“Saving the world through weekly lunch meetings complete with a guest speaker and a raffle … it’s a bird … it’s a plane … its mostly white people in business suits … it’s a briefcase convention … IT’s CONAN THE ROTARIAN!!
I am the last person to be blackballed by a Savannah Rotary Club. My friend Dr. Steve Acuff had put my name in and I agreed to join. So he called me a few weeks later and asked to meet with me where he delivered the bad news.
At the time my third book had just been released, I was overseeing the construction of a shelter for women and children and another for people living with AIDS. I was all over the news and was invited somewhere most every day to speak, including all of the Rotary Clubs. I thought I was a shoe in. Steve led me know this was the first time someone had been blackballed since the days of integration.
“I wonder why,” I asked him?
“Well,” he thoughtfully began, “do you remember when the Leadership Savannah class went to Washington D.C.”?
Did I? Man we had a blast.
Our Leadership Savannah class was comprised mostly of … leaders. We were forever breaking new ground and on the D.C. trip several things happened. First of all we orchestrated the kidnapping of a bar named Déjà vu, including Steve and Pat the famous lawyer locking the Disc Jockey out of his cage so that they could keep playing “Love Shack” by the B52’s over and over again.
I also recall that our entire Leadership Savannah class was banned from ever flying United Airlines again. Several of my classmates didn’t want the party at Déjà vu to end so they brought it on the plane, complete with confiscating the microphone and grabbing stewardess’ to dance the aisle.
When we weren’t doing these things we were at Congress, the Library of Congress or Old Ebbits Grill. What got me blackballed from the Rotary Club happened in Congress and I cannot think of a better place to get in trouble.
At the time Robert Mapplethorpe was a terrific controversy because he received money from the National Endowment for the Arts and produced art that many found offensive. We were in a room in Congress and some Congressman from California was ranting and raving about Mapplethorpe. Taxpayer dollars should not go to such stuff!
He was doing this slide show and showed a painting of Jesus depicted as a black junky sitting on an inner city street shooting up.
“Look at this sacrilege!” the Congressman wailed.
I raised my hand. He looked surprised. “So,” I began, “in the Bible it says that Jesus is with the poor, the oppressed, the window, the orphan and the sojourner. A sojourner is a homeless person. Many are heroin addicts. This panting seems to convey that Jesus feels their plan. What’s your problem?”
Many of my Leadership Savannah mates were also Rotarians and evidently you’re not supposed to question things if you are a Rotarian. So I was blackballed. When Steve told me the reason I sat straighter in my chair. It made me kind of proud.
“You are softer now,” my friend told me yesterday. “To look at pictures of you then … you weren’t angry but you were …”
“Intense,” I finished for her. If you are going to represent the needs of the down and out, the sick and the poor, the addicted and the dying … you become intense.
Having a career managing the sadness and tragedies of others affects your happiness. It certainly did mine over the years. Then I reached this tipping point where the unhappiness of the world conquered my happiness. And now here I sit on this Sabbatical trying to learn from it.
“I want you happy,” she said.
“Me too,” I nodded, smiling.
But … “all of the answers and all of the questions” will not be “locked in an attic one day” to use Jimmy Buffets line.
Leaders don’t do that.
Regardless of the cost.
