A Dying Man's Words to Live By

As Steve Jobs is laid to rest, I would like to share with you some profound thoughts he gave in the Commencement address at Stanford University in 2005.  I encourage you to watch or read the speech in its entirety when you have an opportunity.  You can find it on the web.  In the meantime, contemplate the words below.  They truly are words to live by.

On Love and Loss and Failure

We had just released our final creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.  And then I got fired.  How can you get fired from a company you started?  I really didn't know what to do for months.  But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did.  The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit.  I had been rejected, but I was still in love.  And so I decided to start over.  I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.  During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.  In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.  Don't lose faith.  I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.  You've got to find what you love.  And that is true for your work as it is for your lovers.  Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.  And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.  If you haven't found it yet, keep looking.  Don't settle.  As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.  And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.  So keep looking until you find it.  Don't settle.

On Death and Life

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.  Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.  Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.  There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die.  Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.  And yet death is the destination we all share.  No one has ever escaped it.  And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life.  It is life's change agent.  It clears out the old to make way for the new.  Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.  Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking.  Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow know what you truly want to become.  Everything else is secondary.

On the Loss of an Icon and Personal Hero

 Maybe once every century, God seems to bless humanity with a person who changes the world in a way that alters the form and function of our lives, ultimately changing the way we live our lives.  In centuries past, the planet was blessed with names like Da Vinci, Edison, and Ford.  In our lifetime we were blessed with Steve Jobs.

A week ago today, I was on the phone with a dear friend who is a regular visitor at the Jobs' home in Palo Alto.  At some point in our conversation I asked him if he had recently seen Steve Jobs.  Martin grew eerily quiet for a long moment.  Then in a broken voice he said, "He is not going  to make it, he will pass any day."  He went on to describe the atmosphere at the Jobs' home and shared tidbits from a recent conversation he’d had with Steve's wife Laurene.  When I hung up the phone, I found myself deeply saddened.  I walked back to my room in a cloud of depression.  For the second time this year, I was about to lose a hero.

A few months back, David Wilkerson was tragically killed in a head-on collision.  His vehicle was hit by an eighteen-wheeler near his home in East Texas.  The news of his tragic death devastated me.  He was a spiritual mentor to me, and a life hero.  Now six months later, the second of my three heroes in life was about to die.  And it was very difficult for me to fathom, understand, and accept. 

Once I was back in my room, I grabbed my Bible and read various stories of miraculous acts of healing.  It seems I wanted to remind God of what he could do.  If he could raise numerous individuals from the dead, he could certainly heal a very sick man in Palo Alto.  Eventually I dropped to my knees and began to pray.  I fervently pleaded with God to heal Steve Jobs.  He was way to young to die.  I pleaded for mercy and grace, for a miracle to take place.  I asked God to please extend the life of one of my heroes.  My prayer was not answered.  Steve passed away four days later at the age of fifty-six.

There is so much to be said about the life of Steve Jobs.  Instead of recanting all he has accomplished, I would like to tell you why he is one of my heroes.  He made the world smaller.  His ideas and inventions turned a very large planet into a global village.  He was a man of vision, of brilliance, of passion and he was blessed with the ability to figure out what we wanted before we knew we wanted it.  He rebuilt the world to fit his own digital vision.

Steve Jobs was a pioneer, a trailblazer, a man who believed he could make a dent in the universe.  With a messianic intensity, he preached a message that technology was a tool to improve human life and unleash creativity.  He had complete faith in his intuition and embraced personality traits that some considered flaws – narcissism, perfectionism – to lead Apple in a stunning comeback from near bankruptcy, turning it into the world's most valuable company.

Steve’s life and the battles he underwent inspired my life in numerous ways.  From my earliest days of leading others, I embraced his style and example.  Employees and friends would often hear me mention his name in relation to some vision, some hope, some dream I had for my own life, my ministry, or the organizations I led and directed.  He had a profound impact on my life in two distinct ways.

Steve Jobs was a creative genius.  He believed anything could be accomplished.  He lived in a realm seemingly above obstacles, limits, borders and possessed a convention-bucking vision of what something could become.  He was committed to excellence and made sure that the tiniest details were perfect.  His example was my inspiration to launch an organization that conducted nationwide youth conventions designed to be powerful in content, creative in presentation, and life-altering in experience.  In these gatherings, thousands of teens were inspired to sacrifice a few weeks of their lives to serve others in foreign lands on trips we provided.

Everything that went into the development and planning of this organization was driven by a desire to do something no one was doing and to give teenagers an experience unlike any they had previously encountered.  We tried our best to do everything with a spirit of excellence and this extended to all facets of advertising, production, communication, publication, and presentation.

When I initially started the company, I was met with opposition.  We were affiliated with a worldwide Christian denomination that was somewhat rigid and conservative.  For the most part, the large organization was entrenched in a traditional style of communication.  Many thought my style and vision was too "secular" and way over the top.  However, I would not let the naysayers hinder me.  I did not allow their opinions to compromise my vision, belief, and creativity.  Back then it was difficult to wade into old industry with a new idea.  But I would not give up and the results of chasing a dream were astonishing.  Because I was blessed with an amazing staff of individuals who were extremely gifted, talented, and supportive of my ideas, the lives of tens of thousands of young people were greatly impacted and inspired.  Thousands traveled to nations on every continent to aid and assist others. This was a direct result of Steve Jobs and the enormous impact he had on my life.  His example taught me to never give up, to do everything with excellence, and to pursue my passion and dreams.  His life also taught me one of the most important lessons I have ever learned: Do not waste the years spent in exile.

In 1985, Steve Jobs was fired from Apple.  In a boardroom coup, the company he founded ousted him, deposing the tech king from the palace he had built.  "What had been the focus of my entire life was gone and it was devastating.  I was a very public failure," Jobs said in a speech given at Stanford University.  This was one of three serious reversals in his life that illustrated rejection, exclusion, and extinction.  It sent him into exile, into the wilderness.  And he did not let those years go to waste.  Instead of resting on his laurels and fading into oblivion, he allowed the time of being away to strengthen him and shape him into the lateral thinker and innovator he became.

