Sabbath Messages > Sabbath Message: November 5, 2005
Good Sabbath
November 5 , 2005
"Who is mighty? He who makes of his enemy a friend."
What a week of extremes! I trained up to L.A. but got jammed in a fatal accident on the train in front of ours. It took 3 1/2 hours for this tragedy to be investigated, so I simply returned home to be with Franny who had a terrible case of vertigo. The next day I saw my beloved brother and it was so good to be together even for a brief time. I also saw many old friends at the ULI Fall meeting. The Trustees went to dinner at the Disney Music Center, an audacious piece of architecture that defined the new downtown. Inside, after dinner, we entered the great hall to hear an organ recital. The organ showed the same audacity with pipes and forms seemingly in chaos, ah but the sound! The organist plays with feet, fingers and feeling that must be incredible to mere mortals. Surely the acoustics had been designed in heaven.
The next morning was spent with Jeff Lee, who is legally blind, but runs a building business with rare insight, left to him by his very active 80-year old Dad, Harlan, and Mom, Beverly. Harlan, has been my friend for almost my whole career. He is 80 but only in years, not in body or mind.
When I returned home, to be greeted at the station by my beloved Frances--worth any trip--I got into my computer and learned that I had lost one of my closest friends, George Smith, a rare genius of splendid articulation, whom I had invited to give his first speech so many years ago. George spent his genius years knowing finance like few others, but showing a love for his splendid spouse Pam, and his terminally stricken daughter Becky, a sensational human who was another angel in close touch with God, who needed her in heaven, but got her father sooner than any one had expected.
Fran and my close friend, Judge Michael Goodman, needed a sudden open heart escapade but came through it very well, thank God. Life is filled with the unexpected and innocence and lessons learned in pain or foolishness. Man is a rational animal, but still an animal that loses so much of that rationality as he wanders through mortality. What most of us need is open-mind surgery, where we learn to listen to life's possibilities so that we can expand our minds and our achievements.
I am slowly reading a marvelous book of thoughts on the human brain/mind, "An Alchemy of Mind", by Diane Ackerman, who writes with words seldom read, with lilting humor and superb rational thought, a true scientist who probably uses both sides of her brain as she explains--so beautifully, so wonderfully, what we think, why and how we think, and the organ that makes it possible (as far as we know). Learning is so important, but it is vital that we always have a portion of mind that remains innocent so that it is like a home that will always have room/wall space for one more precious possession. I'll now share a few of her words to sample what you must get a hold of: 'Not all of the brain works at the same speed. There's lickety-split reflexes, focused analysis, hurried thought, daydreaming, meditation, intuitive thought, and the slow meandering thought, done by the much-maligned unconscious. Insight roams the sea of the unconscious like the Loch Ness monster, a rumor whose wake occasionally becomes visible, but even then it's mystifying and scarcely believed." I took this soft cover beauty on the train, and no matter how tired my eyes were, I could not put it down. To ignore this soft-passioned mindful meandering would have been a sin against life itself. Buy it and read it, slowly so that the words can gush into your mind and heart and surely construct your soul.
O Lord, please treat George with words that he so cleverly articulated, for they were Your blessings, as well he knew,
And comfort his life-partner and Becky so that they continue inspired by his devotion and philanthropy.
Thank You, dear God.
Amen
Live life today, add to mind and soul, and reach for someone you love, for love shared is love eternally possessed.
sandy
