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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday February 11, 2002 Volume IV Number 6 |
FOCUS - The Fire Within
The Olympic Torch is lit. Let the games begin.
Salt Lake City threw a party. A spectacle worthy of the name. The theme, “Light the Fire Within,” embodied by a twelve year old boy, a local Salt Lake City hockey player. He searched the ice for the flame which would ignite the Olympic ideal. As the night progressed, fire became a clear and suitable metaphor for the spark that drives the entire Olympic movement.
The party was a succession of touching and memorable moments.
A hush fell over the crowd as a tattered American flag entered the arena. Everyone knew it represented the tragic events of 9-11, and those whose lives were so purposelessly lost, and gave living tribute to a familiar line in our National Anthem. “… and the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night, that our flag was still there…” And it was. Torn. Soiled. But still intact. Still a strong symbol of the American spirit.
In an era of hyper-security, our President
appeared in open air, and made his way into the crowd to take a seat among the
American athletes and under the glare of mega-watt spotlights, surrounded by
giddy young competitors pleased to be in the company of the Commander in Chief,
proclaimed, “On behalf of a proud, determined nation, I declare open the games
of Salt Lake City, celebrating the Winter Olympic
Games.” He turned as Sasha Cohen, the figure skater, handed him a cell phone.
“Mr. President, would you please say hello to my Mom?” With a smile and a
Bushian nod he took the call.
If I could be someone else, if I could somehow be transformed into another person and live out their life as mine for a season or two, and do the things they do for a living, well, one prime candidate would be John Williams, who has in a single lifetime, accumulated an immense body of work familiar to most of us. A prolific composer, Williams’ collection includes a string of Oscar winning films, themes which have since woven themselves into the fabric of American culture… themes contained in musical scores for block-buster films like E.T., Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Jurrassic Park, Star Wars and Schindler’s List to name a few. The big orchestrations, the timpani, and the strings and the woodwinds filling in the score with energy and life, all flow from the oceanic mind and heart of John Williams. I even liked his short piece commissioned by NBC for years the signature theme of the Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.
And there he was in Salt Lake, introducing the world to yet another soon to be Williams classic, with the Salt Lake City Philharmonic Orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, baton in hand just like the old days with the Boston Pops, this time directing a legion of fine musicians on a frigid world stage, filling the air with strains of glorious sound, all with the intentional wave of his magic wand. I’d like to be John Williams… for a season, to direct that army of music-makers with the magic wand in my hand and translate those pages lined with staffs and stemmed notes and crescendos and decrescendos and swells and pianissimos and fortes into a room filled with harmony and sound and drumbeat and the color of music.
Wow. What a life it would be.
* * * * * * *
Imagination remains as one of our most prized human capacities. With it, we dream dreams. We create scenarios for the future. We picture a reality that is yet to be. Imagination motivates and energizes our planning. We are persuasive when we exercise our imagination. Our eyes light up. Our voices contain the element of urgency. People are drawn in. They want in on the action.
Let’s be real. Imagination is subject to abuse, as well. Schemes are hatched; dark, destructive plots that can hurt and destroy and come from an underworld of cruel and inappropriate and illicit behavior. These secret conspiracies find their genesis in an imagination gone foul. There is a dangerous downside to certain kinds of day-dreams.
So think about it - imagination has power both to build up and to break down.
While we need to be forever on guard, I think good imagination ought to be generously employed for those many positive purposes, encouraged in the young, embraced by the old, and for the rest of us somewhere in between, indulged on a regular basis.
No one doubts that every Olympic Athlete who prepared for years for this moment competition was driven by a dream. That mental picture, which included the visuals in living color and the bright sounds and even the scent of competition in the world arena drives the work-outs and the sacrifice and the training; pushing beyond the limits of human endurance, and then, in pursuit of the dream, walking through the narrow gates of the Olympic Stadium alongside team-mates who paid a similar price, all together, when at last the dream intersects the reality of time and space. What a glorious moment.
It’s a shame really, that for many of us disappointment and age and disillusionments and the harsh obstacles and terrible, unwelcome realities cause our dreams to fade. We let them go. One after the other, we release them into the air like a bird in the wild, tossing them to the wind, and bidding them a sad and tearful farewell as they fly away over the ridge.
Our imagination atrophies for lack of use. Our dreams reduced to shades of gray.
We give up. We settle in. We shut the blinds.
The Opening Ceremony reminds us that there are still possibilities out there worth pursuing.
Maybe the lighting of the giant cauldron signals something for us, too.
