The Beauty of Letting Go

Author C. S. Lewis reminds us that “Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” Our current culture would persuade us that the important thing in this life is to grab, grasp, and accumulate. More is way better. But many are discovering the beauty of letting go. We are learning that it is possible to hold on too tightly and lose everything. The tighter we squeeze onto the things we are trying to hold, the more we squeeze them right through our fingers and we lose them anyway. 

Of course, there is an important difference between letting go and giving up. Letting go gives you an opportunity to move forward; giving up drops you clear off the monkey bars. 

It is a very subtle temptation that tricks us into thinking that always holding on proves we are strong. But sometimes, letting go allows us to become the person we really wanted to become all along. In fact, history reveals that some of the world’s greatest battles have been won by those wise enough to let it go and take a second strategic look. Alexander Graham Bell is quoted as saying, “When one door closes, another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us." 

It is especially difficult to let go of something you don’t even realize you are gripping so tightly. And usually it is pride that blinds us from recognizing the death grip we have applied. So don't let your pride bully your wisdom into thinking it is imperative to hold on when it is the right time to let go and move forward. The exciting challenge of life seems to be the fine art of deciding when to hang on and when to let go. 

Earlier in my life I had become involved with a local religious institution that later proved to not be a healthy situation for our family. I had to come to a place where I realized that it was prudent to quit allowing the strife, let go of the tension, and move on with our lives in pursuit of other worthwhile and honorable endeavors. It was one of the greatest decisions of my life. Great good has come as a result of that choice. I discovered that you can lose only what you are blindly clinging to, but strategic surrender is certainly not the same as losing. 

The concept of strategic relinquishment of our rights in certain situations, and to certain institutions, runs closely parallel to our relationships with the people who are closest to us. We have heard throughout our lives that if you truly love someone you will let go of her from a selfish and possessive sense in order to help her become all that her potential will allow. . I have seen that work with remarkable results. 

In 1994, Anna Marie and I witnessed an unusual story of love and relinquishment in the African country of Kenya. We were assessing the hospitals around Nairobi and throughout the enchanting Rift Valley. While there, we were invited to stay atElsamere, the famous home of Joy and George Adamson, located on the shores of the impressive Lake Naivasha. While Joy was alive she had gained international notoriety by writing the book Born Free in 1960, a book that sold more than five million copies. A popular movie had later been released in 1966 and had won three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture that year. 

In 1956, George Adamson was a game warden for the local African region. He was forced to shoot a lioness as it attacked him, only to later find out that the shooting had left three lion cubs motherless. Two of the cubs were sent to a zoo in Rotterdam, but Joy and George kept Elsa. It was their intention to raise the cub and educate it sufficiently in order to safely release her back into the Masai Mara. They fell in love with Elsa. The book reveals the difficulty experienced by Joy and George in coming to the point of actually releasing Elsa back into the wild.  

At last, Joy succeeded. With mixed feelings and a breaking heart, she returned her friend back to the jungle, alone. Joy and George then traveled to England for a year before returning to Kenya. They were hoping when they returned that they would find Elsa. They did find her, and discovered that she had not forgotten them. In fact, Elsa brought along her three cubs to get acquainted. Elsa became the first lioness to be successfully released back into the wild, the first to have contact after release, and the first known to have cubs. Loving Elsa resulted in setting her free. Love demanded letting go. 

It just might be a better part of wisdom to consider the relationships and situations in which you find yourself today. Whether it is trying to save a lioness or negotiating the monkey bars, it just might be that letting go is what will allow you to move forward.

Quantifiable Responsibility

I don’t speak or write very often about the subject of fear. It is not that I am such a brave fellow . . . it is just that all the nooks and crannies of my Scotch/Irish disposition seem to be filled up with happy stuff. I try to choose “happy” over “scared.” In the past thirty years of international travel, however, there have been some occasions when I probably should have been more afraid. 

In 2004, I had just returned to Denver from a physically exhausting trip to Papua New Guinea, Tonga, and India, and was headed that July morning for Montenegro. I experienced a situation that shook me to my emotional core. It was a fear I had never known before. 

In order for me to catch my international flight, our alarm clock sounded at 4:30 Saturday morning. As I was headed to the shower I was nearly overwhelmed by a most unusual and austere sense. An intruding and powerful temptation was hammering me: “You have absolutely no need to head off to the Balkans this morning. You are exhausted. Go back to bed and sleep. There is really no quantitative measure of responsibility to what you are doing. No one can say, ’Jim Jackson did not go to old Yugoslavia today, so forty-two people died.’ Since it can’t be measured or quantified, there can be no measurable responsibility, either. You are justified in staying home!” 

Indeed, it was a strange confrontation that had taken place on the way from my bed to the shower. The implications of the incident frightened me. It was true: I was not observably responsible for goodness that might or might not come as a result of my going to old Yugoslavia early on that Saturday morning. No other person on the outside of me was forcing me to get up and catch that flight. My responsibility ran along a different line. 

I knew I needed to get on that airplane. The simplicity of responding to what I knew I needed to do was the real issue of responsibility. The rest would flow as a consequence of my obedience. I somehow knew that the compelling temptation to compromise—to lie down and go back to sleep—would have neutralized my clear imperative. I also intuitively knew that the neutralization would be contagious and affect my focus and dedication to what I was ultimately trying to accomplish. Exhaustion could not even compare to what it would have felt like to quit. 

For the next few weeks I could not get the incident of temptation out of my mind:There is really no quantitative measure of responsibility to what you are doing. No one can say, “Jim Jackson did not go to old Yugoslavia today, so forty-two people died.” Since it can’t be measured or quantified, there can be no measurable responsibility, either. You are justified in staying home! It scared me every time I thought about it! 

