I would be giving, and forget the gift

During my career as a not-for-profit manager I dealt with a lot of issues pertaining to the concept of giving. This is because non-profits exist as the result of giving, both monetarily as well as in-kind. Their very survival is determined by the ability of staff to attract donors as financial partners and volunteers.

Seeking the type of person who possesses a charitable, giving spirit is likened to a courtship. It requires a slow molding of a relationship, which results its own kind of yielding intimacy. Fund raisers prefer to be called development directors because of this dynamic. It indicates the kind of process one goes through in building relationships with prospective donors, whose wealth provides the allure for engaging in such a protracted effort without the guarantee of success.

One of the first lessons you learn as a development director is what many believe to be the cardinal rule of fund raising; people give to people, not abstractions. No matter how meaningful your mission or finely crafted your vision statement, the personal relationship creates the path along which donations ultimately follow.

The corollary to this premise is that people give more to the people they know or the people they know of. The use of celebrities to endorse an organization’s program verifies the power of relationship building, even those crafted around what is in essence a business proposition. Without the ability to attract donors, the average development director’s professional life expectancy is less than two years. It is a harsh business despite its seemingly loving veneer.

My purpose in writing, though, is not to offer a crash course in fund raising. Rather it is to continue my examination of the character qualities advocated in a poem by Howard Arnold Walter, a 1905 Princeton graduate. The poem is one he wrote for his mother as a Christmas present. Its structure is something a mother could certainly love and others, like me, appreciate. For the poem’s twelve lines each espouse a character trait, whose value is seen in its positive impact on those around us. No doubt these traits were learned at home during Walter’s youth and enhanced by his university education as a divinity student.

Walter likely did not see himself as a development director, but his commitment to giving runs parallel to what I learned as a non-profit manager, who was responsible for fund raising. And our kinship in this area goes even deeper as I learned many of these same virtues at home in a caring Christian family. We are brothers in spirit if not in our career paths or other aspects of our respective lives.

We both know that a gift is by definition a no-strings attached transaction. We also know that there are ways to defeat this designation. In my world you could restrict a gift or make it conditional, thereby exercising some control over its use, making control the return on what more accurately proves to be an investment, not a gift. For Walter the string he sought to avoid was the expectation of something being offered in return.

At its most fundamental level this expectation is a statement of gratitude. The misfortune here is that it puts the recipient in a subservient role. The gift becomes a wage for which an act of service is required. Higher up the scale of anticipated returns is that of a favor. The recipient earns their wage by providing a product or service as a consequence of the initial “giving”. This is an immoral exploitation of a natural response. We as humans feel an inherent debt when we receive a gift. Many fund raisers send their probing “gift” in the form of mailing labels, note cards, and even money such as a nickel for us to use in making our response; typically a cash donation to an organization with which we have no other connection but that nickel. This is the bait for them to set their hook into a prospects charitable conscience. It is manipulative. And this is the very thing Walter vowed to avoid.

True giving is done without the thought of getting something in return, even a word of gratitude. Walter’s pledge to give without thought of repayment requires this type of perspective. And for him it follows the other attributes he vowed to carefully cultivate in order to be authentic as a compassionate human being; true, pure, strong, brave and friend. It is a path worthy of our efforts to honestly follow.

I would be friend to all – the foe, the friendless

Growing up I always had people my age, who I regarded as friends. Those relationships focused on one thing – play. At school or in the neighborhood, we all craved the wonderful outdoor climate of Southern California in the 50s and made the most of our free time at recess and after school. No matter the game, we had fun.

As I got older the nature of my friendships changed. My athleticism was strictly recreational. I was just as exuberant and competitive as before, just not as skilled as those who were pursuing athletic scholarships and talked about going pro someday. I might have dreamed of playing centerfield for the Dodgers, but knew that such a fantasy is what dreams are made of.

Not surprisingly, girls started to enter my friends’ network without any regard for their athletic prowess. Form and face and blonde hair topped my criteria list. A gentle spirit was appealing as well. That such a belle failed to take any interest in me meant my social calendar was fairly empty.

By the time I entered high school all of my former playground friends were gone. We were part of that generation, whose parents had moved to Southern California following World War II, bought their first home in the suburbs and then moved to more affluent neighborhoods as their fortunes improved. For me the loss was disastrous. It was essentially a blow to my identity as a rowdy, fun-loving kid, who could be found running around the neighborhood enjoying life to the max. The gang was no longer “all here.”

