Leaders Step into Rivers
No man steps in the same river twice,
for it’s not the same river
and he’s not the same man.
—Heraclitus of Ephesus (circa 535 – c. 475 BC)
I don’t remember much from Philosophy 101, but this one crazy quote always comes to mind — especially when I go fishing.
Famous for his insistence on ever-present change, on man’s becoming in contrast to his being, Heraclitus compared life, history, time to an ever-flowing river.
Here’s how I understand Heraclitus:
History is like a river…it begins somewhere and ends somewhere. It flows in a direction; like all other stories history has a beginning, middle, and end. And when we step into that river, we change it. And it changes us.
Part of our continuing journey of “becoming” the leaders God wants us to be is learning to step into rivers that change history and change us. All leaders step into rivers. They have the courage to go first; to take the first steps to effect change.
What’s critical for leaders is stepping into rivers that matter!
Laurie and I chatted this week about the “vocational” rivers we are stepping into and why:
Laurie and I serve with Faculty Commons because, as Rick Hove (my friend and boss) keeps reminding us, so much of our culture is “downstream of the academy.” If we can affect “faculty, grad student, students, and ideas” on the university, we can help bring Kingdom change.
At Gettysburg and thru efforts like this Life&Leadership letter, we long to help leaders develop because we believe that “leadership” is the critical factor on every battlefield. Develop a leader and you can change the course of history.
And as I hinted in the last letter, we love the unity of gospel proclamation and gospel demonstration, of justification and justice. As one author says: ‘God has set in motion a redemptive plan — a plan that would span the centuries and continents — to make right what had gone so wrong.”
We want to discover and be part of that redemptive plan. We want to go into the heart of darkness like Joseph Conrad’s trip up the Congo. We're looking, however, to not merely critique man's injustice, but to actually and practically see Kingdom change in dark places.
We want to step into rivers of injustice and see them become as beautiful as the rivers I fish in Colorado.
Rivers on My Mind
We thought a lot about rivers these last few weeks. Mostly because I got into some of the best fishing ever, stepping into some beautiful rivers here in Colorado.
Now, fly-fishermen can't resist showing off some photos. Here’s my favorite one from a few weeks ago (thanks Bob Horner for taking this pic).
Some of the rivers I fish, like the South Plate, the Arkansas, the Blue, the Poudre, the Gunnison, and the Colorado, flow thru beautiful places in Colorado. Along their banks, fishermen (like me!) sometimes catch healthy fish. And Laurie and I live on our own slice of heaven, the Tarryall River (pictured above). It’s a little high now with the fresh runoff from melting snow, but my fly rods are always loaded and ready. Maybe next week I can get on my own home waters.
These rivers, however, were not the only ones on our mind.
Thanks to the staff of Love-Justice Intl, Laurie and I were reminded that there are other rivers in this world—rivers of injustice where there is a long-flowing history of women being trafficked and of children orphaned and abandoned.
Their exotic names—the Congo, the Bagmati, the Ganges, the Kagera, the Songwe, the Limpopo, the Kolente, the Brahmaputra, or the Zambezi—can’t hide that along their banks victims of poverty and oppression are being enslaved and drowned of any hope for a better life. Fishermen may occasionally cast nets into those rivers, but the polluted waters and the infected fish only contribute to the brokenness there.
No one takes pictures of the fish they catch.
While being reminded of these rivers, Laurie and I also got to help Love-Justice Intl cast some vision to and serve some potential financial partners.
We encouraged those men and women of means to take their first steps into these rivers of injustice, and help change the course of history in the heart of darkness. In several conversations with these partners, I shared Ezekiel’s vision of a future river, whose headwaters flow out from under the throne of God.
“And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that even the waters of the Dead Sea may become fresh. Everything will live where this river goes. Fishermen will stand by and cast nets to all kinds of fish. . . And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fails, but they will bear fresh fruit every month because the water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their trees for healing (Exekiel 47).
While the Bible assures us that history is flowing toward that beautiful end, God also gives us the opportunity to join in by stepping into those rivers of injustice today. And as we do, God miraculously allows us to help bring change downstream of today. To bring that ultimate future into reality. And as equally amazing, we too are changed when we step into the darkness of broken places and "let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. Amos 5:24.”
Abraham Lincoln and the Rivers of Injustice
I enjoy reading about Abraham Lincoln. His Gettysburg Address becomes the focus of our discussion of the Language of Leadership.
Every year, I read at least one Lincoln biography and/or invade Lincoln's library to read what he read, trying to unpack the qualities of his leadership.
Here are several leadership principles I’ve seen in him:
Embrace the Noble Rage of Fierce Resolve
and
Temper that Fierce Resolve with Personal Humility.
First, Embrace the Noble Rage of Fierce Resolve
Lincoln never had the advantages of a thorough public education nor the opportunity to learn from private tutors. But from an early age, he took responsibility for his own learning, finding within himself an ambition to change the world.
All his friends said of Lincoln that he possessed an unwavering ambition to matter. William Herndon said, “Abe had a soaring ambition; his ambition was “a little engine that knew no rest.” Whenever there were setbacks to Lincoln's ambition—as there were more than once—he raged against them, telling Herndon, "How hard—oh, how more than hard—it is to die and leave one's country no better for the life of him that lived and died her child!"
In his first bid for elective office, the Illinois legislature, he said,
"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other ambition so great as that of being truly esteemed by my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem."