Six months earlier, while traveling in Zambia, I had performed a needs assessment at the Mwandi hospital. It was beautifully situated on a wide bend of the river that flowed into the great Zambezi River. I had already asked most of my needs assessment questions to Dr. Kaonga Wezi, who was the director of the hospital, when he related to me some tragic news. His wife was also a doctor in the pediatrics and community health departments. Dr. Wezi told me that he and his doctor- wife were getting ready to leave Zambia. Recently, their 2½ year old son had contracted pneumonia. That shouldn’t have been too difficult for mom and dad to handle, since they were both well-trained doctors, and mom was an experienced pediatrician.

Without warning, however, the little child died with both of them there. The complicated grief was unbearable. They had succumbed to the overwhelming and paralyzing temptation of concluding that, “If we are both doctors and cannot even save our own baby boy from pneumonia, then we should not be accepting the responsibility of trying to save the children of other people.” The mother had already moved out of Mwandi, having declared that she would never again practice in the field of pediatrics. 

My heart broke for them. It appeared they were accepting the quantifiable results of the failure of one situation to define their future responsibilities. 

In contrast to that sad situation of perceived responsibility in Zambia, I was reminded of my good friend Dr. Kunar who ran a free clinic in Rajahmundry, a city of nearly a half-million people in eastern India. He belonged to a family of the high Brahmin caste, but had specifically felt the need to take medical attention and help to theuntouchables, the lowest ranking of the people of India. That was not a very politically correct decision. “You see, Dr. Jackson, it was a miracle that I am a doctor in India. I was the first person to graduate from the medical school with that stated commitment. I finished second in my class, even though they did everything they could to turn me out and keep me from passing my exams. The governments of India had not addressed the severe needs of the poor and powerless. But I was supposed to be a doctor to the poorest people in this area, and it is now happening.” 

That was the same attitude that had made the endeavors of Mother Teresa such a startling phenomenon in India. As she had admitted, “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” Mother Teresa and my friend Dr. Kunar had each met face to face with insurmountable oppression and resistance in India. Others had demanded that their dedication to the task and their devotion to the hurting people were really quite foolish, unnecessary, and out of sync with the reality of the culture. 

Neither Mother Teresa nor Dr. Kunar yielded to the idea that you have absolutely no need to get involved in helping the untouchables in Calcutta or Rajahmundry. No one can possibly hold it against you if you never showed up to help, and thousands of people died because you were not there. Since the results can’t be measured or quantified, there can be no measurable responsibility, either. Each patently rejected that line of reasoning. 

Mother Teresa and Dr. Kunar were each dedicated to the understanding that even though they would never live to see the full results of their efforts, their simple and positive response to what they knew they should be doing was the real issue of responsibility. Over the years I have tried to keep track of the work of my friend Dr. Kunar in Rajahmundry. No one else really cared about the untouchable rock breakers, who earned the equivalent of four dollars a week, and on average lived to be only twenty-seven years old. 

I am also eternally grateful that I got up, showered, and caught my flight to Montenegro that Saturday morning in July. The thought of justifiably rationalizing out of what I know I ought to do still frightens me. I want my life to be defined by instant and complete obedience to what I intuitively know I ought to do, rather than cleverly justifying a defense that might ultimately neutralize the intended good.

A Matter of Economics

It is an economic virtue to be frugal corporately as well as personally. A strategy of waste reduction, pursuit of efficiency, and suppression of instant gratification just makes good business sense. There is, however, another subtle aspect of responsible economics that is sometimes less obvious: don’t let things go to waste just because they are in the wrong place.

Prior to the founding of Project C.U.R.E., I was involved in economic consulting in lesser developed countries. While working in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), I was taken out and shown that the grain storage facilities in Zimbabwe were full and running over with maize. For three years they had experienced bumper crops, and they had run out of room to store the grain. I was shown stacks and stacks of burlap bags filled with maize and covered with black plastic. The stacks were the size of very large buildings. But the rain was getting in from the top, and the rodents were getting in from the bottom. And all the while, the tribes across the Zambezi River in Zambia were starving. The irony was that Zambia was rich in copper production. The price of copper, however, had plummeted, and no one was buying Zambia’s copper, so they had no money to buy the maize.

There was nothing wrong with having the maize, and there was nothing wrong with having the copper. The commodities were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and they were not being utilized. It took a third party who was not involved in their tribal problems who could help them structure an exchange whereby Zambia could receive the needed maize for their hungry people, and Zimbabwe could take Zambia’s copper and put it in warehouses in London until the copper prices returned to normal. Everyone then came out better off!

Adam Smith, sometimes referred to as the father of modern economics, sought to explain that markets emerge out of the division of labor. When people divide up the labor and perform only certain specialized jobs as occupations, instead of trying to do everything for themselves, it is necessary for them to depend on others for fulfilling most of their needs. An efficient market will make those services and goods more readily available to meet those needs.

The word entrepreneur is sometimes a difficult word to pronounce and even harder to spell. The function of the entrepreneur is simple. It is to help the economy’s markets run more efficiently. The entrepreneur will see an opportunity to make the market run more smoothly by taking something from a position of “lower value” out of the economy and re-entering it back into the economy at a “higher value.” The idea is that the services or goods were simply in the wrong place in the economy.

For example, Jackson Brothers Investments (JBI), during the 1960s and 1970s, was our company that developed real estate in the ski areas of Colorado. We would purchase large, economically struggling ranch sites and develop them in accordance with the state and county regulations. We would provide roads, electricity, water and sewer districts, and approved tracts of land overlooking the ski slopes. The completed projects brought happiness to a lot of new owners, provided jobs, generated handsome profits, and greatly increased the tax base for the counties and the state.

The best example, perhaps, that I can think of regarding the economic principle ofdon’t let things go to waste just because they are in the wrong place, can be found in the phenomenon of Project C.U.R.E. Since its inception in 1987, it has aggressively collected, managed, and distributed over one billion dollars’ worth of goods and services to the neediest people around the world.