My own bad fortune changed one day when I saw a moving van drive by and stop about four houses down from where I lived. The next day there was a new kid in school and his presence changed my whole perception of friendship. Of the same age, we did everything together during our high school careers. Double-dates, trips to the beach with our surfboards in the back of my father’s ’63 Chevy pickup, sports and general mayhem befitting our free spirit mentality. What I remember most, though whenever I look back on those days, is the time spent just sitting and talking.

My friend was analytical in ways I had never even considered. And from my now more mature perspective on life, I would say he was also more original. It changed me simply due to the need to keep pace just as I had done in matching my skills in running, catching, throwing and batting when the game of life was defined by baseball.

I considered my friend to be the dominant partner in our friendship. I was surprised to learn many years later that he thought I was in the lead. What a hoot. The one thing we could both agree on is that our friendship spoiled us in terms of how we defined friendship during our adult years. We were neither one ever as honest and open with others as we were with each other during those crucial teen years. This for me defined friendship. I have since become cognizant of using that term minimally as I have met others, who have subsequently been relegated to the class I distinguish as acquaintances.

If you have been following this current series of messages, then you know I am relying on a 1905 poem to guide the content of what I write, while giving me a little assistance in staying on task for writing and posting on a weekly basis. The poem, by Harold Arnold Walter, is constructed as a vow to his mother about the type of Christian character he would maintain and the actions he would undertake in his relationships with both God and people.

So far we have seen that he vowed to be true, pure, strong and brave. The quote given at the start of this week’s message begins the poem’s second stanza. His worthwhile and noble vow is to be friend to all.  But you may be able to determine from my ruminating on my own past that his is a line that I could not write let alone endeavor to follow. Not that I have an aversion to people of any caste or character. It is just that friendship is not universally applicable for me. It is simply too intense. It is something that cannot be offered wholeheartedly or indiscriminately to the foe and the friendless. But kindness can. Hence my alteration of the word “friend” in the title to advance what I believe to be true about following the Golden Rule. Kindness, and even compassion, can be extended to all. Friendship is the reserve of commitments made, which entwines us heart and soul with another.

This in no way alters our prescribed actions captured in such a phrase as giving a drop of water unto the least of our fellow beings. Such kindness is an expectation of the doctrine Walter studied as a student of theology at Princeton University. It is a reflection of the self-sacrificing love which is the character the relationships among followers of Jesus. It is what I would term being friendly, but with more depth than the casual toss of a coin or two into the cup of a homeless person.

If Walter were alive to ardently defend the face value of his words, I would admire him. But we would be at odds about the true nature of friendship. Doctrinal wars ensure over such disputes and divisions occur despite our best intentions. I am guilty in this; I make a clear distinction between being a friend and merely being friendly. Our outward actions in how we deal with the foe, the friendless may appear to be the same, but Walter and I would know that there is a chasm between our respective understandings of our motivations as different as a noun is from an adverb.

What matters most is that there is an action where need exists, to friend and foe and friendless alike.

I would be brave, for there is much to dare.

We are now in the fourth of a series of messages inspired by a 1905 poem written by Harold Arnold Walter for his mother as a Christmas present. If, by chance, you have read my previous blog posts, then you know my affinity for this poem has to do with its unusual content; a statement about character development included in a book of songs more focused on praised and adoration of the biblical God. Personal vows can be found in the hymnal’s other songs as well, but none so singularly dedicated to the concept of moral growth as Walter’s poem proves to be.

There are three stanzas to this poem, each stanza consisting of four lines and each line touting a character quality Walter pledged to keep as well as the reason for its primacy in his life. The links he built include being true because there were those who trusted him while they are apart, being pure because there were those who cared about him, being strong because there was much to endure that we must allow to take place, and now being brave, for there is much to dare.

We can easily and maybe incorrectly attribute bravery to the performance of those action heroes we see in the today’s movies. They never fear despite the life-threatening magnitude of the obstacles they must overcome, never get hurt no matter how many blows they receive, and never lose. Victory and a celluloid immortality are in the script.

Our lives, however, aren’t scripted. We can lose. We can be hurt. We can even die. All of this comes as a simple consequence of our frail nature as vulnerable human beings. There is always something at risk, even when we can muster the courage to overcome our fears. In fact that point is the essence of being brave. This character quality becomes more evident when we know we are personally vulnerable and have something to lose, but still dare to take a stance in the face of our fears.

