Don Quixote Project World Class Person in Training

To a student from Central Seminary, the Metropolitan Community Colleges and William Jewell College, HateBusters will award $500.00 for a plan devised by that student to help us become World Class Persons. I want to become a World Class Person and help others also become World Class Persons. By my own definition a World Class Person is someone who can go anyplace at anytime and talk to anyone about anything and feel safe. I am offering $500.00 to one student from Central Seminary, the Metropolitan Community Colleges and William Jewell College who can devise a plan that will help move us in that direction. Don Quixote is my favorite fictional character. He says, “Too much sanity may be madness, and the greatest madness of all may be to see the world as it is and not as it should be.” It seems madness to me to limit ourselves and others by the labels we use to describe who we are. Our age, gender, color, nationality, language and religion are small pieces of who we are. These characteristics all limit us in space and time. But in our souls we are universal and eternal, at home anywhere and everywhere and for all time. I am an old man. An American. I speak English. I am white. I’m Christian. I am happy to be all of these things. My personal life is wonderful. I would not change a thing. But I am more than the sum of all these parts. There is more! I’ve been married to the same woman for nearly 47 years. I’ve lived in the same house for 38 years. I had the same job for 30 years. I would not change a thing. But there is more. I am all of these things. And happy to be so. But there is more. There is my soul. That inner space we call soul is more vast and mysterious than the outer space we explore with telescopes and space ships. From that inner space comes my vision of the World Class Person. I long to be able to go anyplace at anytime and talk to anyone about anything and feel safe. I want to be that person. But I don’t know how to get there. I need help. So I turn to young minds in higher education. They may not as yet have learned that something cannot be done. Their idealism may not yet have surrendered to reality. That is my hope. Help me know how to be a World Class Person. Lead us all to that promised land. Send me an email to let me know you want to help. Students who wish to enter the contest should contact the faculty representative on their campus to declare their intentions. Faculty representatives will forward each student’s email address to HateBusters. HateBusters will then interview each student by email and grant permission to enter the contest. Campus faculty representatives are listed below.

Central Seminary Metropolitan Community Colleges William Jewell College Carolyn Gordon and Terry Rosell Brian Chasteen and Cheryl Carpenter Chris Henson and Debbie Chasteen

Maximum Freedom I choose to give minimum guidelines and requirements for this contest. I’m afraid that doing so would only limit the imagination and creativity of those who might enter. I can’t even tell you exactly what I’m looking for. But I can promise you I will know it when I see it. I am partial to the written word, but this contest is open to submissions in any medium. I will ask the campus faculty representatives to advise me in picking winners. But to win the $500.00 prize, the submission must seize my attention and refuse to let go. Deadline for submissions is April 1, 2004. Winners will be announced at our Human Family Reunion, held at William Jewell College on Saturday, April 17 at 6:30 PM. I have great expectations that contestants from all three campuses will seize my attention and refuse to let go. But I must tell you that if that doesn’t happen, the contest will remain open and the $500.00 award will be made at a later date. I’m hoping that all of you who enter this contest will choose to read the fairy tale below. This will give you a feel for how my mind works and maybe some idea of what you might do to seize my attention. A START-UP KIT for A FAIRY TALE The story you are about to read is incomplete. You, the reader, must tell Phillip what to do and how to live. This is a do-it-yourself fairy tale. How it turns out is in your hands. Whaddaya say to that? Your job as a junior learner in Sapphire College and a resident of the land of Nevaeh is to choose a name for yourself and a mission for your life. And then to write the story of your life. As a World Class Person. MAGIC JOURNEY Just an ordinary day; Suddenly you’re on your way To a place that cannot be from the Walt Disney World 3-D film, Magic Journey

A FAIRY TALE The Story of Phillip of Sapphire College And Those Who Could Not Hate Phillip has loved fairy tales since he was a boy and listened every Saturday to Let’s Pretend on the radio. He has loved church since he first saw those stained glass windows and that cavernous sanctuary as a three year old. And he has loved school since he enrolled in Miss Lula Douse’s first grade class at Santa Fe Elementary School. He wants to combine these three loves of his life. He’s working on a new curriculum for Sapphire College. The WORLD AS I WOULD HAVE IT is the name Phillip has given his plan. Drawing on Looking Backward, Utopia, 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Don Quixote, Camelot, Brigadoon, the Wizard of Oz, Finnean’s Rainbow, Alice in Wonderland , and all the fairy tales he has ever heard, Phillip wants to dream the future into reality. Those who come with Phillip to Sapphire