All of those goods and services, at the beginning, were in the wrong place. They were all subject to waste. Millions of tons of medical supplies, and countless numbers of pieces of medical equipment were vigorously pursued, secured, managed, and distributed. At one time those items took up space in someone’s warehouse with no plan for utilization. Countless hours of some of the most talented and devoted volunteers in the U.S.—medical nurses, doctors, physician’s assistants, and paramedics— have been focused on making well the sick and afflicted in the right places in over 130 countries around the world.

Of all people, I have been most fortunate, having been on the scene in university teaching institutions, hospitals, surgical centers, and clinics where those medical goods and services arrived at just the right time to save the life of some precious mom, dad, or child who would have died without the needles, syringes, sutures, IV apparatuses and solutions, scopes, monitors, and anesthesia machines.

I am, in another respect, one of the most fortunate persons on earth. The economic principle, don’t let things go to waste just because they are in the wrong place works in a spiritual realm. I clearly recall when I was personally in the wrong place and headed for the nearest dumpster, but the Eternal Economist graciously gave me another chance for recycle.

I have a faithful friend by the name of Paul Harris, who worked for JBI back in the 1970s. We made lots of money together in those heady days. Today, Paul takes his entrepreneurial skills every day to the offices of Project C.U.R.E. He knows well the economic concept don’t let things go to waste just because they are in the wrong place. He also knows the eternal value of saving a hurting life. His job is to vigorously go after medical things that are in the wrong place and save them from going to waste. In just the past few weeks he has located and procured through donations over a million and a half dollars’ worth of pieces of coveted medical equipment. Who can say how many precious families’ lives will be affected by just those pieces of equipment alone?

Whether you use this tested economic principle at your next garage sale, or to save the lives of thousands of hurting people around the world, never ignore the admonition, don’t let things go to waste just because they are in the wrong place!

Insatiable, Perpetual, and Universal

I had been traveling in and out of Cuba since the very early 1990s, and held the first shipping license allowing Project C.U.R.E. to ship donated medical supplies and pieces of medical equipment directly from Miami into Havana. That had been quite an accomplishment, since the borders of the island compound were tightly closed by Fidel Castro, and the U.S. continued a very strict embargo against the Communist regime.

No regularly scheduled flights were allowed between the U.S. and Cuba in those early days because of those economic and political sanctions. The only way to travel into Cuba from the U.S. was by a very unreliable airplane charter service. At the Miami airport the rag-tag ticketing process was absolutely crazy. It took nearly half a day, starting at 4:30 a.m., to negotiate for the tickets and finally board the plane.

When the plane dropped down low enough for the landing procedure, I could see the green countryside surrounding Havana. Everything was so grown over and run down! The runway landing lights were wired on either side of the runway with extension cord wires running on top of the runway. When the planes came across the runway, they had to run over the top of the heavy black extension cords.

By 1999, I was quite comfortable in traveling in and out of Cuba. By then I had discovered a more convenient routine for entering Cuba. My contacts had shown me how to travel to the Casuarinas Hotel on Cable Beach on West Bay Street in Nassau in the Bahamas. At the hotel would be waiting for me an official letter of invitation from Cuba’s minister of health. I would take the invitation letter to the Havanatur’s desk at the Nassau airport, show them my passport and board a prop-driven Aerocaribbean plane to Havana. Upon arriving, I would be met by special VIP services, issued a Cuban visa, and hustled through Cuban immigrations and customs.

On my 1999 trip, I was picked up at the airport by Julian, a Cuban gentleman in his Russian Lada car, and taken to the Hemmingway Marina area of Havana. It was an area of Havana I had never seen before. The marina was surprisingly filled with international sail boats, fancy yachts, and interesting tourists. My hosts had secured a small hotel room for me to stay for two nights near the activity.

Before we went to dinner my hosts introduced me to a fellow from the U.S. who had just sailed his yacht around the world and had dropped anchor in Havana. He invited me on board his breathtaking vessel, and I thought I was once again a little boy on his first trip to a candy store. It had taken the owner twenty-two years to design and build his spectacular blue water yacht. He had commissioned the Royal Huisman Shipyard in Vollenhove, Holland, to create the vessel under the watchful eye of master shipbuilder Wolter Huisman. World renowned co-designers Ron Holland and Pieter Boeldsnijder implemented the inception from what was virtually nothing but a dream into probably the world’s most magnificent piece of floating art and technology.

The magnificent yacht was 145 feet long, its main mast was 160 feet tall (the height of a 16-story building) and it weighed well over a half million pounds. During construction, no corners were cut in the design or creation of the finest and most technical floating vessel of the 20th century. When not under sail, it was propelled by three Mercedes industrial diesel marine engines. The cost of the yacht to the owner was far in excess of 100 million dollars. I asked and found that the owner had acquired his money, in part, by building and selling a very prestigious shoe company.

I tried to express to my new friend my appreciation for his quest for uncompromising excellence. Indeed, it inspired me. He was very curious about Project C.U.R.E., and he invited us to sit down at their dinner table and share with him and his dinner guests about Project C.U.R.E. Before we left, the owner slipped away from the table and invited me to take a complete tour with him below deck. It was a thrill of a lifetime for me. He stopped at one desk and pulled out a 200-page memorial picture and textbook entitled, The Creation of a Masterpiece. Only a few of the books were published. The text and photos documented the entire story of the designing and building of the yacht. I thanked him deeply for the gift and the opportunity to experience his work of art. The book was a very valuable gift to me.

The following night included the sheer joy of returning to the prodigious yacht. The owner had invited us to have some dessert with him. I was sure to take the coffee table picture book back with me for my new friend to autograph. I had stayed up until 1:30 a.m. the night before reading the book and discovered he had chosen anonymity throughout the book, and had requested that he be referred to as “the client” or “the owner.” However, he did include a lovely picture of his 80- year-old mother in the book on the day of the christening.

I asked him about his reason for never having his name mentioned or his photo included. He said, “Jim, people just don’t understand the inconvenience and burden there is attached to being rich … it’s really hard.” We talked about how the things we accumulate always have a way of spinning webs around us until we are nearly totally possessed by the possessions we have accumulated. We mused at how we only add more care and concern to our lives as we add the “stuff” to our lives. “It seems that when we really need to be adding peace and quiet we only attract more anxiety and dissonance to our lives.”

