6things2

6 Big Things to do Before You Die

One of my earliest memories is from Kindergarten. We were standing in a line outside the cafeteria, when these much older and impressive people arrived. They were Juniors from the high school. They had come to sell us pencils. I believe to this very day the major fund raising project reserved for the Junior class of Haverling High is selling #2 pencils with the Varsity Basketball Schedule printing around it. They come in blue with white letters or white with black. These big grown up people made a big impression. I said to myself, “When I’m a Junior, I’m coming back here to sell pencils too and I did! It was the first big goal I ever set for myself and at 57 years old I still feel the pride of accomplishment. We’re never too young to have a big goal.

A business best seller of the ‘90s: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras popularized the acronym BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal). Their extensive study showed that companies with a Big Goal tended to be more successful than those without one. A “bee-hag” has three characteristics. It’s got to be big enough to take about 10 years to achieve. It should be clear, compelling and easy to remember. Their example was JFK setting the goal of “a man on the moon in this decade.” Finally it should be consistent with the company’s values. Henry Ford set out to provide a car that every household could afford. He didn’t try to build a better railroad. Companies work better with BHAGs. People have more complete lives when they have Big goals to accomplish.

Long before that ‘small step for man and giant leap for mankind’, another man discovered the importance of BHAGs in the lives of ordinary people. Victor Frankel was a Jewish concentration camp prisoner under the insane rule of Hitler. He noticed that other prisoners who found a way to discover meaning, even in the face of such disaster, were the ones who lived longer and had a greater possibility of survival. With death from starvation or the gas chambers a mere breath away, Frankel took up the BHAG of developing a new kind of Psychotherapy. His book, Man’s Search for Meaning, tells the story. It’s important to have Big Things to do if we have 10 years, or seemingly only 10 minutes in which to achieve them.

Write and Publish a Book

Here is my Big list. Don’t expect it to be yours. Just let these ideas stir up your own desires. Until it wore out I had a poster in my office that said. “If you don’t know where you are going you’ll probably wind up some place else.” It’s hard to achieve a goal if you don’t know what success will look like. If you are reading this, and it came from a book store, Amazon.com, or the internet, I have accomplished my number one Big thing. I want to be a published author.

Compose a Song That Becomes Widely Popular

Number two on my list is to compose a song that becomes widely popular. I’ve been writing songs for many years. By now I’d guess there are well over 500. Whenever I despair that none will be well known I think of John Newton. Some of you may not even recognize his name. Others will not know he was a clergyman in the Church of England. Still fewer know that for years he wrote a song a week for use in that small country church. Yet all of us can sing at least one verse of his greatest accomplishment: the ever popular hymn Amazing Grace!

John Newton’s accomplishment gives me hope. With periodic inspiration from the Holy Spirit I keep composing. Mostly we sing the songs I write at Church. A few have gained a wider exposure. Two of my songs are moving forward in circulation and popularity: Under Your Rainbow, and Can’t Shake Me. They are published in the Louisiana Kairos prison ministry songbook. Go to our music room and you can listen to Under Your Rainbow and 8 other songs.

Under Your Rainbow

Lord let me live under your rainbow,
Blessed by the promise of covenant love,
Let Your light shine like a light in a window,
Cast off the darkness with your love.

Thick are the clouds of trouble around me.
Deep is the flood of danger in the night.
Rough are the waves on the streets of the city.
Send the peace dove and Your light.

Now I see storm clouds are passing.
Prepare a home for my soul to reside.
Plant a new faith in my life for you serving.
In my heart may love aide.

This song was written at the time of the first Gulf war as our parish was gathered for prayer in Charlotte, NC. It took on new meaning and became a favorite at St. George’s, Bossier City following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. One of our parishioners was Lay Leader for a Kairos Outside event. Elaine used Under Your Rainbow as the theme song for the weekend. Women in the lives of incarcerated men found it resonated with the storms in their troubled lives. In 2005 the song took on a whole new and less metaphorical tone, following Hurricane Katrina when many cities in the south were indeed filled with flood and danger.

Can’t Shake Me

Devil, you can’t sake me.
Devil, you can’t make me.
Devil, you can’t take my soul away.

You can tempt me in the morning, noon, and night.
You can lie and steal and cheat and try to make me up tight.
You can throw your slings and arrows my way,
But I’ll will still be here to fight another day!

Sometimes the road to fulfilling big things opens without our conscious effort. Can’t Sake Me was written in response to a particularly difficult and troubling church meeting. One of my KAIROS (a prison ministry) team friends thought it would work well for his church’s Alpha course. Richard uses it twice a year in that context. When it came time for a revision of the statewide KAIROS songbook he suggested I contribute. I submitted several and these two made it. Sometimes our Big goals unfold in ways we did not imagine.

Take Prize Winning Photographs

Like most Baby Boomers, my first camera was a Kodak Brownie with the big flash attachment. Filed somewhere for a sometime, lifetime scrapbook are fuzzy black and whites from family vacations in Canada and Boy Scout Camp. In those formative years the photo journalism of Life Magazine and National Geographic fascinated me.

Eventually I owned a grown up camera, a Pentax K1000 no frills all manual accept for the built in light meter. National Geographic was my model for evaluating the quality of my pictures. Could I take a picture worthy of this wonderful magazine? I lugged that weighty camera and two huge telephoto and wide angle lenses on three expeditions worthy of my ideal. I have pictures of the Sphinx, the Ruins in Copan, and the back hills of a Philippine Island.

