Integrity In The Moment of Choice

Wednesdays are usually pretty awesome days for me. They begin with me joining a men’s breakfast sponsored by our church. We meet at the Janesville IHOP and call ourselves MOFIA – Men of Faith in

Action. We have been meeting for years and have become very comfortable with each other. We pray together, we share cares and concerns, and then Pastor Nate – my good friend and spiritual coach – leads us in an inductive Bible study from which we all have great take-aways for our daily lives. Anyone is welcome to join us. Just show up at the IHOP at 6:30 a.m. on any Wednesday morning. Take a right at the cash register and then a left and you’ll find us in the back. Why not invest an hour with us? We’re a pretty benign group. What do you have to lose? Personally, my week does not go as well if I have to miss MOFIA for some reason.

Following MOFIA, Pastor Nate and I almost always adjourn to Starbucks where we review church business and initiatives, community issues, personal accountability, and share ways that God has been working in our lives.

Not a bad way to start the day by any stretch of the imagination!

Wednesday, May 1, started very much in the way I described above. I was feeling good. I was feeling whole. I was feeling like I was making progress on personal goals. But then I attended a public meeting where information was shared that knocked my outlook quickly to the negative side of the ledger. Life is like that. I’m running along smoothly when suddenly life’s vicissitudes jump right on me and land a telling blow.

Two of my very good friends, guys with whom I have worked closely on numbers of positive initiatives in Milton, resigned their positions. While I realize that perspective in the community runs the gamut of human emotion, I was saddened to the core. To understand that great creativity, enthusiasm, energy, commitment, and loyalty would be slipping like water through our collective fingers was gut wrenching for me. I’m a pretty level guy most of the time – probably bordering boredom. I was not level after that meeting. My heart was empty but coursing through my mind and body were strong emotions and words that I did not like and I did not want to display nor utter. What to do to regain equilibrium?

I turned to the bike trail. I felt it was too chilly to bike so I walked and I walked. I started at Storrs Lake Road, walked to County N and returned. My timer recorded 2.5 hours and my phone indicated 6.9 miles.

It was pleasant out there – temperature just right for walking. The red-winged blackbirds were watching me closely and calling out jibes about me being in their territory. Spring was showing itself through blossoms & tiny leaves on trees. Thistles looked healthy & thriving. I reveled in the time to process, to seek God’s guidance, to enjoy nature, to reboot.

While walking I picked up litter – two bags full. Picking up litter does not rise to the top of my list of favorite things to fill time but I do find it therapeutic. It's a definitive positive action I can take to make a part of the world better. It gives me satisfaction and a sense of completion. Last Wednesday it helped dispel the negativity and instinct to lash out that had been trying to establish a beachhead in me. Under one piece of litter I found a baby bunny, who ran quickly away. Just another sign of how quickly things in life can change and how we need to be grounded to weather those changes.

When I returned to my car I met a long, long time friend who was on his long-established walking route of starting at the Milton House, then walking out to the lake and back. Fifty years ago he and I used to run that route. Neither of us run any more but we do chat. Our chat by my car that day was a grounding and a sign. A sign that life does go on, valued friendships go on and do regenerate us again and again. My walk, my reflection, and my chat purged from me the negativity and sadness that had earlier that day overtaken me.

Victor Frankl wrote of what he discovered in the Nazi death camps this way. “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

In his book, First Things First, Stephen Covey titled Chapter 9, Integrity in the Moment of Choice. He goes on to assert that, ”QUALITY OF LIFE DEPENDS ON WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SPACE BETWEEN STIMULUS AND RESPONSE”.

So yes, I am deeply saddened and disappointed about what happened last Wednesday in Milton. I love Milton but, most recently, I am embarrassed for Milton. In my mind it is a travesty whose ripples will keep us bobbing for some time. However, I am reminded that love is so much better than hate and that even though hate comes my way I do not have to descend to that level of human discourse.

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