Although Walter majored in theology at Princeton and may have found his concept of bravery in the Bible’s sacred text, my own concept is rooted in my own path as a history major. The History of Ancient Greece (course #313 for which I got an A grade) introduced me to Pericles, the Athenian general and statesman during that nation-state’s golden age. I have kept his words enshrined in a book of quotations gathered from various sources over a lifetime of study. They encourage us to consider that “The man who can most truly be accounted brave is he who knows best the meaning of what is sweet in life and of what is terrible and then goes out determined to meet what is to come.”

Walter’s own concise phrase, there is much to dare, includes this perspective; an awareness that there is much to lose that is sweet in life and that there are no guarantees of success in whatever we endeavor to accomplish. Pericles was eulogizing his soldiers as I recall. But the most peaceful of us and those of us of seemingly inconsequential status can live this sentiment as well. Threats abound without any regard for such meagre human defenses as affluence, ethnicity or nationality. Therefore bravery is not about such things. It is about a character trait worth developing for there is much in every life to dare.

I would be strong, for there is much to suffer

This is the third message in a series based on a poem written in 1905 as a Christmas present for the poet’s mother. The poem later became a song, a hymn in fact, which is how I found it, while perusing the pages of an old Baptist hymnal. I was not familiar with the melody and until I made use of the wonders of the internet to access an on-line performance by the late actress, Gale Storm, I had never heard it sung before.

The poem is a son’s promise to his mother to faithfully adhere to the spiritual standards she must have imparted to him during his childhood. Its construction is a series of one-line statements about character, which makes it an unusual inclusion in the type of songbook typically focused on praise and adoration of a majestic deity.

I found the poem convenient for helping me to maintain a consistent writing discipline by drafting and posting weekly messages on my website. My strategy is to simply follow the introspective path of the poem’s author, Harold Arnold Walter, using his character qualities and reason for nurturing them as the inspiration for composing my own say about these same precepts.

The quote shown above is the third line of the poem’s first stanza, pledging to be strong – which I take to mean in character more than a statement about physical strength. From what little I have learned about Walter, he was not strong physically and died at an early age from complications arising from a weak heart. Strength in his reasoning was likely moral as it follows the first two points he made of being true and pure.

With each character trait stated in his poem, Walter provides a reason for its significance to him. Here he is concerned about the need to prepare for hard times, expressed in the words there is much to suffer. We all endure difficulties. It is a given about being alive. We might agree that much of what we endure is inconvenient. But an honest assessment would cause us to admit that few of us truly suffer as we cope with many mundane aspects of our day-to-day existence.

It is possible that Walter, a theology major at Princeton, was using the word suffer in terms of its use in the King James Bible he studied, where it meant allow. In the KJV Jesus is quoted as saying, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” He was telling his followers to allow the little ones to come near. They were not a nuisance from his perspective. Rather they were the perfect example of faith as seen in their childlike trust of someone who exhibited unconditional love and kindness.

There is much we allow by virtue of having no control over the circumstances we encounter. If so, then that quality of moral strength in our character allows us to respond to those situations in keeping with the other virtues we try to cultivate, those qualities Walter wrote about in the rest of his poem, which we will continue to follow as time permits.

I would be pure, for there are those who care.

This current series of messages is based on a 1905 poem written by a Princeton grad from the school of theology. That I found it in an old hymnal is understandable given its content. But it is the uniqueness of the content for a mainline Christian song book that caught my attention. Far from being about the usual praise and adoration for a beloved deity, or an homage to the joy of faith and fellowship, this poem focused on character and the reasons for developing and maintaining a godly one.

The poet was Harold Arnold Walter. It was written as a Christmas gift for his mother, while he was overseas teaching in a Japanese university. It reads like a personal pledge to someone on the earthly side of heaven, who he venerated in keeping with how a believer is supposed to regard with honor his or her parents. Moms tend to ultimately win out in the influence department as attested to by the recipient of the gift. We are clueless as to what dad received, though. Perhaps the proverbial tie.

The line at the opening of this message is the second line in the poem’s first stanza. Having pledged to be true in keeping faith with those who relied on him, Walter then pledged to be pure because there are those, like his mom, who cared about him. As with being true, the motivation for remaining faithful to this virtue is rooted in an awareness of others and how our actions affect them.