In the twelve years he spent in exile, Steve Jobs reinvented himself.  Scrupulous examination of faults, failures, and personal shortcomings enabled him to make adjustments.  The heaviness of going from America's wunderkind to a perceived failure was replaced by a lightness of beginning again, of starting over, of transforming himself.  The years of living in the wilderness – where people abandon you, where they write you off, where they believe every negative story – were not wasted.  They prepared him for a comeback, and what a comeback it was.  In 1997, he returned from exile to retake the helm of his beloved Apple – teetering on the edge of extinction – and saved it from collapse.  For the next fourteen years he forged his singular vision through a combination of inspiration and gut instinct.  He upended entire industries. Personal computing.  The music business.  Publishing.  Hollywood.  Cell phones.  All have been radically transformed by Steve Jobs.

Living in exile, in the wilderness, is very difficult.  It's a barren and empty and lonely existence, a stark contrast to the days you stood on top of the world, basking in success, surrounded by friends and admirers.  When failure casts you into the outer limits, a majority of those who once stood with you no longer stand.  Individuals you helped are nowhere to be found.  People you opened doors for now slam those same doors and shut you out.  Often you are abandoned to your own wanderings with little support.

Steve Jobs' years in exile have inspired me to not waste my years in such surroundings.  I have learned to use this time in the wilderness to reinvent myself, to rediscover my passion, my calling, my purpose.  In the incurious world of today, one focused mainly on comfort and ease, his example pushes me down the harsh path of self-examination to ask painful questions of myself: How did I allow my life to get into this situation?  What was my role in the failure of my marriage?  How can I be a better man, a better father, a better husband, a better friend?  The years in exile are shaping me.

Self-examination is the most difficult path to travel.  But introspection is the one path we must travail during our time in the wilderness.  It was this path that transformed Steve Jobs into the remarkable individual he became, a man who changed the world for all of us.  

Rest in peace Steve Jobs.  I and the rest of humanity will sorely miss you.  Thank you for sharing your brilliance with all of our lives.  You changed how the world works and how the world imagines itself.  You have shown us how to use our gifts to make the world a better and brighter place.  May we follow the shining path you left and illuminate the world around us.

The Case of Charlie Engle and Liar Loans

Charlie Engle is an astonishing individual.  He is a man of passion, a man of conviction, a man of belief.  He is driven by an innate optimism that believes anything in this life can be accomplished.  And he lives out this belief.  He is the only man ever to have run across the United States and the Sahara Desert in Northern Africa. 

I was introduced to Charlie Engle in the federal system, a place we now both reside.  Like me, he writes about his life and experiences.  He is a gifted writer.  I encourage you to visit his website (www.charlieengle.com) and read his inspirational blog "Running In Place."  I am certain his words will inspire you to become a stronger and better person.

Charlie Engle does not belong here.  What happened to him is nothing more than an outrage.  His story magnifies how misguided our criminal justice system has become.  I encourage you to read the New York Times article below that documents his case and tells his story.  You will get a glimpse of just how quickly your life could be turned upside down and how close you could be – yes you –  to spending some time in a federal prison.  I also encourage you to read my last blog "Amanda Knox is Free - Perspective."  The article below and my last blog will open your eyes to some unimaginable acts that are taking place under the disguise of justice.

In Prison for Taking a Liar Loan

A few weeks ago, when the Justice Department decided not to prosecute Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide, I wrote a column lamenting the fact that none of the big fish were likely to go to prison for their roles in the financial crisis.  Soon after that column ran, I received an e-mail from a man named Richard Engle, who informed me that I was wrong. There was, in fact, someone behind bars for what he’d supposedly done during the subprime bubble. It was his 48-year-old son, Charlie.

On Valentine’s Day, the elder Mr. Engle said, his son had entered a minimum-security prison in Beaver, W.Va., to begin serving a 21-month sentence for mortgage fraud. He then proceeded to tell me the tale of how federal agents nabbed his son — a tale he backed up with reams of documents and records that suggest, if nothing else, that when the federal government is truly motivated, there is no mountain it won’t move to prosecute someone it wants to nail. And it was definitely motivated to nail Charlie Engle.

Mr. Engle’s is a tale worth telling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its punch line. Was Mr. Engle convicted of running a crooked subprime company? Was he a mortgage broker who trafficked in predatory loans? A Wall Street huckster who sold toxic assets?

No. Charlie Engle wasn’t a seller of bad mortgages. He was a borrower. And the “mortgage fraud” for which he was prosecuted was something that literally millions of Americans did during the subprime bubble. Supposedly, he lied on two liar loans.

“The Department of Justice has made prosecuting financial crimes, including mortgage fraud, a high priority,” said Neil H. MacBride, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in a statement. (Mr. MacBride, whose office prosecuted Mr. Engle, declined to be interviewed.)

Apparently, though, it’s only a high priority if the target is a borrower. Mr. Mozilo’s company made billions in profit, some of it on liar loans that he acknowledged at the time were likely to be fraudulent and which did untold damage to the economy. And he personally was paid hundreds of millions of dollars.  Though he agreed last year to a $67.5 million fine to settle fraud charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, it was a small fraction of what he earned.  Otherwise, he walked.  Thus does the Justice Department display its priorities in the aftermath of the crisis.

It’s not just that Mr. Engle is the smallest of small fry that is bothersome about his prosecution. It is also the way the government went about building its case. Although Mr. Engle took out the two stated-income loans, as liar loans are more formally called, in late 2005 and early 2006, it wasn’t until three years later that his troubles began.

As a young man, Mr. Engle had been a serious drug addict, but after he got clean, he became an ultra-marathoner, one of the best in the world. In the fall of 2006, he and two other ultra-marathoners took on an almost unimaginable challenge: they ran across the Sahara Desert, something that had never been done before. The run took 111 days, and was documented in a film financed by Matt Damon, who served as executive producer and narrator. Mr. Engle received $30,000 for his participation.

