EVERYTHING IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIP

When I was in my early twenties, and a first year high school teacher, I discovered the principal of our school was placing all the Hispanic and African American students in a special class for so-called "mentally disabled." He did this, I found out, so the school district would receive more money from the state.

I was new, not only as a teacher, but in the world of politics and racism in school systems. Innocent yet clear, I called for a State investigation of the principal and his treatment of minority students. After the investigation, the principal remained, and my contract was terminated. Of the twenty-two other teachers on the staff, all of who agreed to speak up at the investigation, none did.

This event was my official introduction to getting involved with the world of justice and fairness. I had to. With a family of two young children and a wife, I soon found a job working with Native Americans, a group of people I knew nothing about except from cowboy and Indian movies. My job was to provide "counseling" to Native people representing almost every tribe in the United States, some being off the reservation for the first time. After dissolving my initial fears of being around a people that looked so different from me, I found what "family" can really mean when the word "sacred" is lived out daily, when humor is about oneself, rather than aimed at another, and when everything in life is about relationship.

Everything in life is about relationship. I found myself talking less with what I called "empty talk." I learned to speak only when I had something to say. I laughed more. I dissolved my belief in ambition in exchange for being of service to others -- whatever that might look like.