The significance of Walter’s pledge is likely lost on many of us. Purity is hardly a venerated virtue in today’s culture. The easy and perhaps kneejerk perception of its role in a person’s life is one of abstinence, which smacks of prudery at best and repression more than likely.  Abstinence for abstinence sake, though, is a base concept only in the way its opponents trivialize its merits.

For a theology student graduated from Princeton around 1900 the concept would go much deeper than the common attitude towards purity. Its root would naturally be in the Scriptures, which focus on how we are to treat others. This includes how those of us in the male animal category should respectfully think of and treat our female counterparts.

Based on Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, Walter would have considered it impure to look on a woman lustfully, since thinking of her – using the current vernacular – as a sex toy was tantamount to sexual intercourse. And from the Apostle Paul’s writing he would have regarded older women with the respect due a mother and younger women as a beloved sister. Just think how those in the Me Too movement would have benefitted if their abusers had followed this virtuous course instead of yielding to the natural impulses induced by testosterone.

There is far more to purity than sexual restraint. At least in the theological worldview of Walter’s training. Purity requires refinement. This is not a pleasant prospect. Refining is a smith’s occupation in which a metal substance is heated to the point of liquification so the dross can be skimmed from its surface. It is a repeated act with someone having the skills of a silversmith could judge the metal’s purity by how clearly he could see his reflection in the molten metal. For the Princeton grad, the image Walter would have wanted to have reflected in the malleable mirror of his soul would be the face of God. His motivation was not rooted in self, but in an awareness of how his thoughts and deeds will impact others. As we have already noted, others who are important to him. This is assuring someone else’s wellbeing.

We are well beyond prudery here. It is about a commitment to a standard that ignores human nature and its whims in order to pursue what some have traditionally called higher ground. For Walter it was more. It was character establishing the guidelines for conscience so that his thoughts and actions would benefit others.

I would be true, for there are those who trust me.

This quotation is the first line of a 1905 poem written by Harold Arnold Walter as a Christmas present for his mother. It is just happenstance that I came across it recently in an old hymnal, but it seems to be a nice coincidence that I can use the poem as the source of a new web log series at this time of the year given the poem’s Christmas origin.

Its primary appeal, to me at least, is its essential theme about one’s personal character. Walter, a man of three first names, appears to have given the concept a great deal of thought and felt compelled to commit his conclusions to verse. Each of his composition’s twelve lines identifies a distinct character trait he felt worth cultivating. Each line also provides a concise reason for why this was so.

We see the relationship between trait and motivation in his opening line. Being true is significant as there are those who trust him. His mother, the recipient of the poem, would be an obvious case in point. Likely there were others, but it is easy to speculate that she was foremost on his mind and thereby representative of a hierarchy of concern by which we each function. Moms, parents, family, friends, colleagues possess an inherent power of influence that can span both time and space. Walter was literally on the other side of the world when he wrote his poem, being a teacher at the Wasada University in Japan. Distance had little meaning to him in terms of how he structured his behavior. For those of us of an advanced age, time has just as little meaning as we continue to mold our own behavior in conformity to what we know our deceased loved ones would approve.

Being true because there are those who trust us is a premise to which we can easily express our consent without giving it much thought since it evokes an altruistic sensation within us we can appreciate if not actually define or develop in practice. So it begs the question, what does it mean to be true?

We think of the word true as being about facts. It lends itself to an easy construct for an examination as in the presentation of a test question being either true or false. Just check the box for one or the other, no essay required, which means little thinking needed beyond one’s intellectual prowess for recall. This type of knowledge (or expert guessing) is not to be confused with the gift of wisdom, which requires insight and leads to application. You can personally be false and still know that a fact is true.

With a little bit of on-line research, I discovered that the words true and tree share the same root (pun unavoidable). Just as a tree stands firm and upright, so a person’s character shares those same attributes if they are true, as in plumb. True is not an answer to a quiz-show or college exam. It is a condition, hopefully of permanence during the span of a person’s life and legacy. Honest? Yes! Trustworthy? Yes! Dependable? Yes! Even when we are on the far side of the world or this side of the grave from those whose reliance on us spans every barrier providing us license to behave otherwise.