Laurie and I often stop at Lincoln sites as we drive across the country. Several years ago, we explored the woods where Lincoln was born—in northern Kentucky. Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12th, 1809 in a one-room log cabin at Sinking Spring farm, south of Hodgenville in Hardin County, Kentucky. After a land title dispute forced his family to leave, Lincoln relocated to Knob Creek farm, eight miles to the north.
Visiting these two places caused me to ask again: How was it that Lincoln—having been born in out of the way places like Sinking Spring and almost drowning in nearby Knob Creek—possessed such a desire in life to be somebody and to do something in the world?
Could it be the books he read?
Lincoln’s favorite books were the King James Bible, Aesop’s Fables, The Arabian Nights, Shakespeare’s plays, Pilgrim’s Progress, Weem’s Biography of Washington, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and other biographies. His reading list was long.
Lincoln also loved poetry.
His appetite for poetry remained undiminished throughout his life. As another fellow attorney Milton Hay recalled, “The poets undoubtedly had their influence on Lincoln’s style and probably on his mind.”
I’ve been reading some of the poetry Lincoln read, to learn what things made Lincoln tick. Poetry is, of course, metaphorical and in its sparsity, it paints pictures in the mind. It appeals to the imagination and not the reason.
One poem comes up often in Lincoln studies: Thomas Gray’s Elegy of a Country Churchyard. It painted powerful pictures in Lincoln's mind.
When asked for details from his youth, Lincoln quoted from Gray's Elegy: “there is nothing interesting there: my life has been but the “simple annals of the poor.” In Gray’s poem, Lincoln saw himself. In the central stanzas, Gray ponders how the poor are born with the same natural abilities as members of the upper classes and asks: Who can say what humble people might have accomplished in the great world had they not been constrained by their condition? What innate powers might have been displayed by the poor, had they not been frozen by “Chill Penury”?
Gray implies that the innocence and beauty of these souls were wasted in their isolated rural environment. They resembled hidden deserts and forgotten ocean caves (or the faraway rivers of injustice in Africa and Asia) that could have flourished in better circumstances.
My favorite phrases in Gray’s poem might also have encouraged Lincoln to not let his rural disadvantages “repress his noble rage” or "freeze the genial current of his soul." Perhaps Lincoln came to believe that even “in his neglected spot” he had a “heart pregnant with celestial fire.” Maybe in his hands he might sway "the rod of empire, Or wake to ecstasy the living lyre.”
Leaders Discover Lines of Usefulness
All great leaders of movements seem to possess a driving ambition, a noble rage that leads to "some line of usefulness ". Leaders step into rivers that matter and go after certain ambitions with fierce resolve—even with the realization that they too will pass into death and may be forgotten and buried in some country churchyard.
I'm not sure that Lincoln read the following phrase from William Wilberforce's dairy: "God almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the Slave Trade and the reformation of manners." We do know that Lincoln said that every man growing up in his generation wanted to be a Wilberforce. He knew of Wilberforce and his influence and maybe read what Wilberforce wrote to his son Samuel:
"My dearest boy, remember my counsel. If you come into Parliament . . . choose out for yourself some specific object, some line of usefulness. Make yourself thoroughly acquainted with your subject, and you will not only be listened to with attention, but you will please God and do great good."
Lincoln developed, maybe thru the books he read or the lives he learned about, a line of usefulness, a fierce resolve that “the way the world is not the way the world has to be.” And that he was meant to do something about it.
Such ambitions should be true of us. The Scripture constantly reminds us that “he who is noble plans noble things and on noble things he stands–Isa 32:8.” [Study Isaiah 32:1-8 this week. It's a great meditation on leadership.]
All leaders sense that God or destiny has given them a noble assignment, some line of usefulness. It appears that most leaders have had some sort of conversation or vision or wrestling with God or themselves in which they “realized”, in Wilberforce’s words, their line of usefulness.
Jesus certainly sensed it. At his first public appearance, he takes the scroll of Isaiah and reads “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Mike Murdock suggests that “we too are here on assignment. Everything God created is a solution to a problem”–including you. The key to our leadership calling and perhaps our impact is discovering our assignment. It’s our purpose–our specific object, our line of our usefulness–in life.
We as leaders must find our why, rooted often in a God-engendered noble rage. God has made us in our short life to be co-creators—making beautiful things out of the darkness and chaos. You and I are meant to be broken by things that are broken; we are designed to make something of our lives by stepping into the rivers of brokenness and seeing them changed.
What is your assignment? What rivers are you stepping into?
What problem had God created you to solve?
Warning
Our enemy, unfortunately, twists this holy ambition into something self-serving (more on this in the next Life&Leadership letter) or we fail to ignite this “noble rage and celestial fire of God’s design for us."
We rarely change things and as a result, we are rarely changed.
We fish only the beautiful rivers.
And occasionally share our best pictures with our friends.
We fail to step into the dark waters of injustice.
Do Not Go Gentle
Dylan Thomas's words haunt me as I get older. "Do not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. . . [And even in your] “old age burn and rave at close of day . . . rage rage against the night.”
Let us not suppress that noble rage; let us be ambitious for things that matter.
Let us discover our St Louis where gospel proclamation and gospel demonstration flow into one another like the Missouri and the Mississippi.
Frederick Buechner’s quote should captivate us all: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Next Letter: Part 2: Temper Your Fierce Resolve with Personal Humility
