FINDING YOUR SPIRITUAL CORE
(March/April 2005 Issue)

To find my home in one sentence, Concise, as if hammered in metal.
Not to enchant anybody. Not to earn a lasting name in posterity.
An unnamed need for order, for rhythm, for form,
Which three words Are opposed to chaos and nothingness.
---Czeslaw Milosz


Once you accept the idea that you want your life to major on significance, the next step is to focus on finding the core of your personality-the immovable center of who you really are. You can't use equipment that hasn't been issued by your Creator and shaped by your experiences. A great benefit of maturity is that you know what you've got to work with, and that helps you find where you belong.

We all have an essential core, and I believe that the great majority of people I've interviewed for my latest book, Finishing Well are aware of that. Whenever they're in doubt or in crisis of one sort or another, they can always return to that essential core.

Your core is what you never give away. The core of Winston Churchill was his belief in Britain and his absolute resolve in the face of the life-and-death challenge that Hitler posed to the British Isles. He followed Neville Chamberlain, who had dealt with the same situation by appeasement. Churchill is famous for saying, "Never, never, never give in!" and one could say that he was born for that moment. His iron will may have prevented Hitler from destroying Western civilization. In that one shining series of moments, thank God, Churchill was up to the task; he went back to his core.

Another man who knows his core and sticks to it is Wilson Goode, a majestic. black man who some would say did everything wrong but it turned out right. His father was an illiterate sharecropper in North Carolina and a hopeless alcoholic. The family moved twelve times in Wilson's first twelve years of life. His father eventually went to prison for beating up his mother with a garden hoe, and the family had to struggle along without him.

When Wilson went to junior high and high school, his teachers told him, "You ought to be in the industrial arts program so you can get a job when you leave school." The counselor told him not to waste his time on academics. So of course he took academics, because he believed that was what God wanted him to do. His most compelling statement in our interview was, "If I listened to man and not God, I would be nowhere." So I asked him, "How do you figure out what God's telling you?" And he said, "I listen."

I asked, "How do you do that?" And Wilson replied, "I think that most of us are so noisy we can't hear God's will. We're so busy talking, and listening to ourselves, and listening to other people's advice that we don't get quiet long enough to let God speak to us, and know that God is speaking to us. Consequently, we end up very unhappy. I know that it's God's will when I'm directed to something, because I listen."

His point was well-taken. To hear anything in today's noise-saturated culture, you have to get to a place where you can hear God's still, small .voice. "Sometimes I just go to my living room," Wilson told me, "and I just listen. Early in the morning while the sun is coming up, I listen to God speak. And even while I'm sleeping sometimes, God is speaking, and I know it. Sometimes it's hard to put into words, but you just know when you're in sync with God's way and with God's will for your life. You know because it works, and there's harmony between you and God when that happens." There was genuine excitement in his words. But it struck me that there were two sides to that coin, so I asked him, "Do you know when you're out of sync?" And he didn't hesitate. "Oh yes," he said. "It feels like punishment God will pull you back in a minute. Sometimes that little human in you takes control, and you think that you can do it all by yourself, and then God just pulls you right back."

After high school, his counselor told him, "Don't go to college, Wilson; you'll just embarrass yourself." So of course he went to college and graduated in the top 10 percent of his class. Every step of his journey, people kept telling him what he couldn't do. Then sometime later, after he'd moved to Pennsylvania, gained leadership experience in the community, and done a lot of good work there, he decided to run for mayor of Philadelphia where he could make a real difference. But, once again, people said, "Wilson, don't even think about that! You can never be mayor of Philadelphia."

First of all, they told him, there's never been a black mayor in Philadelphia. Second, he would be running against Frank Rizzo, a two-time mayor and former chief of police. So Wilson ran for mayor because he was convinced it was what God wanted him to do, and was elected the first black mayor of the city. Later, after he finished his term of office, he felt God was calling him to recruit mentors for some of the toughest kids in the country. Approximately 70 percent of inmates' kids end up in lives of crime, and Wilson wanted to do something about that.

So I asked him, "Wilson, what was the size of your budget when you were mayor?" He said, "Two billion dollars with 30,000 employees." "So now you're just going from church to church recruiting mentors? How does that make any sense in terms of what you were doing before?" He said, very simply, "It's what God wants me to do." And that is Wilson Goode's core, whatever form it takes. …

The thing that excites people when they get to a certain tipping point in their lives (a point in life where people realize that they must choose how to spend the rest of their life) is not another stock option or another million dollars; it's doing something that truly matters. For a man like Wilson Goode to go from serving as mayor of Philadelphia with 30,000 employees and a $2 billion budget to recruiting mentors, one by one, for at-risk teenagers and children of prisoners, is a remarkable change. I asked him, "How many employees do you have now, Wilson?" "None," he said. "Who is doing all your recruiting?" He replied, "I do it myself. I go from church to church telling people about the need and recruiting folks who are willing to mentor these children, one by one." Wilson was the child of a prisoner, himself, so he understands the need because it is part of who he is, part of his core.
The story of Wilson Goode teaches us several valuable lessons when considering success, significance, and how to integrate our faith in the workplace.

• We must spend time pondering and learning about our core-based on our God given equipment and the experiences that have shaped us.
• We must stop and listen to God. Communication is always interaction between two beings and God has chosen to not be an exception; He grants us the privilege of us telling Him our desires but He also longs for us to listen to His voice.
• When you find yourself in crisis or in the midst of big decisions, returning to your core is always a good first step.

After selling Buford Television, Inc., a large network of cable systems across the country, in July 1999, Bob Buford has turned to investing the remaining years of his life in the lives of others. He is chairman of the board of The Buford Foundation and Leadership Network, was the co-founder and first chairman of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, and has authored three books, including Halftime and most recently Finishing Well, which can be found at bookstores everywhere. Bob and his wife, Linda, make their home in Dallas, Texas.