By Gary Keene

This week, Bishop Mary Ann celebrates her wedding anniversary with Jeff in Hawaii, combined with attending the Korean Mission Leadership Seminar being held there. As she prepares to return home, she encouraged me to share this story with you as an “e360.”

My wife Karen is deeply involved in campaigning for Barack Obama. Just yesterday, she and another volunteer went to pass out flyers at our local Food 4 Less grocery store. Shortly after they arrived, a store employee came out and told them they could not solicit people there. Karen and her friend apologized and started to go back to their car, when Karen paused and said: “Let me talk to the manager.”


She went inside and spoke with the manager: again she apologized, saying the local campaign office had assigned them to this location, and she assumed it had been checked out and OK’d. Karen then asked if they could pass out flyers if they were in the parking lot, not at the entrance to the store. The manager thought for a moment, and agreed that would be OK.


So the campaigners took up a new spot on one of the parking islands in the blazing sun. They had no trouble handing out lots of flyers to the richly diverse population of our northeast Pasadena neighborhood. Soon, an elderly Hispanic man wearing a Food 4 Less vest came by collecting shopping carts. His nametag said his name was Jesús, and he told the volunteers they should go stand in the shade by the front doors, out of the sun.


Karen explained the situation, and he muttered in Spanish about the foolish manager. In Spanish, she asked if he was registered to vote? “Si.” Would he be voting for Obama? Si, but some of his friends were not yet decided. Knowing the Hispanic vote is important for Obama, Karen asked further, ‘What does he need to do to win?’


The old man said simply, “Tell the truth.” He went on to describe how of course all politicians promise many things because there are many problems. ‘We know they cannot do everything they promise and not all of our problems will go away. But do not pretend, do not lie; tell us the truth.’


A colleague once defined a politician as someone who keeps the future and the present and the gap in between all fuzzy: in this way, politicians avoid being held accountable for making any real progress from the way things are, to the way things should be. Real leaders, as Jesús stated with such clarity, must tell the truth: the truth about our current reality, and what it will take to move beyond that reality to what we hope for and dream about.


But truth-telling starts with one’s self: we cannot see or recognize the truth out there, if we have not confronted it in here—in our own souls and psyches. This is why the fundamental work of leadership begins with self-reflection; it is why Jesus (of Nazareth, not Pasadena) was first tested in the wilderness, so that he would know the truth of his own self. This is why a core element of our new Center for Leadership will begin by focusing on this self-work.


There is truth to be told, and it is a crucial function of leadership to do the telling—without any politicizing. For the church, the first truth to be told is that God is, God loves, and God desires a future that matches God’s love for all creation. That truth-telling is the responsibility of every disciple— take it from Jesús. Con Dios, gary