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Another Holiday Season, Chance To Get Message Right

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 28, 2007

Nashville, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Pensacola, Atlanta: I haven't flown this much in years.

It all has been in support of my book, "Get Real: A Spiritual Journey for Men." I have been speaking, teaching, signing, smiling, shaking hands and hugging necks.

The experience has pushed the edges of my comfort zone and forced me to learn how to communicate in new ways. I keep finding myself in front of large groups of strangers, but they are people who know me intimately because I don't hold much back when I write.

I was greeted in Atlanta by Wayne, a huge teddy bear of a former University of Georgia football player. He had gathered 50 to 60 men to study my book in small groups. I had been invited to speak during the sermon time slot at his church and then teach a longer segment with the study groups when they met that evening.

It was humbling to witness men stand up, fight back tears and tell a room full of people that something I wrote changed their life. What they shared changed mine, and what I'm receiving as a result is nothing short of a miracle.

The heart of my thesis can be summed up in the following assertion: No one need be content to chug along resigned to the inevitability of "business as usual." Or, to quote directly from the preface, "We are called to break out of the mediocrity of uninspired lives."

We have all been designed to live consequential lives that challenge and satisfy, and to leave the kind of footprint on this Earth that makes the world a better place because we lived here.

Does the way we live enrich both our families and the community? Is our part of the Tampa sprawl in any way improved because of us? I guarantee it will be if we live life to its fullest potential.

There's a quote from Howard Thurman (1900-1981) that I used in my last couple of presentations. "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is men and women who have truly come alive."

The measure of a truly great community is not so much its economic activity as it is the life of its people. Our future is less bright to the extent that we fail to find our passion and then share it with the world.

I'm concerned that we take our cue from the status quo, that we compromise too readily and that we hold back from our very best for fear of rocking the boat. We forget that America was founded because people were willing to rock the boat.

What if the way we have chosen to order our lives turns out to be a serious miscalculation? What if the writer of Ecclesiastes (2:1) was talking about us? "Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good. But that also proved to be meaningless."

What if the advertisements are wrong? What if we spend the coming month pouring our resources and our souls into a set of priorities and a frenzy of activity that's about as deep as a Tampa snowfall and lasts as long? We own a golden opportunity to carry Tampa into the new year by re-engaging Thurman's most excellent advice.

What Tampa needs is for its people to actually live as if the message of Christmas really does mean something: something Santa Claus isn't equipped to leave under our tree, something deeper than religious noise, something other than business as usual.

Columnist Derek Maul can be reached at derekmaul@gmail.com.

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