I asked my new friend to please do me the personal favor of at least autographing my personal copy. The following is what he inscribed:

Jim, The greatest joy of living and traveling on the yacht has been the wonderful new friends we have made along the way.  Your dedication and work with all the; needy of the world isa real inspiration. For all those whose lives you've touched,  a thousand thanks.
Your friend, 

After I had thanked him again for his example to me of excellence, I shared with him about my brother and I having owned the old steam locomotive and train, the “GW 75,” which had been in the different movies with Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, and others. He then asked about what business I had been in before Project C.U.R.E. that would include owning an entire steam train.

I went back and told him of how I had decided at an early age that I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was twenty-five. He interrupted and said he had the same dream to become a millionaire by age thirty-five. I went on to tell him about getting involved in real estate developing, and how I had greatly surpassed my goal of wealth, but discovered that even so, I was not a happy man. Then I told him how God had radically changed my life and I had vowed to give away my wealth, start over again, and never use my talents and abilities to accumulate wealth again for myself.

I confided in him that I believed God had given me a chance to move from success to significance, and Project C.U.R.E. was only a symbol of what had really happened inside me. “I really respect you, my friend, for who you are and what you have accomplished in your life. But at some point, as you are sailing, I wish you would think about the excitement of moving from obvious success to the adventurous phenomenon of significance. There is a difference. I know you are a man of character and would respond to such a concept.”

The two of us hugged each other on the deck of his masterpiece, and I walked down the ladder to where my shoes were and waved goodbye to my new friend.

The old philosopher and economist, David Hume, once said, “This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, and universal.”

It just might be insatiable, perpetual, and universal . . . but it doesn’t necessarily need to be unchangeable.

Community

The story of Project C.U.R.E. is the story of community. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was the U.S. president during the formative years of my life – ages twelve to twenty. In those years following World War II and the Korean conflict, he used to remind us, “This world of ours . . . must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.” I grew up believing in the virtue of community.

The word community is derived from the joining of two Latin ideas: com= with/together- and munus=gift . . . the gift of being together. Indeed, community is a gift! Elements affecting the identity of a particular community could include: beliefs, resources, intentions, needs, preferences, risk levels, and common emotional connections.

Wherever community exists, security and freedom will more than likely be found as well. Community has a way of taking on a life of its own, and that seems to allow people to become free enough to share and secure enough to get along. There is a sense of connectedness that often flows as a result of community, that has the power to dispel loneliness and to nurture the mutual respect and trust referred to by President Eisenhower.

To me, community is evidence enough that love, respect, and civility can exist in a world of disconnectedness and greed. Fighting each other or ignoring each other are not the only two options available to cohabiters of this earth: love, respect, goodness and civility are also viable options.

While traveling around the world for the past nearly forty years, I have fallen in love with the people of the old cultures and the old world communities. President Lyndon Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird, used to say, “While the spirit of neighborliness was important on the frontier because neighbors were so few, it is even more important now because our neighbors are so many.” In older European communities neighbors have been required to live in close proximity for a long time.

I loved to travel in the cities of Belgrade, or Kiev, or in the countries of Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, or Armenia. At night people love to get out of their homes, put on clean clothes, and go to the downtown centers to walk, visit, and stop at the sidewalk cafes, to have coffee and maybe some ice cream. I have strolled with them and socialized with their neighbors until nearly midnight. There were some unusual and compelling factors of community displayed in those parts of the world that were wholesome and inviting. Most of the towns were eagerly at work trying to revitalize their cities and municipal regions. They were hardy, and at the same time willing to return attention, love, and appreciation.

I used to say to Anna Marie that if she ever looked and found me missing she could probably safely start looking for me in Brazil, because I had a real affinity for the country and people of Brazil. But now I don’t know. The beauty, the flowers, the inexpensive personal economy including food, transportation, and utilities, the fresh fruit and relatively mild winters, and the endearing people of community … it all just might have you looking for me in some classical, historic home on a small acreage near the Black Sea.

I am so glad, however, that I have lived long enough to experience the advent of the internet. It is adding a whole new and different dimension to community. No longer is the geographical neighborhood, or the leisurely stroll in the evening in Belgrade, the dominating factor regarding community. Now I can Skype or write computer messages to thousands of my friends every week. I can send those messages to homes, offices, and phones completely around the world and my friends can respond back to me as quickly as if we were sitting together over a cup of coffee. As we freely communicate with each other, we successfully form a virtual community that fulfills the same community functions of beliefs, resources, intentions, needs, preferences, risk levels, and common emotional connections utilized in traditional community.

There is one more exciting aspect of community that I would like to explore here. Sociologist, Ray Oldenburg wrote a book entitled The Great Good Place. It speaks to the recognized phenomenon that Western cultures seem to be losing the citizen involvement in traditional community. In another book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Putnam, 2000) underscores that position by writing that in the past 25 years attendance at club meetings has fallen 58% , family dinners are down 33 percent, and having friends visit has fallen 45 percent). It may be that we are in danger of losing the spirit of community that once existed in some of our institutions, including churches and community centers.

Oldenburg suggests that we really need three places: the home, the office, and third, a gathering place of community. Starbucks, for example, was founded to fulfill the need for the “third place.” The experiment has proven overwhelmingly successful. I believe that in a very unique way Project C.U.R.E. has become an example of a “third place” expressly for community. I believe that is one reason why we have 15,000 volunteers rather than 125 volunteers. True community exists and is experienced by the faithful volunteers of Project C.U.R.E.

I am excited to think that in the future Project C.U.R.E. could become a dynamic center for purposeful community all over the U.S. and around the world where people would gather to not only enjoy a steaming latte or a good cup of chai, but to meet with friends and associates to build community around a common goal of goodness specifically aimed at delivering health and hope to needy friends all around thecommunity of the world.