It was July 15th, 2006 and I was standing in line at the post office. Glancing around the room in boredom my eyes fell upon a calendar on the wall. The photo above the little white day boxes was of a giant sunflower. “That’s my picture!” I almost said out loud, as I left the line to have a closer look. It was the KSAL Storm Tracker Weather Calendar. There across the top of the picture was my name and home city! As they say here in the South, I “made” the picture the year before on Independence Day. It was taken with the highly technical next generation camera: a Kodak 4.0 mega-pixel digital camera with a real 10x zoom lens, and auto focus. I submitted it to the Photo Friday picture contest at the local TV station. The next Friday the winner was a picture of Dogwood blossoms. In disappointment I admitted it was a good picture too.

The station must not have been able to find me between then and publication of the calendar. I had remarried and moved from Bossier City a short 13 miles to Princeton. Once I finished my postal errand I drove over to KSLA; collected a dozen copies of the calendar, my Storm Tracker 12 umbrella and began to enjoy what was left of my 31 days of fame. The next week I submitted another picture and I’m waiting to see if I’ll make the 2007 Calendar.

It’s important not to give up on a Big thing too soon. It may already have happened! This experience has been an incentive for me to pursue photography with more focus.
Become and Old Time Fiddler

Attending a number of fiddling events at Shady Grove in North Carolina taught me one important thing. An Old Time Fiddler is someone who is at least 70 years old and taught themselves to play. At 45 I had a reasonable length of time to reach the goal. I went to the local school band store and bought a Stradivarius look alike on time.

Having first taken piano lessons off and on for three years when I was a child, as a young adult I have learned to play other instruments on my own. Beginning with a Ukulele at age 16 and a guitar the following year, thanks to Mel Bay, I also play a little banjo, mountain dulcimer, bowed psaltery and mandolin. The violin, however, is a much different challenge. It has no frets! You’ve got to really hear the right pitch and get your fingers on the neck just right. You’ve got to learn a thing or two about the bow as well. It’s still a mystery to me.

At first, when I had practiced about fifteen minutes, my wife would say, “Don’t you think you’ve done that long enough.” I knew I had made some progress when instead she said, “That was nice, play it again.” It’s been 12 years and I’m glad there are 13 more before the Old Time category catches up to me. I’ll need lots more practice once I reach 65.

Sometimes our Big things are the next logical step from prior accomplishments. Sometimes our Big things need the understanding, cooperation, tolerance, and support of others.

Landscape the Yard: The 30 Year Plan

Personality Type Theory tells us Intuitive Feelers, like me, spend most of their time being nostalgic for the past or dreaming about the future. It’s very important for us, especially in the second half of life, to intentionally place more focus on the here and now of the present. Doing the hands-on landscape work at our new home fills this need for me. We have approximately 2/3 of an acre. Unlike most of our neighbors, we kept as many trees as possible and are trying to avoid mowing grass. The first project was a minor necessity. We needed a gravel sidewalk to cover the mud from the driveway to the front porch.

Next on my agenda was a split rail fence. Using the few trees we cut to make room for the house and, whatever our neighbors were willing to share I began to build, one rail at a time. A fence now uniquely marks our lot. Guarding the front yard from atop the fence, sit three metal crows one of my parishioners makes from old shovels and discarded bicycle parts.

Brenda has planted all kinds of ground cover, bushes, bulbs, flowers and trees. If they survive the summer heat we are well begun with 29 years left to go. It’s good to have a Big thing that may never get done.

Pay off all my Debts

I know there are people out there, perhaps even you, who manage their money well. You easily discern between needs and wants. You patiently wait and pay cash for your cars. You saved for your kid’s college education and it was paid for before they were freshman. I managed to stay out of debt until I was a senior in college. I haven’t been debt free since. Sorry Larry Burkett, Crown Ministries, and financial planners everywhere. A special apology is owed to D.D. who had great faith and generosity to help me get close.

These days a government guaranteed loan of $3000 at 3% seems too good to be true. The truth is without the beer I could have done with a lot less. Mom bought the first car. The second set me back $900. Though I certainly paid it, I never paid attention to the interest rate. The next step backward came senior year of seminary when I was ambushed by my first credit card. A once in a life time trip to the Holy Land (another possible Big goal) set us back another $4,000. Paying for two homes at the same time was the costly mistake. By the grace of God, selling the second in Jacksonville Florida the year they hosted the Superbowl got us mostly caught up.

Now I’ve learned some of the ways getting out of debt can be accomplished. If you’re religious, give your tithe first. Then “pay yourself.” That is, no matter how small it is, save something! Pay down those high interest credit cards. Keep that car forever! Make at least one extra payment on the mortgage each year. Expand your income streams. Thanks for buying the book! And, Duh! Don’t spend more than you earn.

Some of our Big goals are harder to share. Some of our Big goals are outside our expertise. Some of our Big goals are things to do because they are the “right things.” We just have to grow up and do them!

Our Big things don’t have to be hairy and audacious. They do have to be Big enough and challenging enough to stir up our passion to move towards accomplishment and give us real meaning. However, real meaning doesn’t just come from hard work! It also comes from play. So let’s move on to 6 Fun Things To Do Before You Die.