development.  As the Proverb reminds us, “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”

“Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.”  1 Corinthians 10:24 

I was sitting in my ivory tower corner office on the forty-fourth floor of a downtown Dallas skyscraper where I served as manager of a regional bond trading operation for a major Wall Street investment firm when I first heard that a plane had hit one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.  How sad, I thought, imagining some small aircraft whose pilot had wandered off course, then accidentally clipped its wings against the building and crashed.  Moments later, though, I stepped out of my office onto the trading floor where I happened to glance up at the large screen TV mounted on the wall just as a second giant airliner intentionally slammed itself head-on into the second tower.

Like me, most everyone I suppose who was older than toddler age back on September 11, 2001 remembers in great detail exactly where they were and what they were doing when they learned – or perhaps witnessed – about the attack on the Twin Towers in New York.  Some have referred to that event as our generation’s Pearl Harbor and have compared the firemen and other heroic first responders to those brave souls who sacrificed their lives on the beaches of Normandy on D-day.

Those were for sure evil acts we had witnessed that day, visited upon thousands of innocent victims, our fellow citizens, in our own country, on our own soil, specifically New York and our nation’s capital. . . . Then, before we could even begin to process what we had just witnessed, the most amazing thing happened, again before our very eyes, as waves of courageous first responders as well as ordinary citizens who happened to be nearby instinctively began to lay their lives on the line to save others, many losing their lives in the process, evil being overcome by good.  “Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others,” the Apostle Paul wrote.  Those words were written on the hearts of millions across our nation that day and continued to be for weeks and months to come.

I still have faith that in the long-run, goodness wins out over evil, that love wins out over hate.  We are God’s children after all, and because of that God works in all things for good.  Not that evil isn’t prevalent in a fallen world, but God is able to redeem every circumstance for our long-term good.  May we ever remember 9/11 as the sacred day that it is, when the goodness of God along with His faithful people prevailed over evil.

“Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”  – Mark 10:9 

We seem to reminisce a lot these days, Tee and I, and while some might muse we’re acting like old people, in defense of that the fact is older people reminisce because they have accumulated years’ worth of stories to tell, whereas younger folks haven’t even yet scratched the surface. Besides, the stories we reminisce about belong to us, we created them, we wrote them, we lived them, and we’ve earned the right to retell them.  Mostly, though, we laugh in our reminiscing, even at things that were not so funny at the time.  Good or bad, funny or not, seems most things that happen eventually work out or teach us valuable lessons, or else we simply live right on past them.

The stories we share with each other – and others from time to time – are more than just sweet memories, much more in fact.  They are history, real history, history that matters, history that needs to be passed on.  Thus we reminisce.  As acclaimed author, speaker and Benedictine Sister, Joan Chittister states in her powerful book The Gift of Years: “Family tales have always been the parables one generation handed down to the next to tell us who we are and where we came from. . . . The tale-telling of the older people [is] the catechism of the family.  These [are] the life lessons meant to make us all stronger, wiser, and truer.  It is those stories told in front of the fire, in the kitchen during a wake, at parties and memorial services, at holidays that become the fiber of a family, a group, a people.  These stories become the living history that binds us together.”

A primary role of grandparents, I believe, is to ensure that grandchildren are aware of who they are and where they came from.  We must teach them the “catechism of the family” as Joan Chittister refers to it.  They should know our stories, for better or worse, rich or poor, in sickness and in health, life lessons to help them grow stronger, wiser, and truer.  It is what marriage and family is all about; why it remains one of the most sacred and influential of all institutions; and why we must endeavor to preserve and protect it.  “Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate,” the scriptures say.  Or if I may be so bold as to rephrase, “what God has instituted, may mankind forever honor and perpetuate.”  It is in the spirit of that institution that my beloved and I celebrate this very weekend fifty-two years of marriage (September 4, 1971).  May, by God’s grace, we be blessed with many more stories to tell and many more years to tell them.

