An Old Story with New Meaning

In honor of throwback Thursday... 

I recently shared an old story of mine with a crowd and was surprised to find it had a new ending. It was 1979, Margaret Thatcher was the new Prime Minister, Bill Clinton had recently been elected Governor of Arkansas, Atari had just released Asteroids, and I was in my first year of ministerial school in Los Angeles at what was then Ernest Holmes College. Like most first year’s, I was required to take a homiletics (speaking) class, one I frequently missed due to its coincidental timing to big waves. Unable to make my newbie freshman class during the day, I tucked away my surfboard and attended the senior class in the evening.

1979, me in my first year of Ministerial School

My first class assignment was to deliver a Rudyard Kipling poem I had memorized, entitled “If”, and man oh man, was I brilliant in conveying its depth. The pauses, emphasis, diction and silence all created a magical moment that had the whole room hanging on every word. I sure was hot stuff at 19 and cocky as the day is long. I was feeling quite proud of myself. If only you could have heard it! It was smokin’ good!  I glanced at the instructor knowing I had just scored big time. He looked delighted and I could tell I had just won him over. Later, in the same class, so impressed he was with my prose and delivery, the instructor asked me to stand and improvise a talk about light for 3 to 4 minutes. I approached the front of the room and then promptly froze. I have never forgotten those moments and not particularly fondly; no words came to my mind nor out of my mouth. I stood there with sweat pouring down my face, my heart racing wildly and my brain turning to putty. A sea of faces stared at me, I was in a blackout, thinking nothing-and the more I tried to find something, the less would come to me…I wanted to impress everyone so badly-but I was vacuous. For the first and longest 4 minutes in my life, I was literally speechless.

The story and lesson I’ve told for the past three and a half decades happened after that moment, which was that I would never again be short of words – which is a good thing for a public speaker. But recently, upon some inner urgings I reveled in a new take on an old lesson.  That day, I got humbled to the core. It wasn’t by choice or even by accident, it was given to me and I got it. The gift of humility. What I learned is that no matter how good a message I may have just delivered, it means nothing in terms of the next talk. I was shown in no uncertain terms that cockiness can lock the gates to the Infinite. I was educated to the cellular level that the message is not me and that I have to get myself out of the way for the extra magic to enter the equation. I do my best to remain humble, but never in a false sense because I’m clear, as clear as every uncomfortable sigh could be heard during that four minutes of silence in 1979, that the next time - the words just might not come.