College will imagine a new way of knowing and relating. Then they will go from this place to practice imagineering, as they bend the world to their vision. Together Phillip and his students will read some of these and other books. They will see movies. They will talk to people with practice in imagining. But mostly they will dream. Phillip has no idea what their final destination looks like. For at Sapphire College they have a saying which guides everything they do: SAPPHIRE: SERANDIPITY/ SERANDIPITY: SAPPHIRE Learners practice discipline of mind and body at Sapphire. But it is the eureka experience they seek. Their cosmic eggs have been cracked. Life for them has taken on a totally new perspective and dimension. They have stepped through time and space to a new place. A place where they know and are known, love and are loved without limitation or condition. Through all the shadows and valleys and fog, they have come at last to the real world of Sapphire College. Phillip invites a small number of the committed to come with him to this magical spot. The simply curious cannot come. Your hearts, minds, and souls are not tuned to the right frequency. You would neither see nor hear. You would not catch the vision, for you have been immunized by reality. You would infect others with your doubts, for you have become too much in love with critical thinking and too little willing to lay your life on the line in the service of a cause that consumes you. Phillip invites a small company of the committed to come with him to Sapphire College. A private interview with Phillip’s friend, Ed Chasteen, is necessary before you can be accepted into this small band. You will need to persuade Ed that you should come with us. Before the story begins, you should know this: Phillip lived in a little Texas town until he was 12. For Christmas that year his mother bought him a used bicycle and taught him to ride. She would hold Phillip up and run along beside him until he was going fast enough to remain upright. The sidewalk that ran past their house ended abruptly a few blocks later, and Phillip more than once lost his balance and fell where the sidewalk ended. And he began to fear arriving at that place. Then one day as he got there, he noticed that where the sidewalk ended, there was now a paved path sweeping gently and upward to the right. The bicycle seemed to turn itself in that direction. A short time later the path became a country road leading soon to a town Phillip had never seen before. “I’d better get home,” Phillip said to himself. “Mother will have supper ready.” But when he turned his bike around, the road was gone. Before Phillip could cry or be afraid, someone appeared at his side. Phillip looked quickly around. An old man stood in front of him and around him stood four beautiful children about his own age. Something about them all soon let Phillip know that he had nothing to dread. Phillip didn’t ask who they were, how they got there or even how he himself chanced to be in a place he had never seen before even though he had traveled only a short distance from his home. “Hello, Arthur,“ the old man said. Before Phillip could correct the old man, he continued. “I knew that bicycle would one day bring you back. Don’t you recognize it? It was yours when you were 12,” the old man said. And you had to be 12 for it to bring you back. “Merlin?” Phillip didn’t understand how he knew the old man or why the old man called him Arthur or why he asked the old man, “What happened to us? Where have you been?” “I’m sorry, Arthur. I forgot to warn you about Mordred. Now Camelot’s gone. But I’ve found you again, and this is the City of Nevaeh.” Phillip thought he should cry and be afraid. Mother had taught him not to talk to strangers. And he understood that he was lost. But he was happy. And glad to be here. He didn’t know why. He just was. “You can’t go home again, Arthur,” Merlin said gently to Phillip. With my magic, however, I will bring your home to Nevaeh. Your house, your street, your mother and dad and your school and church and all your friends will be here. You won’t know it from where you were before. You will go to sleep tonight and when you wake up in the morning you will think this has all been a dream. But you will live the rest of your life here in Nevaeh. Peace and Power and Purpose and Joy will be with you always. You won’t see them again with your eyes, but you will feel them in your heart. And you won’t see me again, Arthur. But as I have spoken, so shall it be. “Now, Arthur, ride into Nevaeh. Your mother has supper ready.” THIRTY YEARS LATER Philip did not know why he could not hate. He had grown up in a time and place where it was popular. He spent much time when he was a boy with Gran Gran and Maw Maw and Paw Paw dozens of aunts and uncles and cousins and nephews and nieces. His mother and father had many brothers and sisters. And they all lived out their lives in the little town of their births. All, that is, except for Phillip’s mother and father. When Phillip was 12 they took him and his brother and sister southward on a long journey to another place much like the one they had left. Years later, when Phillip was a man and was living in the Province of Mo in the country of Usa with his wife and children, word came that Paw Paw had died. And Phillip went to the place of his childhood. He was uneasy in this place with these people. They had loved him when he was small and had caused him to love himself. He loved them for the memories of