The film, “Running the Sahara,” was released in the fall of 2008. Eventually, it caught the attention of Robert W. Nordlander, a special agent for the Internal Revenue Service. As Mr. Nordlander later told the grand jury, “Being the special agent that I am, I was wondering, how does a guy train for this because most people have to work from nine to five and it’s very difficult to train for this part-time.” (He also told the grand jurors that sometimes, when he sees somebody driving a Ferrari, he’ll check to see if they make enough money to afford it. When I called Mr. Nordlander and others at the I.R.S. to ask whether this was an appropriate way to choose subjects for criminal tax investigations, my questions were met with a stone wall of silence.)

Mr. Engle’s tax records showed that while his actual income was substantial, his taxable income was quite small, in part because he had a large tax-loss carry forward, due to a business deal he’d been involved in several years earlier. (Mr. Nordlander would later inform the grand jury only of his much lower taxable income, which made it seem more suspicious.) Still convinced that Mr. Engle must be hiding income, Mr. Nordlander did undercover surveillance and took “Dumpster dives” into Mr. Engle’s garbage. He mainly discovered that Mr. Engle lived modestly.

In March 2009, still unsatisfied, Mr. Nordlander persuaded his superiors to send an attractive female undercover agent, Ellen Burrows, to meet Mr. Engle and see if she could get him to say something incriminating. In the course of several flirtatious encounters, she asked him about his investments.

After acknowledging that he had been speculating in real estate during the bubble to help support his running, he said, according to Mr. Nordlander’s grand jury testimony, “I had a couple of good liar loans out there, you know, which my mortgage broker didn’t mind writing down, you know, that I was making four hundred thousand grand a year when he knew I wasn’t.”

Mr. Engle added, “Everybody was doing it because it was simply the way it was done. That doesn’t make me proud of the fact that I am at least a small part of the problem.”

Unbeknownst to Mr. Engle, Ms. Burrows was wearing a wire.

Lying on a stated-income loan is, without question, a crime, and one ought not to excuse it even though, as Mr. Engle says, “everybody was doing it” — usually with the eager encouragement of their brokers. But the Engle case raises questions not just about the government’s priorities, but about something even more basic: did he even commit the crimes he is accused of?

Partly, I concede, Mr. Engle is easy to root for. He is a personable, upbeat man who has conquered some serious demons. Part of his Sahara expedition was aimed at raising money for a charity to help bring clean water to Africa. "Every experience in life has the ability to teach lessons if I am open to them," he he wrote on a blog  as he prepared to enter prison. How can you not like someone like that?

But the more I looked into it, the more I came to believe that the case against him was seriously weak. No tax charges were ever brought, even though that was Mr. Nordlander’s original rationale. Money laundering, the suspicion of which was needed to justify the undercover sting, was a nonissue as well. As for that “confession” to Ms. Burrows, take a closer look. It really isn’t a confession at all. Mr. Engle is confessing to his mortgage broker’s sins, not his own.

Perhaps anticipating that problem, when Mr. Nordlander finally arrested Mr. Engle in May 2010, he claims to have elicited a stronger, better confession while Mr. Engle was handcuffed in the back seat of his car. Mr. Engle fervently denies this. This second supposed confession, however, was never captured on tape.

As for the loans themselves, on one of them Mr. Engle claimed an income of $15,000 a month. As it turns out, his total income in 2005, according to his accountant, was $180,000, which amounts to ... hmmm ...$15,000 a month, though of course Mr. Engle didn’t have the kind of job that generated monthly income. (In addition to real estate speculation, Mr. Engle gave motivational speeches and earned around $50,000 a year as a producer on the hit show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”)

The monthly income listed on the second loan was $32,500, an obviously absurd amount, especially since the loan itself was for only $300,000. It was a refinance of a property Mr. Engle already owned, allowing him to pull out $80,000 of the $215,000 in equity he had in the property.

Mr. Engle claims that he never saw that $32,500 claim and never signed the papers. Indeed, a handwriting analysis conducted by the government raised the distinct possibility that Mr. Engle’s signature and his initials in several places in the mortgage documents had been forged. As it happens, Mr. Engle’s broker for that loan, John J. Hellman, recently pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud for playing fast and loose with a number of mortgage applications. Mr. Hellman testified in court that Mr. Engle had signed the mortgage application. Early this week, Mr. Hellman received a reduced sentence of 10 months, less than half of Mr. Engle’s sentence, in no small part because of his willingness to testify against Mr. Engle.

Even the jurors seemed confused about how to think about Mr. Engle’s supposed crime. When it came time to pronounce a verdict, the jury found him not guilty of providing false information to the bank, which would seem to be the only fraud he could possibly have committed. Yet it still found him guilty of mortgage fraud. “I think the prosecution convinced the jury that I was guilty of something but they weren’t sure what,” Mr. Engle wrote in an e-mail.

Like many people, Mr. Engle’s biggest mistake was believing that housing prices could only go up. When the market collapsed, Mr. Engle defaulted on the two properties, which of course is not a crime. Although his accountant tried to persuade the banks to do a complicated refinancing, they refused and foreclosed on the properties. Like many Americans, Mr. Engle wound up being punished by the market for his mistake, losing all his remaining equity along with the properties themselves. Thanks to the government, though, his punishment was far more severe than most.

At his sentencing, Mr. Engle told the judge: “I can say with confidence that I can turn negatives into positives. I have no doubt I will make the best of it.” With his inspiring prison blog, Running in Place: A Blog About Surviving Adversity, he has already begun to do that.

Even when he emerges from prison, though, his ordeal will not be over. As part of his sentence, Mr. Engle was ordered to pay $262,500 in restitution to the owner of his mortgages. And what institution might that be? You guessed it: Countrywide, now owned by Bank of America.

Angelo Mozilo ought to get a good chuckle out of that one.

