ONE OF GOD'S GREAT SERVANTS

It was a special and fortunate day for me when I was privileged to meet Gordon Kingsley, Jr. Gordon is the son of a Baptist preacher who had a special gift of reaching young people for Jesus. Gordon did not fall far from the tree. He is a scholar, orator, humorist, athlete, and friend.

Gordon has pastored churches, taught English in college, been a dean of faculty, and finally president of William Jewel College in Liberty, MO. Following his retirement from Jewel, he went to be the Headmaster at Harlaxton College in Great Britain. He remains in that position today. Gordon's quiet personality and quick wit often take you by surprise when having conversation. His work as an orator is 2nd to not many.

About 20 years ago, Gordon gave the baccalaureate address at William Jewell, in which he quoted these gentle and relevant lines that he adapted from Robert Fulghum.

All Gordon really needed to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, he learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of you university mountain, but there in the sandbox at kindergarten. These are the things he learned:

Share Everything
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that are not yours.
When you hurt somebody, say "I'm sorry."
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Every day, learn a little, and think a little and
draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work
and love, every day, a little.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the big world, watch out for
traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Be full of wonder. Remember the little seed in the
yoghurt carton. The roots go down and the plant goes
up and nobody really knows how or why. but it does
and we are all like that.
Cats and hamsters and white mice and puppy-dogs and
even the little seed in the yoghurt carton - they all
die. So do we.
But always remember the first word you learned in the
first book you read, the biggest word of all: LOOK.
SEE.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The
Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and
politics and equality and sane living.

You can build a life on this. Or a government. Or a world.

Think what a better place it would be if all of us - the whole world - had cookies and milk at three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if all governments had a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, no matter where you are on this crazy, mixed-up planet - when you go out into the world, it is always best, to hold hands and stick together.

Special servant-leader, thy name is Gordon Kingsley.