Easter on Easter Island, Part 2

The Rapa Nui Hospital on Easter Island desperately needed the help of Project C.U.R.E. The frustrated doctors explained that simple laboratory tests were taking a minimum of five weeks to be returned to the hospital, instead of fifteen minutes. The airlines flew only once a week from Easter Island to Santiago. They would then have to depend on getting their needed test results from an understaffed and overworked mainland hospital that also had inadequate lab equipment and continual shortages of supplies and reagents. Rapa Nui was put into a critical medical position. Within the past few weeks there had been a severe outbreak of dengue fever on the island. Tourists had brought in the fever, and the local mosquitoes had served to rapidly spread it throughout the island population before the blood tests could be cultured and returned. Several people had died because of the delays. 

After assessing their medical facilities, I felt that Project C.U.R.E. could greatly increase their efficiency by supplying to them, in addition to the needed lab equipment, essential emergency room equipment and supplies, OB-GYN diagnostic equipment, including an ultrasound machine, and a ventilator and respirator for their small intensive care ward. 

On Saturday, Governor Paoz and our other hosts continued to show us around Easter Island and share with us more impressive legends:

  • We think of two tides: ebb and flow. The islanders studied and followed sixteen different tide categories. They knew when and where to fish, plant, travel, procreate, etc. according to the tides.
  • Many rock pile structures were not Ahu formations, but rather, they were stone chicken coops. Early on, chickens were a sign of wealth. A guest was very honored if the host presented a white chicken to him. But the guest was most honored if the host cleaned the chicken, took out its intestines, washed them, and gave them to the guest to eat. A war was once started because the guests insulted the host by not eating the chicken entrails.
  • At different locations around the island were surviving evidences of schools where the students were taught how to cook, plant, judge the sun and seasons, and even how and where to catch tuna fish. The lessons were carved into the stones and we could presently observe the ancient object lessons.

Saturday evening Anna Marie and I left our hotel room, walked along the rocky coastline and turned right on the main street called Avenue Atawu Tekera. We were headed to the end of the avenue just to walk by the Catholic church. It was the only church on the island. We were hoping that the church would have posted some kind of time schedule for Easter Sunday services. As we turned the corner the church bells began pealing out across the cove. 

A little further on, we came upon a group of people spilling out into the dark street. The vacant lot abutting the street was being used by the Catholic priests and nuns to conduct an outside mass the night before Easter. The sky was very dark, and the church leaders had built a large bonfire of old wood to light the night. Many candles glowed from a small grotto as the group joined in singing, accompanied by some of the clergy playing accordions, drums, and guitars. 

Anna Marie and I found a spot along the curb and sat down to join the service. The crowd continued to grow as the outside service progressed. After about an hour the church bells from down at the end of the street began to ring out once more. The priest closed that part of the service by lighting a very large candle measuring about five feet in height. From that main candle the parishioners moved in and lit their individual candles they had brought along. 

The accordions, drums, and guitars started the music once again as all the people marched by candlelight up the hill the four or five blocks to the Catholic church at the end of the street. It was a wonderful experience, and the two of us joined right along with the marchers walking to the beat of the music. 

During the balance of Saturday night’s service and the Easter celebration service on Sunday morning, we witnessed a very emotional and memorable time of worship. The Rapa Nui islanders brought all kind of fruits, vegetables, and even freshly butchered meats, marched to the front of the chancel, and presented their sacrificial gifts to be shared. We heard remarks that were almost reminiscent of the old Puritan liturgy, “no pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.”

As I listened I marveled. These Easter Island inhabitants had come to this extremely isolated location and had created their own legacy, their own culture and civilization. They had spawned an ethic of resilience, hard work, and courage. Their determination to persevere had maximized their human potential, and they had overcome the obstacles that logically should have destroyed them. From the time they had landed in their little canoes, the emphasis had been on courage, persistence, and determination. 

As Anna Marie and I were leaving the church, I recalled one last story that our host, the governor, had shared with us as we toured the island:

    To encourage confidence in the leadership of the king’s governance of the island people, and to tacitly teach the virtues of courage, persistence, and determination, the king agreed that each year a prime minister would be selected from the tribal chiefs. But the tribal chief would not be the one determining his eligibility to become prime minister for that one year. An athlete would be chosen from each tribe to participate in a competition  

    There was a small island off the southern coast of Easter Island where a certain bird nested on its migration route each year. The tribal participants would be ferried out to the small island by boat and left there. They would wait in hiding until the first migratory bird built a nest and laid an egg.

    The first tribal competitor to successfully capture that egg into his possession would climb to the top of the small island and shout back to the king his name, his tribe, and verification that he possessed the egg.

    The other contestants would try to take away the egg from the possessor for themselves, but if the possessor could successfully jump into the sea, he then would have to swim all the way back to Easter Island. But the feat was still not finished, because once back at the island he would have to climb a vertical stone cliff from the water’s edge up to where the king was sitting at the very peak of the largest volcano’s edge.

    If the contestant was successful in fighting, swimming, and climbing without breaking the raw egg, he would then present the egg to his tribal chief, who would in turn present the egg to the king. Once the king received the egg from the tribal chief, he would declare that tribal chief the prime minister for the next year in a great celebration. The king would also bestow on the winning contestant the coveted title of . . . “Birdman.”

    The enduring virtues and legacies that were being taught to the people of the island would sustain them through the hard times and uncertainties of the future. They were all Easter Island Champions!

    Easter on Easter Island, Part 1

    The diverse geographical assets of the sliver-shaped country of Chile make for a place of outrageous and extravagant beauty. Warm sandy beaches, frozen tundra, rugged mountain passes, tropical plateaus, old volcanoes, generous fishing waters . . . Chile has it all!

    I had been in the cities of Conception and Santiago in January. The political officials had insisted that I return in April and visit the Chilean province of Easter Island to evaluate their health care system. Anna Marie joined me on the trip, and we arrived back in Santiago on the Wednesday before Easter.