By Joe Nocera, NY Times  3/25/2011

Amanda Knox is Freed – Perspective

 It was one of those moments that had all who were watching and waiting on the edge of their seats.  No matter where you were, be it somewhere in America glued to a television, or in the baroque courtroom in Perugia, Italy, the tension was intense.  As cameras rolled and the live feed was broadcast around the world, a petrified and ashen Amanda Knox was escorted by Italian carabinieri to await her fate.  The look on her face was unlike any I have seen.  Fear and worry and anguish remained shackled to her countenance as she stared into a stillness and nothingness seemingly reflecting the last four years of the dark nightmare that entombed her life.  An Italian Appellate Court was about to rule and in the balance stood a potential life sentence or imminent freedom.

In 2009, the young American college student was convicted of murder and sentenced to 26 years in an Italian prison.  Lurid and grisly details of the killing of her college roommate were shared by media outlets around the world.  The case garnered worldwide media attention because it centered around anomalous sex acts which apparently led to the gruesome murder of a beautiful young woman, and it involved American, French, British and Italian citizens.  At the heart of the case was Amanda Knox.

Throughout the litigation, the press vilified the Seattle foreign exchange student.  Upon conviction, the denigration and scorn reached new levels.   Very little thought was given to the possibility that Amanda Knox just might be innocent.  Most assumed she was the central figure of a bizarre love triangle engaged in sexual seance and erotic rituals that led to the death of her roommate.  Most of the world believed the story in the media and the spin Italian prosecutors placed on it.

Following the sentence, some watchdog groups unveiled facets of the case, alluding there might have been coerced testimony and prosecutorial misconduct.  The Defense hired investigators to dig into the allegations.  They presented their case, and yesterday the Appellate Court divulged their findings.  As the panel of judges entered the courtroom, no one moved.  All eyes were fixed on the judge who read the verdict.  Once he announced the murder conviction had been overturned there was an emotional outbreak.  Outside, Italian citizens who massed in front of the Courthouse in Perugia also responded in celebration.  Back inside, Amanda seemed to melt and collapse into her own arms.  There was no elative bouncing and jumping.  There was not a response of exuberant joy.  There was not even a smile on her face.  After some seconds the camera gave us a glimpse of the woman whose life and future was completely altered by the ruling.  There was  no expressive happiness.  There were tears showering a forlorn look, a glazed expression, an anguished and scared face.  Quickly, court officials surrounded Amanda and escorted her away so she could privately be reunited with her family.  Amanda Knox came into the courtroom a convicted murderer, she left a free woman.

The ruling in Perugia, an idyllic town centrally located between Florence and Rome, leaves me with some observations.  One can never understand the magnitude of what took place in the Italian justice system unless they have sat on the other side of freedom.  Unless you have found yourself on the wrong side of the law fighting for your life, it's difficult to comprehend the enormity of the ruling in Perugia, a city 20 kilometers northwest of Assisi, the town that gave the world one of its most revered Saints.  And you certainly can't grasp Amanda Knox's reaction to her miraculous freedom unless you have stood in her shoes and seen your name paraded in exaggerated, biased, and weighted media clippings that often convict before you have the chance to defend yourself in a court of law.

Yesterday, we were reminded again, there are always two sides to every story.  Unfortunately, those who face prosecution can seldom, if ever, share their side of the story.  Anything they say is often twisted and used against them.  Perhaps the most alarming question that comes from the overturned murder conviction is this:  Why would Italian prosecutors and investigators willfully and knowingly misrepresent facts, truths, and evidence to gain a conviction?  Furthermore, is this type of activity taking place in the U.S. justice system?  I'll let you assess the facts.

The median incarceration rate among all countries is 125 individuals for every 100,000 people.  In England it's 153; Germany, 89; Japan, a mere 63.  In America it's 743, by far the highest in the world.  When you include all U.S. residents currently on probation or parole, our country's correctional population soars to 1 in every 31 Americans.  All told, the U.S. incarcerates nearly 25 percent of the world's prisoners.  And this does not include the plethora of individuals who backlog our courts awaiting trial or some outcome to their case.  Nor does it include the countless thousands who are under investigation facing some potential indictment.

The cost of our prison system is staggering as it has ballooned to over $200 billion per year.  Meanwhile, millions of men – fathers, sons, wage earners – have been consigned to a vicious cycle of absence, stigmatization, and recidivism.  Something has desperately gone awry.  Either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States, or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice.  Americans are not 12 times as evil as the Japanese, or 8 times as evil as the Germans.  It's alarming that the most Christianized nation in the world has the largest prison population in the world.  Perhaps our response to crime is wrong and is being driven by something other than justice.

USA Today, Newsweek, and other well-respected periodicals have recently begun to address the chilling disparity of the U.S. prison population compared to the rest of the world.  They have asked, "Why are unfathomable numbers of people being thrown into prison?  What is driving this effort?"  The answers lead to another looming question: What motivates prosecutors and investigators and why are so many individuals receiving draconian sentences?  This brings me back to my earlier question regarding the Italian prosecutors in the Amanda Knox case.  Allow this question to traverse the Atlantic and be asked another way: Could U.S. prosecutors and investigators willfully and knowingly misrepresent facts, truths, and evidence to gain convictions?  The aforementioned publications, our exploding prison population, and numerous high profile cases recently overturned suggest that not only are some guilty of this grievous act, it also appears to be a common practice in our judicial system.  The current mandate seems to be "At all costs, get a conviction."

This practice turns our judicial system upside down.  Instead of a case becoming about the truth and discovering what really took place, it becomes about the end result.  This is certainly what I experienced in my case.  Numerous filings by the Government contained statements that were either untrue, exaggerated, or slanted with a bias that was not factual.  A story was spun that stretched the truth of what really took place.  When my ordeal started, I had great confidence in our judicial system and truly believed the Government would be fair.  I learned otherwise.

As I write, a report is coming across the airwaves of another prisoner from Texas being freed from a life sentence after spending 25 years in prison for allegedly murdering his wife.  New DNA evidence exonerated him, proving his  innocence for all these years.  An investigation continues into allegations that investigators and the prosecutor deliberately withheld evidence that would have saved Michael Morton from a guilty verdict.  Again, why would prosecutors withhold the truth in order to gain the conviction of an innocent man?  Such cases as this and the "West-Memphis Three" fill my mind with many thoughts.

