Kings

Our Christmas day highlight was seeing the film “Invictus.” It tells the story of Nelson Mandela’s presidency using the role of rugby as a national unifying force. It was a powerful film. It is amazing how willing a nation is to accept the unacceptable when enough people agree it’s ok. This is a truth we can contemplate in our nation, I’m sure. And in our lives. What do I accept that I know is unacceptable to the human spirit? Racism? Sexism? Greed?

New Year is approaching. Our friend, Gina, is flying up from San Francisco to celebrate with us. She and Andy will be opening their millennium box which was sealed on New Year’s Eve 1999. Ten years on it will be very interesting to read the letters they wrote to themselves. What kind of feelings will the other mementos in the box bring up?

New Year is our favorite holiday and a very special time. It is a time of power wherein we can review our year and chart our new course. We can let go of the old, set new goals, and embrace the new. What worked well last year? What didn’t? What can we carry into this year that is working? What do we need to leave in 2009?

Our big project plans are really developing now. Next week we will post the details of our big project, what we are thinking and how we plan to do it. Maybe this will ignite some interest in you; your ideas and input will be appreciated.

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“Seattle is a beautiful place, but in the 1980’s I was living in a beat up beach cabin. I had an old TV, a lumpy futon and one of those white plastic princess phones. I was basically broke, but my noisy old refrigerator was stuffed with fresh vegetables, eggs, fruit, beer and frozen pizza - and I had a spectacular view of Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains and the Seattle skyline.

That year, I volunteered to host a college exchange student from Guinea Bissau, Africa. When I picked him up at the airport, Salvatore was easy to spot. He was 23, tall and regal looking, with a huge smile and lustrous blue-black skin. He had lived his entire life as a barefoot fisherman in a small native village located on a big river deep in the jungle of Guinea Bissau- and now his village had raised the money to send him to study U.S. Fisheries on their behalf. He had traveled directly from his African village to Seattle, and I could see he was astonished at what he saw as we drove through the beautiful city.

When we arrived at my raggedy cabin, I worried that Salvatore might be disappointed with his new accommodations. He seemed somber as I showed him the little bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, TV and telephone. What was Salvatore thinking? I decided to take him out on the little deck to try to impress him with the view. The snow clad mountains were spread out against the sky that day, and one of Seattle’s majestic white ferries was gliding across the sparkling waters of Puget Sound. We stood there silently for a while, and then Salvatore turned to me with his brow deeply knit in thought.

‘You are a king?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I laughed, ‘I’m just an everyday person like you.’ Salvatore was silent for a moment, and then he turned again and said quite clear and emphatically, ‘You are a king.’ And it suddenly dawned on me that he was right. All these years I had been a king and not known it.” (Scott Sabol, PhD. (One, Zadra, D. and Yamada, K. 2009. Compendium, Inc.))