    I remembered first hearing of Easter Island during my childhood as I listened to the reports of World War II on the radio. Then, Easter Island hit the news once more during the heady days of NASA’s space program. The U.S. had negotiated for the use of a sizable portion of the island in order to build a large landing strip in case any of the space machines got into trouble out in the vast, empty waters of the Pacific Ocean. The Easter Island tracking station became a household buzzword during those many space flights.

    Easter Island is the world's most isolated inhabited island. It is also one of the most mystifying and mysterious places on Earth. The original settlers were Polynesian islanders who somehow paddled their canoes for weeks, maybe months, through open waters of the Pacific Ocean and discovered the island in the middle of “nowhere.” They named the island Rapa Nui and were isolated for centuries from the outside world.

    The people of Rapa Nui developed their own distinctive culture, a culture perhaps best symbolized by the huge moai figures. There are hundreds of the large monolithic stone sculptures that were carved from volcanic rock and mysteriously situated along the coastline, facing the settlements with their backs toward the spirit world of the vast sea. 

    The first recorded European contact with the island was on April 5 (Easter Sunday), 1722, when a Dutch navigator visited the island for a week and estimated a population of 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants. But why on earth would the skinny country of Chili have any interest in owning little Easter Island today that sits 2,500 miles from its coast—that is farther than from New York to Los Angeles—out in the middle of nowhere? As an economist, let me suggest the answer . . . follow the money!

    A country’s territorial water rights extend out to three miles past its borders. By being able to claim that Easter Island is an integral part of its sovereign country, Chile’s international coastline was not three miles out from Santiago, but a convenient 2,500 plus three miles out to the west of Easter Island. That gave Chile an incredible puddle of ocean water to claim as their undisputed fishing territory. There is no doubt about it, skinny Chile needs Easter Island!

    The Chilean airline only flies once a week to Easter Island, and then on to Tahiti. As guests of honor, we were personally met at the Rapa Nui airport with beautiful floral leis and eager smiles. The governor of Easter Island, Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoz and his wife would be our hosts. We were additionally hosted by Hernan Felipe Errazuriz, a prominent attorney in Santiago, who had served as Chili’s foreign minister and also the Chilean ambassador to the United States. The third dignitary to host us was Christian Labbe Galilea, the present mayor of the city of Santiago, and his wife.

    Since we were confined to the Island for at least a week, Friday and Saturday were designated as our days to explore Easter Island. Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoz was the perfect person to be our island tour guide. He was the undisputed official of the Island. He was the keeper of the legends. He knew all the history, all the folklore, and certainly all the people. As we traveled to the legendary spots throughout the island, Pedro told us many stories and related lots of facts about the kings who first came to the island and their exploits and Polynesian culture:

    • The 820 hand carved Moai stone statues weighed from 90 to 150 tons each and all came from one rock-quarry located in the northern part of the island. Each statue represented a king, tribal leader, or very important man of island history. Legend has it that the stones were moved into place by mental and spiritual powers of levitation
    •  A Moai usually sat atop an Ahu that was a sacred formation of stacked stones close to the sea that housed the bones of the dead island ancestors.
    •  There were no bad words in the Rapa Nui language. If you wanted to say something bad to or about someone you had to borrow a Spanish, French, or English phrase.
    • Likewise, there were no words of gratitude like “thank you” in their language. If someone did something nice for you, you would simply accept it.
    • Neither was there any concept of forgiveness in the culture.
    • The only, and ultimate, sign of disapproval or displeasure when someone had crossed over the behavior line was to stick out your tongue at the offender. That meant “death to you.”
    • You didn’t just kill someone who had done wrong; you made him stop breathing, ate his flesh, and then pounded each bone into dust. Then, he could never be honored or return again.

    As we drove to every historic site on the island, the governor continued sharing with us the unusual history and culture of the Easter Island people. On Friday afternoon I received one of the greatest stories I had ever heard regarding the power of information brokering.

    It is not unusual for people to utilize exclusive information to manipulate other folks who do not have access to the same information. The Egyptians used to call it “the King’s secret” when he could control the information of the past to bend the outcome of a present situation. He alone possessed the information that was locked safe in the forbidding walls of his political position. He alone could rule in safety through the secret invention, destruction, or alteration of past documents or information.

    • One of the past kings of the island divided the island into territories, one territory for each tribe. The king kept complete control, and his position was safe from an uprising or from someone killing him because only the king could read the ancient language carved in wood, which told of the compete history of each tribe and individuals of the specific tribes. Each year he traveled to the different territories reciting the sacred history to the tribes. He counted on the fact that knowledge was powerful, and in holding information there was safety. The king knew that no one would even think of killing him, since to kill him would be to kill the history of the individuals and each tribe. If they killed him they would really kill themselves and their posterity. The king lived a long and happy life.

    I was reminded that knowledge is power, information is power. The secreting, hoarding, or manipulating of information may simply be an act of tyranny camouflaged as public service. I was becoming intrigued by the economics and culture of Rapa Nui and Easter Island.

                                           (Easter on Easter Island to be continued) 

    Jars or Cracked Pots?

    Ancient Demosthenes summed it up by saying, “As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not; so men are proved by their speeches whether they be wise or foolish.” Others have implied that the empty vessel makes the loudest sound. I have observed, however, that genius and mystery are sometimes discovered in the cracked pot. 

    I first heard of the Plain of Jars during the US-Vietnam conflict in the 1960s and 70s. The U.S. had showered Laos with more missiles than it had dumped on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. The Xieng Khouang province was one of the most heavily bombed targets in history with about four billion pounds of bombs dropped during the Pathet Lao offensive to try to cut off the Ho Chi Minh movement of the advancing North Vietnamese. Many of the bombs did not explode and still present a problem. Sightseeing on the Plain of Jars can be done only on cleared and marked pathways. 