Without question, some within the justice system are no longer interested in the truth.  Often they lie and fabricate various elements of a case they are pursuing for the purpose of getting a conviction.  Prosecutors, investigators, others on the right side of the law can easily be driven by something other than justice.  All who work in this arena are human, and humans are fallible.  Some can be motivated to build a certain reputation and make a name for themselves.  They can easily use their current position as a stepping stone to someplace higher and better.  Convictions of high profile cases make this goal more attainable and ease the transition to a very lucrative world.  Could the same vices that corrupt the supposed criminals also corrupt the prosecutors and investigators?  Desires for fame, greed, lust and power tempt us all.  It appears some within the Justice Department have fallen for these temptations.  Think of individuals who have been in the headlines under investigation, indictment, or conviction for some crime: Martha Stewart, John Edwards, Mark Cuban, Wesley Snipes, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, Scooter Libby, Willie Nelson.  These names should grant some insight and are only the tip of the iceberg.  Of these, some went to prison, some reached exorbitant financial settlements to avoid prosecution, and some are still under investigation or indictment.

Two cases from years past reiterate the truth of what I am writing - Michael Milken and Jim Bakker.  Both men were convicted of fraud and sent to prison.  Milken received 10 years and Bakker 45.  Both won their appeals and their sentences were greatly reduced to 2 and 8 years respectively.  Milken was prosecuted for creating a financial instrument uncommon in his day – Junk Bonds.  This monetary device and trading of such bonds made him a multi-billionaire.  It was these bonds that built most of the hotels and casinos on the Las Vegas strip and allowed Steve Wynn to fund his empire.  Milken's creative genius caused Vegas to become what it is today.  In the case of Bakker, he allegedly fleeced his followers by misleading his television audience on his show The PTL Club.  Hundreds of millions of dollars were donated to build Heritage USA and somehow his actions were fraudulent.

Years later, some of the world's foremost legal experts studied these two cases thoroughly.  One class at Drake Law School dedicated an entire semester to the Bakker case to try and decipher where he broke the law.  Alan Dershowitz, among others, researched the Milken case.  Dershowitz also represented Milken and Bakker on their appeals.  The overriding opinion of experts who delved into these cases was that neither man committed a crime.  The Law Class at Drake University reached the same conclusion.  Much of what the Government presented in both cases were lies and fabrications that convoluted the truth of what really took place.  Overzealous prosecutors apparently sent innocent men to prison.

Amanda Knox is on a plane tonight traveling back to the United States.  After four years of hell, loneliness, and living through a torturous experience, she is a free woman.  Many who followed this ordeal rejoice with her.  And some are angry and upset.  In their mind another "perpetrator" walks free.  No matter what side of the fence we fall on, we all should withhold judgment for we are not privy to the inner workings of her case.  And none of us were there the night Meredith Kercher died. 

One thing I am confident of is this: somehow at the end of the day, justice will be served.  People do reap what they sow.  The law of karma seems to repeatedly prove itself.  And if it does not happen in this life, it will certainly take place in the next.  In the meantime, let's be thankful for grace and mercy.  They extend to all and have the power to completely transform any person.  Should we err in this life, may we err on the side of mercy and grace.

Love and Destiny

Love is absolutely vital for human life.  Our deepest nature, consciously and unconsciously, searches for love, and our hearts relentlessly desire love and are incessant and assiduous to encounter love's enchanted destiny.  Love is the one force God placed in our world able to rouse everything within us; it's an enormous and astonishing presence that does not permit our lives to linger in the lowlands of complacency – basins leading to an existence of fractional fulfillment.

Love is an awakening and exploration of the rich and opaque landscape of life, pushing us to places we can seldom go on our own.  When love awakens in our lives, in the night of our hearts, the dawn of destiny breaks within us, for love alone is literate in the world of origin; it's the force God gave us to decipher providence, enabling us to reach destiny.  This is beautifully illustrated in the Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire, a story of two orphaned brothers and one abandoned girl raised in the slums of Mumbai. 

Slumdog Millionaire is a moving and gripping story of resilient love driven by the belief that within love lies a spine-tingling destiny. 
The movie opens with Jamal and Saleem Malik as elementary age children residing in a garbage dump in India's largest city. 
Covered in ragged clothing, their days are spent in scandalous wanderings throughout urban slums begging and stealing. 
Scurrying about in one dilapidated shantytown, the two encounter a religious insurrection escalating into a violent storm of chaos and mayhem. 
Innocent bystanders are abruptly immersed in a sea of sadistic beatings. 
No one in sight is immune.  After witnessing the violent and horrifying death of their mother, the brothers run for their lives through a maze of muddled alleyways and encounter a dazed and distraught little girl.  Lost and alone, frightened and fearful, and with no place to go, the abandoned Latika chases after the brothers.The wild pursuit through impoverished conurbations on the flight to safety from riotous disorder leads to a nearby trainyard littered with empty railcars.  The boys climb into an open boxcar as India's famous monsoons come crashing down.  Shocked and terrified from the loss of her mother, Latika squats in the torrential rain a few yards away.  She is afraid to leave the brothers.  Somehow she has found security in their presence.  Eventually, Saleem and Jamal invite Latika in from the downpour and the three become inseparable as their lives embark on a voyage through a spellbinding world of poverty, cruelty, and haunting encounters with malevolent individuals.

Over time, Jamal, the younger brother falls in love with Latika.  The movie details this breathtaking love story and traces it across the next decade of their lives.  Woven throughout the storyline are the astonishing attributes of love, traits we know exist but are inconspicuously absent and discreetly vacant in many of our relationships.  Watching Slumdog Millionaire, I was tenderly reminded of the amazing buoyancy of love and how nothing external – no tragedy, no hurt, no pain, no barrier, no separation, no evil – nothing outside of ourselves can hinder and prohibit love from reaching its required destiny.  Love soars above obstacles; love overcomes setbacks; love ascends unconquerable mountains.  For love reaches and stretches, it searches and pursues, offering a dazzling destiny to all who choose to follow its way.  Love is the most resilient force of hope, of freedom, of faith, of discovery, of purpose, of completion; present in all seasons including the dark and dreary winter when enormous assaults of a fallen world inflict us with deep and painful lesions, wounds of life that seemingly chase love away, wounds we fear may never heal.

