*Let your life speak: Ch. 5*

Palmer's chapter on leadership provides some really helpful points for all people. He starts by pointing out that we are made for community and if this is a fact, then leadership is everyone's vocation... "everyone follows and everyone leads" (74). This is so true... I know I am both leading and following in different capacities... but what I know to be more true is that we are made for community. I just wrote a sermon on being a part of community and how transforming it can be. (I'll post it when I'm done with it.) Community changes the way we look at the world... divine community helps us see the world the way God sees the world. And when we see the way God sees, we have the ability to comprehend the bigger picture and leaders who see the big picture are always the best leaders.

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A good leader, Palmer says, is able to recognize and understand the way "inner shadow and light" work in the world. "By failing to look at our shadows, we feed a dangerous delusion that leaders too often indulge: that our efforts are always well intended, our power is always benign, and the problem is always in those difficult people whom we are trying to lead!" (79). When we don't admit and recognize our faults, we fail as leaders. Good leadership comes from people who have figured out their inner darkness and can lead others "to a place of 'hidden wholeness' because they have been there and know the way" (81). Keeping ourselves spiritually centered is really important. Even if you are spiritual, recognizing when you need "me-time" is so important.

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I know that I will only stay sane if I do one of two things every day: pray (or do something spiritual) and go for a run or walk/ go play. Keeping myself centered is important for me as a leader and simply as a human, but also for everyone else. I know that when I'm unhealthy I'm stressed and angry at the world and that doesn't do ANYONE any good.

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As leaders we have to know who we are and claim it... it isn't the power or the position that defines us... it isn't the control or the knowledge we claim over others... "it depends only on the simple fact that we are children of God, valued in and for ourselves" (87). Once a leader recognizes this, suddenly their leadership becomes about the other... not themselves. It is about God and God's transformational love shone through others. The leader helps the community understand what it can do and allows other to do the rest. You see, there is this general sense of "functional atheism" even within the Christian community. They assume that "ultimate responsibility rests with us" (88). However, it says somewhere in scripture that we do what we can and God will take care of the rest. Caedemon's Call, a Christian band, sings in their song "Two Weeks in Africa", "We put the walls up but Jesus keeps them standing...He doesn't need us but he lets us put our hands in." We are a community infused with God's love and spirit to liberate the oppressed and feed the hungry.

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However, things don't always go as planned. For a long time (and to a little extent now) I had a fear of failure. No matter what I did, it felt like if I didn't do it well enough I failed. And failing seemed so extreme but I didn't know what else to call it. Palmer relates this same feeling to the denial of death... But he says (in the spirit of Easter), that death touches everything... but death does not have the last word. "By allowing something to die when its time is due, we create the conditions under which new life can emerge" (91). This has been so important to me over the past couple years as I have learned to work with my failures and find the growth within them.

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Our inner self is private, right, because it's INNER. But the beauty about community is that it asks us the questions that can only be answered when we look into our inner self. Our communities ask the questions that get to the core of our being. We can't be fearful of others... we can't be afraid of vulnerability... we have to embrace it and accept it. Palmer reminds us that religion was only ever born out of fear... they "originated in the struggle to overcome this ancient enemy" (93). Be not afraid. Everyone has fear... Be not afraid means... literally... do not BE the fear we have. Replace that fear with trust, hope and faith.

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That's when we can be good leaders.

When we have fear, but do not embody it...

When we embrace community as helping our inner selves...

When we accept our faults but learn how to use them to grow...

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"Now we stand on ground that will support us, ground from which we can lead others toward a more trustworthy, more hopeful, more faithful way of being in the world" (94).