    Never did I dream that one day I would actually get to visit the Plain of Jars, located on the high plateaus of the mountains of Laos. I had been asked to perform needs assessments for several Laotian hospitals in the area that had requested donated medical goods from Project C.U.R.E. Just outside the city of Xieng Khouang was located one of the ancient sites where the mysterious hand carved stone vessels still remained. The jars were huge, up to nine feet tall, the largest weighing fourteen tons. Most were carved of sandstone, others of granite. Some were round, others angular, and most were hand chiseled between 500 B.C. and 900 A.D., and then, somehow, they were transported from a distant rock quarry to the present sites. 

    It reminded me a lot of standing out in the countryside in England and trying to figure out why the massive rocks of Stonehenge were balanced as they were. How were these massive jars transported? Who carved them? How were they used? What civilization placed them here? What happened to some of the lids that used to cover them? Did they bury people in them? Did they store water in them? There were thousands of the megalithic vessels around the Xieng Khouang area. 

    Traditional Lao stories and legends explain that a race of giants ruled by a king called Khum Cheung fought long and valiantly and eventually beat their enemy. He supposedly then created the jars to brew and store huge amounts of rice wine in the vessels to celebrate his victory. Another local tradition states the jars were molded, using natural materials such as clay, sand, sugar, and animal products, in a type of stone mix. They believed that a nearby cave was actually a kiln, and that the huge jars were fired there and were not actually hewn of stone. 

    Some legends claim that the jars were used to collect rainwater for caravan travelers along their journey at times when water was not available. The rainwater would then be boiled for safe use. 

    Initial research of the Plain of Jars in the early 1930s claimed that the stone jars were associated with prehistoric burial practices. Excavation by Lao and Japanese archaeologists in the intervening years has supported this interpretation with the discovery of human remains, burial goods, and ceramics around the stone jars. 

    The nearby cave is a natural limestone cave with an opening on one side and two man-made holes at the top of the cave. The holes could have been used as chimneys of a crematorium. Some archaeologists excavated inside the cave in the early 1930 and found material to support a centralized crematorium theory. 

    The Plain of Jars could have been a burial site. Inside some of the jars have been found glass beads, burnt teeth and bone fragments, pottery fragments, iron and bronze objects. The stone jars initially may have been used to distil the dead bodies. In contemporary funerary practices connected to Thai, Cambodian, and Laotian royalty, the corpse of the deceased during the early stages of the funeral rites is placed into an urn, where the deceased undergoes gradual transformation from the earthly to the spiritual world. The ritual decomposition is followed by cremation and secondary burial. 

    While exploring the megalithic archaeological landscape in Laos, I kept wondering what I could learn about empty jars and cracked pots. One thing I did know was that there certainly was a lot of confusion about the mission and message of the ancient traditions and practices. It was muddled and hidden enough that no one could really be certain now, even though it was incredibly important to the folks involved back then. 

    I concluded that the genius to be discovered was that compassion is not a megalithic jar to be filled, but a fire to be ignited. When that fire is ignited, and its energy and warmth is focused on a needy place like Laos or Cambodia, the white-hot flame will be extended not just into the years ahead, but into eternity. Project C.U.R.E. volunteers who spend their energies passionately collecting, sorting, warehousing, and distributing health and hope around the world are indeed messengers. They are human vessels with a message that will not be forgotten. The collective vessel is filled with the pulsing heartbeat of over fifteen thousand individuals who compassionately love and care for others. 

    Hope can do exceeding good to the vessel in which it is stored, and multiply thereby the goodness onto which it is freely poured.

    Acceptance and Receiving

    The key to life is to be found not only in exercising and dispensing kindness, justice, and righteousness, but also in graciously accepting occasions of kindness, justice, and righteousness. Once people stop doing this, they cease to live. 

    George Orwell once wrote, “Happiness can exist only in acceptance.” You may dream of being happy, you may sincerely wish you were happy, but until you allow yourself to open up and embrace happiness, it won’t be yours to experience . . . or as Woody Guthrie used to say, “Take it easy, but take it,”

    I vividly recall an experience in the country of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, where I was taught well that receiving the goodness coming my way depended upon my willingness to accept it.

    I had at one time or another visited all of the individual republics of the old Soviet Union. The history was rich and colorful and included such eccentrics as Genghis Kahn, Timor Tourmaline, and Alexander the Great. Ancient tales of adventures along the Old Silk Road were still retold around Uzbek and Afghanistan firesides.

    But over the years new sailing routes replaced the long camel caravans that plodded through the shifting sands of Central Asia, and upstart eccentrics like Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev exerted their dirty games of civil manipulation on the more recent political chessboard.

    Several official applications for medical assistance had been received at our Project C.U.R.E. headquarters from ministers of health, hospitals, and clinics located in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. My schedule would allow me to travel only to Central Asia at that time during the first two weeks in February. My travel itinerary had me flying from the U.S. to Germany, and eventually to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and then to Bishkek and Osh Kyrgyzstan. An epic winter storm, however, changed all my travel plans. I arrived, eventually, at Kara Kulja, Kyrgyzstan, by automobile. The storm was so severe that the entire region had run out of natural gas and electricity. The local hotels had nothing to offer, but I was invited to stay at a local Kyrgyz farm home. 

    Traditional homes were built on a compound format with several separate buildings joined together by a fifteen-foot-high wall and a large metal entry gate for protection. One building served as a bath house, another building housed the cooking facility, another was for sleeping, and yet another building for eating. We were served dinner on a frayed carpet, and we all sat on the floor and leaned against pillows as we ate. Because of the cold, we all wore our coats during the meal. The hot food, that had been brought in from the cooking building, plus our body heat, served to take some of the chill off the small eating building.

    After we finished dinner, the old patriarch of the family invited me to join them as they slept in the kitchen building around the open cooking fire. There was no other heat. I glanced around the small building where we were eating. It was tolerably warm, so I told them that I would be alright staying there if they had some blankets I could use to make a bed on the floor. I didn’t want to impose on them in the kitchen or intrude into their privacy. That was such a stupid choice, but they respected my decision and did not argue with me. They brought in a quilt and some leather horse hides to be used as covers.