Love does not always enable our lives to encounter positive happenings.  Love can lead to very difficult experiences, devastating moments of loss and hurt that engulf and choke and blanket our hearts in dark clouds of desolation.  We are left with an inner emptiness, a hollow void that asks confusing questions.  Billows of hurt impair our perspective and veil our understanding, shading us from seeing that pain is commensurate with love and is one trek love must travel to reach its fulfilling destiny.  Without struggle and even hopelessness, love becomes nothing but another kind of sentimentality, a murky miasma concealing love's true and authentic nature and its ultimate destination.  Never forget, just beyond the gloomy mist hovering in and around our world sits a vast expanse of brilliant blue filled with bright rays of warmth and hope.  Once the dark clouds pass, colors of love always appear, love shows up in God's promise of a rainbow.  And this is the message poignantly communicated throughout Slumdog Millionaire, a message I learned firsthand.

After living through a mostly beautiful, sometimes mind-bending and heart-wrenching relationship; a marriage filled with a myriad of contradictions covering the spectrum of behavioral and emotional extremes – joyful passion to sorrowful pain, blissful happiness to mournful sadness – my heart has not grown frigid, nor is it afraid of love and its amazing destiny.  Incredibly, the opposite has occurred.  Sometimes we do not learn what love is until we experience the gutted and devastating reality of what love is not.  Invite your heart to accept one of life's most mysterious and troubling paradoxes: We cannot understand what love truly is until we experience the most painful lesson of learning what love is not.

No one can hurt you as deeply as the one you love.  When you allow another inside your life, you leave yourself open.  Even after years together, your affection and trust can be disappointed.  Life is dangerously unpredictable.  People change, often quite dramatically and suddenly.  Bitterness and resentment quickly replace belonging and togetherness.  Every relationship travels at some time through the black valley of despair.  This tests every aspect of your love, of your affection.  Your sense of each other darkens and your presence is sore and wounded.  This can bring the greatest destruction to your bond, for it distorts love's true essence.  However, if you can come through this time, it can purify your love, allowing speciousness and fallacy and various misconceptions to fall away.  This leads to new ground where fondness can grow, where love can flourish, leading you to its enthralled destiny, causing you to experience a depth of love unlike anything you have encountered.

At times, relationships turn and partners fix on each other at their points of mutual negativity.  When you meet only at the point of poverty between you, it's as if you give birth to an apparition that desires to devour every shred of affection and love between you.  Your essence is combed.  You become helpless and repetitive with each other.  Here you need to give love a chance to work in order to redirect your spirits.  Often we speculate on why our relationships fall apart.  What seem like the obvious factors are not always the truest ones.  The current tendency to shrink love to information and analysis often leads to the disenchantment we commonly feel in our relationships and in our lives.

When relationships are in trouble, they are not usually healed by endless examination and counseling.  Spending countless hours in therapy, covering a plethora of issues does not always untie the knots of our relationships.  Occasionally, we need to step back, push the issues to the side and simply allow love to go to work and let love do its work.  If you look at another through the lens of love, the magic you once had can return because love has the transcendent ability to bypass the mind and affect the spirit.  If you invoke love's power and presence around you, the ancient affinity that brought you together can hold you together and allow you to discover an amazing profundity and intensity of love you never knew existed.  Impossible knots of relationship can unfold themselves and reach the necessary loosening that extends beyond our uncertain vision of love ever flourishing again.

Never underestimate or limit the mysterious and provocative lifeline of love, a lifeline of immeasurable hope overflowing with divine surprise, leading to providential destiny.  Love is filled with a divine script that cannot be restrained by any of life's improvisations and setbacks.  It has its own life, a degree of life far greater than anything we can truly imagine.  We will never experience this degree if we knowingly and willfully resist love and its beautiful qualities.

In my aforementioned situation, I needed to allow love to do its work in my life.  I had to let go of acts of injury and hurt and consider greater treasures than my personal feelings, such as my daughters and their lives, such as God's blessing and his destiny of love for my life.  In truth, I needed to trust God's word, believe what it said about love, and live this out.  As I did, my heart changed.  I found myself filled with feelings of warmth and concern for a person who hurt me deeply.  I was able to let go of the pain of what separated us and embrace the joy of our time together.  Love allowed me to see the good, not the bad.  In turn, my world opened to the wind of resilient love, and this love has changed me in ways I never imagined.

No matter what you have been through, the heartbreak and disappointment you have encountered, love still offers its destiny.  No matter how desiccated your current relationship may be, love is present, and with love present anything can happen.  Nothing is impossible in a world ruled by love.  Should you find yourself lost and alone and broken, frightened by the prospect of ever opening your heart to love again, allow me to encourage you with this thought:  the emotion that breaks your heart is the very one that heals it.  Love is God's greatest gift of healing and its destiny will unfold in your life.  It was this very theme that enabled Slumdog Millionaire to cross cultural boundaries and captivate the hearts of audiences around the world.  And this was beautifully portrayed in a heartrending scene at the movie’s end.

Jamal is back in the setting of his greatest pain and loss where he saw Latika for the last time, the Mumbai Train Station.  Months earlier, she was violently ripped from his arms.  During the vicious abduction, one of the kidnappers savagely filleted her cheek, carving from eye to chin and threw her into the back of a speeding car.  The "Slumdog" is saddened and broken and empty as he relives his unimaginable loss.  Forlorn and hopeless, Jamal sits with his back to a pole and dolefully looks around.  Suddenly he sees Latika through a maze of moving trains.  He rushes toward her.  With each step he takes, love's destiny is seen and felt.  On reaching her, he lifts her in his arms and then gently holds her and softly traces the brutal scar stretching down the left side of her face whispering to her mark of insecurity, "You are the most beautiful woman in the world."  She whispers back "I thought you had forgotten."  He responds, "I never forgot. I knew I would find you. It's our destiny."  Love has a destiny for all who follow its path.  Its destiny awaits you.