* * * * * * *
When Kristyn left her classroom on that ordinary Wednesday afternoon three weeks ago, her students filed out the door just like they always do. Glad to be free. She said, “See you tomorrow.”
But she didn’t.
On Thursday, she was gone.
That was the morning she was rushed to the hospital where for a full week, she and the rest of us hoped she would stay long enough to deliver a healthy baby.
Those hopes were dashed.
Kristyn has pretty much recovered physically from her terrible ordeal, her good husband Ben at her side. It’s been an emotional roller-coaster and a spiritual marathon. There have been long nights and dark days. The social worker handed her a little book entitled, “When Hello Means Good-bye.” It’s become a handbook for us all.
This week, Thursday, she returned to that classroom. She teaches science to sixth, seventh and eighth graders… and in two days of rotation, she sees over a hundred and fifty of them.
Certainly there have been days during this recovery period when she imagined leaving her students altogether. She was over five months along when she left that Wednesday afternoon – the entire student body anticipated the arrival of “Mrs. Duncan’s baby.” With giggly enthusiasm.
She’d have to explain.
A contingent of colleagues arrived for a visit to Kristyn’s home little over a week ago. They came bearing flowers and cards and notes. They also brought with them hugs and tears, and stories of the children and how they missed their science teacher. The loss of little Isaac was conscientiously reported to her students, and according to these fellow teachers, they all shared in the sadness.
Then they told Kristyn straight out – everyone wanted her back; her students, her colleagues, all were eager for her return.
When the time is right, they added.
Oh… one more thing, they said. Little William, a thirteen year old in Kristyn’s science class, the one with the short attention span and an ever present mother, a mom interested in William’s every move, the curriculum, the playground, the extra-curricular stuff, well, the news is not good.
William’s mom, the weekend after Kristyn went to the hospital, had a surgery. A delicate spinal surgery. In just two days, an infection took root. And in a tragic turn, under emergency treatment, she went back into the operating room, and died on the surgical table.
William, they said, had not been back to school since.
* * * * * *
Fire and ice.
The little time traveler, carrying a lantern, wove through the pageantry. Native Americans welcomed the athletes offering the blessing of five nations. The Mormon pioneers arrived with their Conestoga wagons and barking dogs and prairie critters of every sort, bison and eagles and moose and elk and coyotes, too, on ice skates brought to life by skilled puppeteers. The show took the crowd all the way to a contemporary hoedown as the Dixie Chicks fiddled and the whole crowd danced and the boy finally found the light.
The Olympic flag was carried to the pole under the stream of lights and the audience carrying lights of their own into the stands spelled out colored slogans and formed massive banners visible to the blimp droning above. Finally, a speed skater raced round the corner to a drumroll of timpani and snare, skates shooting a torrent of sparks from his blades, glowing in the night, and flames shooting from small torches in his two hands in a swirl of red and orange light, swooping through center stage where his flames ignited five circles of jets, each lighting the next, until the five rings forming the great symbol of the Olympic Games glowed flickering from the surface of the rink, blazing, a burning brand, and the crowd gasped in amazement.
The little boy found the light.
The ornamental Olympic Torch arrived on cue. The flame journeyed across the nation, and now entered the great arena under the spotlight. Held high by a solo runner. Olympians, familiar faces now aging from Games gone by, passed the torch one to the other and ran up the stairs to the top where the 1980 American Hockey team waited, the miracle team that upset the Russians in that memorable year, and the giant torch overlooking the stadium and all of Salt Lake City burst into a colossal flame.
The crowd roared its approval.
* * * * * * *
When Kristyn arrived for her first class Thursday morning at 7:15, a half dozen twelve year old boys waited at the entry. They wanted to witness her reaction first hand.
Their teacher pulled open her classroom door, and inside found balloons and a banner that read “WELCOME BACK MRS. DUNCAN – WE MISSED YOU!” and the black board filled with personal notes from every student, as was the white board on the other side of the room. Flowers in a vase sat on her desk, and the hugs began.
Teachers and staffers and administrators dropped by, too. They heard the stories of students preparing for the return of their science teacher, gone for three weeks. The kids expressed their sympathy as only twelve and thirteen year olds can.
There were lots of tears that day. And a warm embrace. And laughter. It was a homecoming.
“Then I told them my story, Dad,” Kristyn explained to me that night on the telephone.
“What did you say?” I asked.