childhood that still run daily through his mind. But as he listened to them talk, he knew that though he loved them, he did not like them. As they drove from their ancestral home, Phillip asked his parents why they had been the only ones of the family ever to move away. “We didn’t want you kids growing up in that environment,” his mother said. Phillip understood. His relatives are good, hard working people. They seem to love one another if loving may be judged by helping in time of need. But they seem to get no pleasure out of it. Nor in giving help do they give a sense of doing more than their grudging duty. A small circle of non-family is included in their meeting of this mechanical obligation. For the rest of the world there is only hate. For the most festive occasion celebrated in their land, Phillip had planned to take his three small children to visit their great-grandparents. When the leader of their land was killed by a man filled with hate just a few miles from their home, Phillip did not want to go. He knew what would happen. Before they had been there ten minutes, their leader’s death was mentioned. Paw Paw said, “He was warned not to come.” Knowing that his grandfather and his aunts and uncles were so filled with hate and found so little joy in life made Phillip cry inside. In the place where his mother and father took him to become a man, Phillip saw that black people and brown people and white people lived apart. In church on Sunday and in business during the week each color had it’s place. Phillip remembers the Preacher, a quiet man who every Sunday transported Phillip with word pictures to a place far from the world he lived every other day in, a world where a bearded and barefoot Jesus taught everyone to love and healed those who were sick in body and spirit. From church as he was leaving one Sunday, Phillip passed two old men in the church house door talking about the morning sermon. Said one: “If them niggers try to come in this church, I’ll beat ‘em back with a baseball bat.” Said the other, “Me, too.” “Jesus, teach these men not to hate,” Phillip said almost aloud as he passed. Phillip’s cousin learned to hate. He dropped out of school to become a soldier. Dismissed after a year for unbecoming conduct, he returned to his place of birth. Now he carries a leather bound Holy-book in the seat beside him in his pickup to use as a weapon against those he doesn’t like. He uses it often. And with great glee. Phillip is sorry to say he hasn't much read Bertrand Russell, the celebrated philosopher from the island where Phillip’s ancestors had lived before coming to Usa. Phillip doesn't even know the source of the observation that he for years has attributed to Russell: "We could weave any other web of meaning about this universe and find it satisfactory." Where or whether Russell actually said these exact words, they have, together with the admonition of another great teacher, shaped Phillip’s own teaching and the goals he sets for his students. The admonition is from Jesus of Nazareth: "Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." THE CYCLOPS It was the first meeting of Sapphire’s senior learners for the new year. These were good people, wonderful teachers. Phillip had often wished he had had teachers like them when he was a student. To have them now as colleagues made Phillip proud and made him work hard so he could feel he deserved to be a part of this good place where the best in him was regularly called fourth, where all that was in his heart, mind, and soul was nurtured. But these meetings went on so long. Though Phillip tried with all his might to pay attention, his mind often wandered. Just as today’s discussion reached its nadir, the two heavy wooden doors to the red carpet room where they always met were flung open and a two-headed cyclops spouting fire and mounted on a giant green dragon burst into the room. “My name is Hate,” bellowed one head, “and this is my twin brother, Bigotry. Word has reached us at the Green Castle of the Human Family Reunion. We are here to eat you up and put a stop to it. “If one among you is brave enough to cut off both our heads, all of you may live and go about your foolishness for another year. But when a year has passed, you must present yourself to us at the Green Castle so we can cut off your head. If you do not come, your life will be spared. But we will have our way with all other members of the Human Family.” “Who will answer us?” roared both giant heads in unison. Before he could think about what he was doing, Phillip leapt to his feet. His loudest voice was the squeak of a mouse following so on the heels of that mighty roar from which the walls were still shaking. “I will,” shouted Phillip, as he grabbed the sword the cyclops offered. Swinging the sword with both hands in a mighty arc through the air, Phillip severed both heads with a single blow. As they lay on the carpet, the cyclops swept them up and vanished from the room. Months later, Phillip walked into his Sapphire room one morning and saw a green castle pulsating on Little Joe’s screen. “It’s time to start on your journey,” boomed a voice Phillip remembered “Go by foot. Ask for directions of everyone you meet.” For many days, Phillip traveled. Four days before his appointed rendezvous, Phillip came upon a simple home in a forest far from Sapphire in a part of Usa where he had never been before. He was tired and hungry and had met no one who could tell him the way to the Green Castle. His knock at the