I have been away for the past few weeks and have used my restricted access to the internet as an excuse not to write and therefore not to post any messages during my absence. A mistake admittedly and one which runs counter to the purpose of this week’s blog since the theme of my message is to announce a new series about personal character. This means that my lackadaisical approach for writing and posting these messages needs to be replaced with the disciplined attitude essential to my goals if my writing is to have the credibility I ultimately seek.

The source of this new series is a 1905 poem entitled I Would Be True, which ironically highlights my recent deficiency in fulfilling my own writing commitment. The author was a young Princeton graduate teaching English at the Wasada University in Japan. He wrote the poem for his mother and mailed it to her as a Christmas gift, since his commitment to his profession prevented him from making the journey home to be with his family.

The author was Harold Arnold Walter, whose brief life left this one creative legacy, which others have found appealing for pursuing their own creative sensibilities. Preceding me was Joseph Yates Peek, a Methodist lay-minister and self-taught musician, who put Walter’s poem to music, transforming it into a hymn of modest popularity. Ralph Harlow, a Congregational minister, followed. He added three more verses to the hymn, claiming that Walter came to him in a dream with an appeal to complete what was lacking in the original. Maybe so, but now there is me, no dream needed, just the audacity to piggyback on another’s work in order to keep faith with my own aspirations.

I discovered I Would Be True in an old hymnal. Its appeal was not in the tune, which I did not know and could not read, nor in Harlow’s additions.  Rather I was struck my Walter’s original message to his mother, written as if it were a pledge of assurance that her teaching would always shape his character for the balance of his adult life. This put his poem outside the mainstream of what we expect to see in a Christian worship service, where praise and adoration of a Redeemer God are paramount.

Walter’s three verses consist of four lines each, with each line containing a character trait essential to the type of service he sought to perform. And each verse contains a sub-theme, indicating that these traits found their significance in his relationship with others, his self and with the God of his theological training. His quest for personal depth has subsequently provided me with a road map for drafting my next twelve messages as we enter, appropriately, the Christmas season guided by a poem of Christmas origin.

It only remains to be seen if I can be true to both my intentions for writing and Walter’s vision for doing the same.

I introduced this personal project in message one, regarding the work being done on my father’s 1963 pickup truck. It has been setting idle in California, my home state, since his death in 1981 and I brought it too Wisconsin in 2013 as part of a larger family resettlement program, which allowed me to take care of my brother during the remaining years of her life. She got my attention and the truck continued to sit idle. Until now.

Part one of this account described the work being done on the wheels. The greasy, grimy cleanup work, which composed my part of the process, was supported by a couple of photographic images to verify that I did indeed get my hands dirty for a good cause. Now I am pleased to provide something of a grand reveal as my friend and collaborator in this effort, Dave Lee, has completed the brake assembly for each wheel. He gets the technical credit for this achievement. I am just the duffer with dirt beneath my fingernails.

My one other accomplishment can also be verified at this time. This involves the removal of the bench seat and the cleaning of the cab. Beyond the usual accumulation of dust and dirt one can expect to find when cleaning an object or structure, whose lonely life of decades during has been outside, there was also a good collection of dead leaves, discarded parts, trash and the evidence of rodent infestation. Apparently some creature made good use of the truck as a habitat in the absence of human occupation.

As a child I was devoted to watching Saturday morning cartoons and an avid consumer of the sponsors’ products, especially those with a high sugar content. This was an age when one of my favorite cereals, Trix, only came in three colors; raspberry red, lemon yellow and orange orange. General Mills, the cereal’s manufacturer, promoted its product with the slogan that “Trix are for kids.” (Note: I left out the reference to the silly rabbit in the tag line as being inconsequential to my message).

I’ll gladly and faithfully follow the cereal peoples’ discriminatory lead in the promotion of my own manufacturing product, the repair of dad’s ’63 Chevy, by saying that trucks are for people, especially vintage pickup trucks, which feature prominently in one’s family history. No varmints allowed!

More as it happens.

This past week a line from the Jethro Tull song Aqualung came to mind citing “Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.” In my case this was not about a destitute and homeless, street-wise existence but a labor of love as I have initiated the task of returning my father’s ’63 Chevy pickup to working order.

I will refrain from calling it a restoration as time and money will keep me from tearing the entire vehicle down to its bare bones for a full makeover. Instead it will get careful and caring attention to what needs to be done to make it road worthy.