I told them what happened in the middle of the night the last day I saw them. And how I went to the hospital with my husband and how the doctors and nurses helped us and how we thought that maybe if I stayed in bed for a couple of months and didn’t move one way or the other we might save our little boy.
I told them in simple terms about the danger of infection. And what an incredible miracle every little baby really is. And I told them I could hear the heartbeat of our little boy. And I felt him move.
I explained about the infection, and the scary and awful night a week later, the night we lost our little boy.
And then I said I went through a period of time, along with my husband Ben, when we were very sad and discouraged. And I admitted to them that I almost didn’t come back to school.
“Were they listening, honey?” I interrupted.
Dad, you could hear a pin drop in that room. They were more attentive than I’ve ever seen them. All six classes.
“You repeated it six times?”
Yep.
Then I told them what I learned. I told them about the wonderful people who surrounded us. I explained how Isaac got his name from the Bible story. I told them how much their notes and welcome back meant to me. Then I looked them right in the eye and I told them that every one of them is a miracle. A very very special person. Isaac didn’t make it, I said. I don’t know if I’ll ever know why. But you did. You made it. It doesn’t matter now what your circumstances are at home or anywhere else. And I looked at them all again, “You made it,” I repeated.
And I believe that you have a purpose. You’re not a mistake. You have something important to give. I can see it in all of you already. All of you.
Then she just smiled. And nodded. Like she believed her own words. Because she did.
“Now let’s get to work.”
And that broke the spell.
The youngsters opened their books at their teacher’s instruction with a new sense of resolve.
* * * * * * *
One of the aids took Kristyn by the arm in the hallway.
“William is here,” she whispered. “It’s his first day back… it’s been a week since his mother died. Someone heard him say that the only reason he came back today is because he heard about you and Isaac. He heard you were coming back to school.”
“No way,” said Kristyn. “Where is he?”
“Over there,” and she pointed in the direction of a lonely twelve year old, working hard to blend into the crowd out on the playground.
Mrs. Duncan went straight for him. She gently touched his shoulder. He’d pretended he didn’t see her.
“Hi William.”
“Hi Mrs. Duncan.”
“Ya got a minute?”
“Sure.” He shrugged.
They went into Mrs. Duncan’s Science room where flowers and balloons and notes still filled the place. They sat down.
“I heard about your mom.” William looked at the floor. “I’m so so sorry.”
William shook his head.
“You heard I lost my little boy… a week before you lost your mom.” William nodded again. “My boy’s name is Isaac.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I knew your mother, William. And I know she was a Christian.”
“You knew?”
“I’m a Christian, too,” she said.
“You are?”
“Yes.” She smiled.
“I kinda thought so,” he said.
“William… I think I know how you feel. I feel pretty much the same way. It just plain hurts. It really hurts. Lots of people are gunna try to say nice things to help you feel better… but it probably won’t, because it just hurts. And that’s OK... it hurts so badly.”
“They don’t understand,” he said. “I just want her back.”
“Me too. I want Isaac back, too,” Mrs. Duncan’s voice cracked.
And that’s when William let it go. They held hands and wept together. A little boy longing for his mom. And a mom longing for her little boy.
“I can’t tell you why. And I can’t take the pain away. But I do know this…”
He looked up at her through his tears.
“We’re gunna make it, you and me,” she said firmly. “Somehow. God will help us. It’s for real, William. I’m gunna pray for you.”
William looked back to the floor and nodded.
“Will you pray for me?” she asked.
William’s eyes came back to his teacher’s. He grinned slightly.
“Yes. Yes, I will.”
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Passion drives achievement. It’s the fire within. As we gather inspiration from Winter Olympians this week and next, let the message sink in. It’s not over for you. You may never win Olympic Gold, but there’s still room for you to grow. New levels of achievement. New worlds to conquer. Enjoy the over-stuffed chair as you watch. But when you switch the coverage off, and pull yourself out of the comfortable recliner, get ready to hit the pavement… running.
Mrs. Duncan and William connected in a powerful way. They learned something from each other. Loss is real. So is the pain. But there is hope. As long as we draw breath, there is still something for us to do and be. Kristyn’s getting back to a world she left behind. She’s a different kind of teacher now.
She held Isaac in her arms.
She’ll never be the same.
You’ve known disappointment and loss. Just like many of those athletes who’ve bounced back, dusted themselves off, and got back to chasing their dreams.
Today, on this yet another Monday morning, learn from them all, and get back in the race.
Let the games begin.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
LeaderFOCUS is brought to you by Good Stewardship Associates
Special Thanks for Design by my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
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