    During the night the temperature dropped dramatically, and the blizzard moved in with full gale force. The snow began to blow through the chinking of the ancient log walls and covered the floor and my bed. I rummaged through the contents of my suitcase in the darkness of the old room. I was so cold that I had tried to put my head under the blankets. But that had not worked at all. The old horsehide blankets still smelled terribly like the barnyard, and I could count the time duration of my head being under the covers in nanoseconds.

    Finally, I pulled from my suitcase all my clothes to either put on or use as covers. I even took a couple of pre-worn undershirts and promptly wrapped my head with them, turban style, in order to stay warm. I actually worried about the possibility of freezing. I kept thinking about the open fire in the cookhouse. Why wasn’t I there?

    As the condensation from my breathing turned to ice around my face, the crazy thought from somewhere flitted through my brain: “If you can’t be content with what you have received, be thankful for what you have escaped.” I was going to be thankful for making it through the night.

    I could have experienced warmth and comfort only through the acceptance of the hospitality that had been offered. I might have dreamed of being warm. I might have sincerely wished for snuggly comfort, but because I had forfeited the offer to open up and embrace the warmth of the kitchen fire, comfort would not be my experience that wintry night. 

    In the future, I needed to do a better job of learning a necessary lesson. In order to receive a kind or helpful gesture, I would have to graciously consent to the offer, and then take into my possession that which had been offered. The offer to sleep by the fire did not become mine, because I did not take the offer . . . so, I nearly froze.

    Since that cold night in Kyrgyzstan on the plains of Central Asia, I have wondered just how many other occasions during my lifetime I have failed to benefit from some good thing or good experience because, for one reason or another, I did not engage and actually accept and receive what was intended to make my situation better off? 

    In these days, I am trying to be a lot more sensitive!

    Creative Thinking

    Harvey Firestone believed, “If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn’t any limit to what you can do with your business and your life. Ideas are any man’s greatest asset.” All of my life I have been intrigued, and have studied diligently, about the phenomenon of creative thought. I have tried to explore imagination, curiosity, invention, innovation, idea generation, and even reasoning by metaphor and analogy.

    At my present age, I must confess that I am no closer to saying confidently that I understand how God engineered, designed, appropriated, and infused into the head and soul of mankind a function that would allow a person to rightly comprehend a need, and then hatch a creative thought to meet that need.

    I can get my head around the neurons, dendrites, electrical currents, and storage aspects, but from whence cometh the ethereal composition of creative, and unprecedented thoughts? From a practical standpoint, I have learned that the challenging needs of our lives must not become the overwhelming component. It is, rather, the utilizing and appropriating of that creative process of overcoming the challenges that becomes the important and enduring aspect. Never underestimate the need that is challenging you. And never underestimate the creative resources you have available to meet that challenge

    I love observing the creative mind functions of the people of India. Computer programming would certainly not be what it is in the world today were it not for the folks from India. In the southern part of India around the area of Salem, they were experiencing a huge problem with people being bitten by poisonous snakes and dying from the venom. The area was well known for the chicken farms and for egg production. The chickens and eggs attracted large numbers of vipers that also fed off the chicken and egg production. When the workers would reach their hands into the nests to gather the eggs, the vipers would strike.

    I was performing a needs assessment study at the large regional hospital that served a population of over twenty million people. I was walking down a corridor with the director of the hospital and one of the department heads. Most of the beds had wooden boards instead of mattresses. The emergency gurneys were made out of old bicycle parts with two bicycle wheels instead of the usual four small gurney wheels. The delivery beds for the birthing mothers were made out of 4’X 8’ sheets of corrugated metal with a hole cut in the middle and a bucket beneath to catch the afterbirth. It was all quite sad and pathetic.

    As we walked down the corridor, however, I passed a small ward where there was a machine sitting along one wall. I abruptly stopped and remarked to the director, “I didn’t realize that you had kidney dialysis capabilities at your hospital.” “We don’t,” he replied. “But,” I protested, “that machine is a kidney dialysis machine. We just finished donating to Ukraine a complete dialysis set-up including the reverse osmosis water purifying machine and all! The machine against the wall is a dialysis machine.”

    “Oh, that machine . . . no, we found that machine and it is busy almost all the time to take care of the many people who come here with poisonous snake bites. We run their blood through it and it filters out the venom and they don’t die.” “How very brilliant,” I remarked. They had encountered a need and had latched onto a creative and unorthodox idea to meet that need. But how in the world could the human mind ever even come up with a concept like dialysis?

    We usually don’t start cutting our wisdom teeth until we are faced with a bite bigger than we can chew. Necessity is often the mother of creative thinking. The necessity of a solution and the challenge of the pressing situations usually prod us into utilizing the creative advantages that we have available to us. And I personally think it is time to stand and cheer for the creative thinkers, the ones who face the challenges and set their hearts and minds to the business of creating solutions to our most complex needs. After all, what is this thing we call genius if it isn’t the opening up of one’s potential to God’s unfathomable wisdom?

    Generally speaking, our culture teaches us compliance and the seeking of positions of security and safety. But the very fact of being alive must include the courage to seek the creativity that is available to us. It has to go beyond forbearance of the problem to the area of creative solutions. While in Africa, I was introduced to an old coastal adage: “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” Adversity has the effect of eliciting and stirring our talents that otherwise, in calm times, would have lain hidden.

    When faced with adversity, Henry Ford used to say, “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” My attitude of life has always been that if I am pushed to the very brink by adversity, I can count on being shown the creative way to proceed on the ground, or else be taught how to fly.

    “The struggle of life is one of the greatest blessings,” insisted Helen Keller. “It makes us be patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” I believe that overcoming is accomplished through the generous gift of wisdom and creative thought that is made available to us. If we will cultivate that gift and encourage those creative ideas, then our lives will be characterized by design, order, and accomplishment. Creative thinking is a powerful asset.