The Great Design – Renewal

 Life today conspires against renewal.  At one point, our society valued self-denial or deferred gratification.  Spouses sacrificed for one another in pursuit of long-term goals for their marriage, for their family.  Parents trapped in an unsatisfying relationship stayed together for the sake of the children.  People knew who lived next door and there was a sense of commitment to all who dwelled on the same block.  If one family faced a crisis, others were made aware, not through gossip and fiery rumors but out of genuine concern and compassion for those we understood to be a part of our lives, a part of our community.

Self-denial, honoring commitment, compassion and concern for others, sacrifice for greater good, were fabrics of society visibly seen and foundations in which life was rooted and grounded.  The essence of what life was about, of what was worthy and imperative, believed to be of the highest order, allowed lives to consistently undergo some process of renewal through experiences encountered, driven by principles diametrically opposed to selfishness.  In our conscience there was a healthy sense of what mattered most and some understanding of what brought life fulfillment, joy, and happiness.  Though we could not always explain it, our spirits understood the Great Design.

Somewhere along the way there was a gradual shift in culture and the self-denial ethic morphed into the self-fulfillment ethic.  This was a dramatic swing and the transfer turned some of what we valued upside down.  A seismic shaking brought about a rearrangement of ethics, of values, of what we deemed important, spawning a palpable change in the mental and emotional landscape of our lives.  Not all of this change was positive.  Some changes hinder and create fabrications of what ultimately grants fulfillment, of what really leads to happiness.  In numerous ways, our culture has become an instant society that devalues relationship, diminishes sacrifice, and cheapens commitment.  We are more prone to listen to our emotional needs and seek to have them fulfilled immediately, without sacrifice, without waiting, without considering others.  Consequently, we jettison anything that proves complicated or disconcerting, tiresome or boring.  Under the new rules, the powerful act of renewal loses out, the Great Design breaks down.

Many lives today lack vigor and freshness.  Our relationships, our marriages, our experiences, our days, quickly become stale.  With the enormous emphasis on self, there is a tendency to ignore the present, producing less and less time for conversation, for contemplation, for reflection.  We have this tension, a steady sensation of not enough; not enough time, not enough leisure, not enough rest, not enough money, not enough toys.  This lack of satisfaction places our lives in a state of restlessness and agitation, creating an uneasiness which obscures reality and dangerously complicates the journey of living; often blinding us to our true purpose, to the meaning of life, to what ultimately fulfills.  Passageways to renewal become shrouded, leaving us hollow and vacant, fragile and weakened.

Humanity is God's magnum opus.  Of all creation, the splendor and majesty of everything created, we are the one and only aspect of God's handiwork made in his image.  The Great Design is the creation of humankind, formulating us to need God and to need one another.  It's only through the dynamic of relationship – vertical and horizontal – that we can reach the Shangri-La of life; the rapturous space where living is fresh and full, amazingly alive with wonder and astonishment.  As we stray from proposed constellations in which life was fashioned to flourish, God's natural act of renewal shuts down and our spirits and minds are left wanting.

God designed life to be filled with acts and occurrences that generate renewal.  Our lives are living, flowing, and sinuous, budding, growing, and emerging.  In the way we replenish our bodies with proper nutrients, causing them to renew and attain fullness, we must do the same for our spirits and minds.  This is part of the Great Design; this is how we are made.  Should we stray from our purpose and ignore this facet of our lives, renewal is not experienced.  Life becomes blasé, dull, unfilled, empty.

Renewal means to make life new.  It's an innate process that restores freshness, vigor, and vitality, restoring what has become faded or disintegrated.  This process happens naturally as long as we feed our lives proper nutrients.  Renewal is a constant state that keeps churning and spinning, activating itself in the decisions we make, the things we do, hour by hour, day by day.

Everything within creation operates on the cycle of renewal.  Day becomes night, becomes day.  Seasons come and go and come.  Flowers bloom and die and bloom.  Tides rise and fall and rise.  Vegetation foliates, exfoliates, foliates.  Creatures replenish, excrete, replenish.  Bodies wake, sleep, wake.  God designed the world with a natural order and the process of renewal is at its heart.  Our spirits are no different from any other form of creation.  There is a perfect design and when we operate within that intent – do that for which we were created – renewal takes its course in our lives.  Accordingly, we experience fullness and abundance.  When we step outside our intended purpose, chaos ensues.

Our universe runs by faithful and consistent laws.  The sun always rises in the east.  Rain brings to earth its most needed resource.  Planets follow dependable orbits.  Animals migrate annually.  Nothing in the natural order is found wanting.  You see this and feel this when you stop and savor the natural world around you.  Gaze up at the stars at night, look across a beautiful meadow, stare at the endless expanse of blue on any beach, or marvel at majestic peaks.  Something resonates in our spirits when we look at the splendor of creation.  Our interior world experiences deep peace and contentment.  We are looking at order, viewing creation functioning as it was designed to do.  In turn, our spirits connect.  They align with the Creator's intent.  A properly aligned mind and spirit directs our lives to the abundance God promised us.

God has built into our systems a rhythm of life which we must not violate: output and input; work and rest; service and worship; personal time and family time.  It's very easy to neglect some of the less active disciplines.  We live in a world that continually bombards us with messages emphasizing self – you deserve a break today, look out for number one, you can have it all now.  Such messages run contrary to the Great Design.  God set certain rules in motion and within those rules exists a natural process of design that must be followed in order for life to blossom, to thrive.  When we drift outside of this design, life becomes arid and stale, uninspired and flat, blank if you will.

When asked to identify the most important rule in life, Jesus immediately replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”  His answer summed up the Great Design, declaring what the course of life should be.  Jesus did not come to earth to reverse established laws of order by creating different laws.  He fulfilled the law of order already set in motion.  His life demonstrated the powerful act of renewal.  Furthermore, Paul wrote the following to the Philippians and the Romans: Let this mind be in you that was in Jesus; be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  These verses leave me asking questions: How can I possibly love God with all my heart, mind, and soul?  And how do I renew my mind, get the mind of Jesus, and practically live this out?