It must be acknowledged right at the outset that I am not alone in this endeavor. My good and trusted friend, Dave Lee, has the mechanical skills needed to make the transformation possible. My value is doing the messy part of cleaning the grease, grime and rust off of frame and various components of the underside of a truck’s existence. Hence the reference to greasy fingers smearing my shabby work clothes.

To-date the truck is up on jacks. All for wheels have been removed as have the brake drums, brake assemblies and backing plates, leaving me with the less than glamorous parts that have accumulated the oil and dirt of decades. Their removal is my mission.

The tools of the trade include a putty knife, wire brush and an ample supply of mineral spirits as my attack weapons against the evils of filth. I have emerged victorious with only a few cuts from metal parts seeing the light of day for the first time in ages. My badge of success is the grime beneath my fingernails, which I proudly wear since they are harder to clean than the truck parts. One’s fingertips are just too sensitive to endure the onslaught of wire brushing.

My lack of mechanical skills should make it evident that I am not into this in order to drive a vintage vehicle for the fun of it. This is a matter of keeping faith with family and friends, especially dad, who have driven or ridden in this priceless artifact of family history. Just seeing it run again after more than twenty years of sitting idle will provide a fine sense of accomplishment for me. Maybe someday, though, when time and funds allow, it will receive the blessings of the full restoration I think it deserves for bearing a priceless cargo over many a mile.    

One of life’s rewarding experiences is finally coming my way at this late stage in life. One of my children is actually following in my footsteps in a couple of unanticipated ways.

My adult daughter is now playing baseball, my favorite childhood sport, even though she had shown no prior interest for it when she was young. The cause for this epiphany about the merits of America’s past time has little to do with me and everything to do with her employment. She is on the staff of a company called Life Styles, which serves a special adult community, whose members have developmental challenges of various kinds.

Apparently softball is a popular activity for them and my daughter, by virtue of her place on staff, is the manager for one of their teams. She doesn’t know the rules of the game and has little natural aptitude for the art of catching, throwing and hitting an orb of any size. Her childhood interest was always firmly rooted in the care and maintenance of horses. Still, she’s game to be a manager-player and mix it up with a unique collection of people, who find it pure joy in swinging a bat, running the bases and touching home plate, even if no one is officially keeping score. It is simply the love of the game that puts a little swagger in their step whenever they take the field.

My daughter knows that I spent time coaching her older brother in how to play the game. He had a bat, ball and glove not long after he learned to walk. And at dad’s insistence he learned to use them to the extent that I started talking to him about a professional career before he graduated from grade school. Somewhere along the line he developed other interests, which meant that all of his baseball paraphernalia found their way to the back of his closet, permanently. This fact prompted my daughter to observe all these years later that “You taught the wrong kid.”

O well. Such is the plight of being a parent. You never really know how your best of intentions will turn out as your children’s independence quotient comes into play in their lives. I have a second chance, though, since my daughter is following in my footsteps in a different endeavor, one I am adept at and can coach in lieu of never having taught her to cope with the curve.

She is in the process of establishing a non-profit organization, which I know something about since it is how I made a living all those years that I was neglecting her athletic education. To be honest, I did do a lot of chauffeuring when she was little, ferrying her and her four-legged charges to various equestrian competitions. Although I never really progressed beyond knowing a horse’s head from its tail, the fact that I came to appreciate my daughter’s aptitude for horse sense prompted me to encourage her to develop her knowledge and skills in pursuit of whatever dream might come from it.

The result is a new non-profit, incorporated earlier this year, where she lives in Arkansas. If interested, you can learn more about it by visiting www.gaitways.org. I had a part in helping to file the application with the state to obtain corporate status and then the one sent to the IRS to gain their much needed recognition for gait Ways as a public charity. This will allow my daughter to acknowledge all donations as tax-deductible gifts in support of her mission. And that mission brings us back to those special folks, who are an integral part of her baseball team.

My daughter’s vision is to partner the horses she has rescued with the special needs adults under her care. Since Life Styles is about helping people become contributing members to their respective communities, my daughter’s goal is to partner her horses, who have a natural instinct for being participants in a safe community of their own (aka herd), with their human counterparts in pursuit of building relationships based on trust. The skills and confidence gained from this unusual collaboration will last a lifetime for all involved.

It also has allowed my daughter to assume the mantel of being an executive director of this new non-profit organization. And that allows me to take credit for an assist, just as if I had hit a sacrifice fly into deep right field in order to advance the runner to the next available base.