“You will go and leap like calves released from the stall.”  – Malachi 4:2 

While there are certain people who are justifiably incarcerated for committing criminal offenses, even those of us who are not criminals sometimes experience imprisonment in one form or another, though perhaps not physically locked up in a jail cell.  Such imprisonments may be due to an abusive home environment, a job we hate, a bad boss, an unhappy marriage, financial burdens, or debilitating health issues – imprisonments that are unfair, unjustified, that are no fault of our own, simply misfortunes of life.

Sometimes, though, we become prisoners from our own doing, not criminal activities, simply burdens and mistakes we lay on ourselves.  We’re like Otis, the town drunk in the quaint village of Mayberry on the Andy Griffith Show in which Andy Griffith played the role of Sheriff Andy Taylor along with Don Knotts who played Barney Fife his inept sidekick deputy.  Occasionally Otis would appear in one of the episodes stumbling into the sheriff’s office in a drunken stupor where he would wobble over and lock himself up in the jail cell for the night.  We do that too, don’t we, with our secret thoughts that may include regrets, insecurities, or bad thoughts or feelings toward someone?  Those private thoughts can confine us in the hoosegow just like Otis, holding us back from moving forward and using our gifts and talents to the fullest.  Otis, at least, would sleep it off and be set free the next day.  For the rest of us breaking free is not so simple.

It is not simple because freedom and imprisonment are a great paradox.  That is, what gives us real freedom, to the immature mind can look like imprisonment; while what to the immature mind appears to be freedom only leads to imprisonment.  I recall as an adolescent myself sometimes fantasizing about what it would be like to have plenty of money with no cares or responsibilities.  On the surface that looked like freedom at the time, until I began to realize that kind of freedom was only a pathway to the imprisonment of self-centeredness.  Paradoxically, becoming responsible, dedicating oneself to purposes greater than oneself, which on the surface may look like imprisonment, is actually the pathway freedom – real freedom to utilize our gifts and talents to their fullest.  It is when we discover those unique purposes that God has bestowed on us that we find true freedom.  Then, “You will go and leap like calves released from the stall.” . . . . . . Free!

“God created man in his own image.”  – Genesis 1:27 

Maybe I was a little sarcastic in the way I said it, in fact I probably should not have said it at all, except by then it was too late to take it back.  “I’ll bet that every meeting you attend you are the smartest guy in the room,” I had blurted out sarcastically without thinking.  It was an inappropriate remark for an executive coach to make to a client.  Yet his reaction surprised me.  While he acknowledged that he believed that to be true, his facial expression and body language seemed to indicate I may have struck a nerve.

He was a brilliant man, hard-working and dedicated, and a student of every detail of his area of responsibility, a high performer in every sense.  Why then was he not getting promoted?  Why was he not being considered for higher leadership positions?  And that is how I came on the scene, the reason he had engaged a coach.  So it was that, inappropriate as it may have been, my sarcastic comment had somehow flipped on the light switch, an ah-ha moment for both of us.  What we realized in that moment was that even though he was an encyclopedia of functional knowledge about every detail and knew all the right answers in meetings, what was holding him back was in leaving his humanity at the door when he came to work.

As I read more and more about the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution taking place it has reminded me of my journey with that gentleman and the parallels between the two in that knowledge and expertise and skills, while critically important, only take us so far.  It occurred to me that we humans are more than the knowledge we may have accumulated, than the skills we may have acquired.  “God created man in his own image,” and while God may be the ultimate intellectual, He is much more, which means, thus being created in God’s image, we too are much more.

AI has potential to provide great advancements for humanity, the world, and the universe.  It also has potential for great destruction when used with the wrong motives.  Then there is the fear that it will displace human endeavors altogether.  Except!  Except, only mankind was created in God’s image, not AI, and it is only God who breathes life and spirit into us humans.  God is the ultimate moral compass.  God is love, and only God can give us hope. . . That was my client’s epiphany – and his career took off.