I found my answer by following the pattern Jesus set.  We renew our lives, our minds, our hearts, by engaging the acts of Jesus.  When we live out such acts – show kindness, love others, bear another's burden, exercise faith, commune with God, place others first – renewal comes.  As we give, we receive.  Life is not a meaningless sequence of actions but an arena to live out the will of another world, to live out the Great Design.  In doing this, renewal comes to our lives and we are satisfied, fresh, fulfilled, abundant.  We are made new.

God's world is active and alive, filled with wonder and awe.  It's not filled with deadness or emptiness; it's filled with life.  And life always births more life.  Money, possessions, accomplishments are not alive.  They are dead.  They do not feed our spirits.  Thus they never satisfy.  They create euphoria for a moment but do not fulfill and they do not renew.  Only something living can renew.  What is living?  Caring for the poor, loving your wife, creating memories for your children, visiting a friend, sending a note, engaging God, helping others.

When our lives focus on self, are driven by self, we become addicted to self.  This is what happened in my life.  I became preoccupied with self, and this sent me on an endless hunt to find fulfillment.  The classic pattern of addiction is to increase the dosage: the more we do, the more we want, the worse we feel.  Though we may get what we want, internally we remain empty.  Our inner life is left craving.  Due to how we're designed, acts born of self are not enough to satisfy; they do not fulfill.  It's difficult for our success-mad, egocentric culture to grasp this crucial truth.  It's understandable only when the false values that obsess us are stripped away.

It has been a humiliating and dark experience, a pilgrimage through a desolate desert filled with extremely difficult and painful realities that helped me rediscover this invaluable truth.  Focus on self, possessions, accomplishments, bring no lasting joy, they do not renew my spirit.  They blind me from seeing what I need most is infinitely more precious and indispensable than accolades of success and roaring accomplishments.  What I need most is a genuine and authentic relationship with my Creator; a sincere compassion and brokenness for others; a humble and meek attitude that permeates everything about my life, everything about who I am as a person.  For the greater part of my journey I strived for these.  But somewhere along the way I lost them, and in losing them I lost myself and lost my way, causing God's act of renewal to lie dormant in my life for a period of time.

The spiritual awakening I have encountered has allowed these truths to again govern my life, enabling the process of renewal to work again in my world.  This has helped me recognize and understand I need divine empowerment that comes from outside of me and my giftedness, empowerment that comes from a place of rebirth; a place of honesty, a place of integrity, a place of humility.  This place is the foundation of my life, the bedrock of my faith, the place I now live.

In one sense, I have never felt more alive.  An acute awareness of life envelops me every moment of every day.  I see things and feel things I overlooked for so many years.  I find beauty in the simple: phone calls, writing cards, staring at pictures.  Other elements of life, like touching grass and seeing the immense blue and breathing fresh air and feeling the warmth of the sun are moments I now cherish.  For nearly a two-year period, most of these were taken from me.  I hang on to every word in conversations with my daughters, and when I get off the phone I recall the words they spoke.  I live for those moments where I hear their voices.  To me it’s magical.

Looking back, I see how so much of my life was not lived in the present.  I constantly found myself chasing dreams, planning new ventures, rarely taking time to stop and realize how blessed I was as a man, how much God had given me.  I did not realize any of this until I lost everything, until I was separated from everyone I love.

I was blessed with the most amazing woman and I took her for granted.  I became entangled in my own world of dreams and thoughts, seldom satisfied or content, consistently wanting more, wanting bigger, wanting better.  Frequently, I was not available emotionally, often lost in my head chasing and pursuing, rarely stopping to look into her soul, to listen to her heart, to allow myself to be mesmerized by her amazing, fascinated by her stunning, enthralled by her brilliance, awestruck by her gorgeous, captivated by her incredible.  Inadvertently, I failed to appreciate the magnitude of her gifts and allowed my selfish interests and desires – which in the end meant nothing in the bigger world of my life – to become of primary importance.  What is life if you build an empire but lose the one person you love with your entire heart, the one person who completes you?

Treasure the people God placed in your life.  Some say love matures.  I do not believe this.  There is nothing mature about love.  I believe we use such terminology as an excuse to avoid facing reality and admitting that certain feelings may have faded, that endorphins have quit flowing, that we have allowed love to become lost.  We lose sight of the wonder and awe and magic of love.  We take love for granted and assume it will always be present.  Love does not die, hearts do.  The human heart –the field that contains love – must always be cultivated, tilled, watered and harvested.  If not, it will become a wasteland where love cannot grow and flourish, where love cannot blossom.  The beautiful field – the heart – once filled with love, becomes a dry and desolate field as a result of apathy, neglect, and indifference.  Don't allow the hearts of the people you love to become a barren wasteland thirsting for drops of affection, longing for showers of compliments, aching for sprinklings of adoration, yearning for a trickling of time and tenderness.  Love the individuals in your life.  Treasure them.  Adore them.  Make time for them.  And give them your whole heart – hold nothing back.

When you care for another, when you deny yourself, when you honor commitments in the face of feelings that call for the opposite, your mind and heart, your life is renewed with sparkle and dynamism.  The acts of these qualities persistently send your mind and spirit through the process of renewal; they birth newness and vitality.  They recreate life.

God's plan is not for us to live in a febrile fog, drifting aimlessly on windless waters.  No, his desire is for our lives to experience renewal, sanctioning his rushing wind to catch our lives and send them to dizzying heights.  We experience maximum life when our spirits are aligned in a way that expresses the will of the Designer.

Fill your life with moments that continually keep you on the path of renewal.  This approach does not contradict what our hearts yearn for; rather it fully employs the design features God built into our spirits to fulfill us, causing our lives to be fresh and vibrant and transcendent.  The wisest man of all time reminds us with these words, "Store God's commands in your heart.  If you do this you will live many years and your life will be full.  Whatever you do, do well.  For when you go to the grave there will be no more planning, and you must give an account to God for everything you do."