door was answered by a man who said he was a hunter. He lived here with his beautiful wife and knew the country for miles around. The Green Castle was only a half-day’s walk away. Phillip could spend the next three days resting at the hunter’s home. The hunter would go out each day to hunt. He would give Phillip his kill each day so Phillip could build up his strength. In return, Phillip would give the hunter whatever he was given as he wandered about the house and its environs. As Phillip slept that first morning, the hunter’s wife came to him. She was beautiful beyond any man’s dreams, and she offered herself to Phillip with a seductive air of all-knowing innocence. Phillip was tempted beyond any human capacity to resist. “I cannot, Fair Lady,” he heard someone say. The voice sounded strangely like his, though he was not conscious of speaking. “Too many people depend on me. I must be strong. I cannot disappoint their hopes.” So she kissed him once and left. When the hunter returned at the close of day, he brought much game to Phillip. Phillip kissed the hunter on the cheek. The second morning, the hunter’s wife came again to Phillip, more beautiful and more desirable than before. Phillip had not thought himself capable of such resistance, but somehow he understood that weakness at this point would doom him and all those who believed in him. So she kissed him twice and left. When the hunter returned he had only half as much game as the day before. Such as he had, he gave to Phillip, and Phillip kissed him twice upon the cheek. Again the third morning Phillip resisted the hunter’s wife, while giving thanks that he would be gone before the next day dawned, for he did not think he could again say no to this desirable creature. How he had done so these three times was more than he could understand. Something beyond his own strength was at work here: This he knew, but without understanding what it was or how it worked. An awesome, unspeakable gratitude was what he felt. And a sense of being chosen, though why and for what, Phillip did not know. That knowledge awaited him out there somewhere. Perhaps at the Green Castle. Maybe beyond. As the hunter’s wife left him on the third morning, she gave Phillip three kisses. Then from her leg she took a golden garter and gave it to him. “With this,” she said, “the curse will become a blessing.” When the hunter returned, he had but a single bird to offer Phillip. “Never have I had such a poor day at the hunt,” he said. Since I was a boy with my father, all who know me say that animals and birds come to me out of respect for my powers as a hunter. But today they did not. And I have so little to offer to you. One bird I give to you, and I ask that you keep one thing given to you today.” Phillip kissed the hunter three times. Phillip left the hunter’s cottage as the sun was coming up on the forth day and arrived at the Green Castle at high noon, just as the clock atop the main turret was striking twelve. Phillip smiled as he listened to the last deafening gong of the clock fade away. And he thought of his friend Dorothy from church back in Nevaeh who liked to say that nothing is ever just coincidence. She had said it so often that she had convinced Phillip. And at this moment, he took great courage from this simple saying. For years under his breath and off-key, Phillip had been singing the title song from that classic black and white western he had seen at the movies. Gary Cooper was the town marshal. He had just married Grace Kelly. Grace was a Quaker with deep convictions against guns and violence. Gary was to retire and leave town that day with Grace on the train. Then word came that that same train was bringing to town a man Gary had sent to prison years earlier. He had vowed to kill the marshal. Now he was coming back to do it. He would arrive at High Noon. As he remembers, Phillip begins to sing: “I do not know what fate awaits me. I only know I must be brave. And I must face a man who hates me, or lie a coward, a craven coward, or lie a coward in my grave.” The cyclops sits astride his giant green dragon as Phillip comes into the castle. “Stretch out your neck, puny mortal,” thunders the cyclops from both heads, “and let us be done with you.” With a mighty swing of his sword, the cyclops cuts off Phillip’s head. Or should have. Whole armies the cyclops had felled with lesser blows. But the cut on Phillip’s neck is no more than an awkward barber might administer. And the cyclops is furious that his blow has been ineffectual. “Your legs will wither,” roars the cyclops. Walking will become more than you can manage until you become an invalid. Your mind will be seized with thoughts of your misfortune. You will not have the physical or mental energy to spread your stupid ideas of human family reunion. You will curse God for doing these things to you. “Now go. Go in misery. May you drown in self-pity. May your friends desert you as you become snarlish and sharp with them. May you curse the day you were born and pray to die. May you live long like this.” With the curse of the cyclops still ringing in his ears, Phillip found himself in bed back at his home in Nevaeh. It was dark in the room, but he could sense Ann in bed beside him and could hear her breathing. As he sat bolt up-right in the bed, he was awash in panic and sweat. A nightmare? Sure! But so real. His heart was racing. The sheet under him was drenched; water poured from every pore of his body. He got up to get a towel. On the way down the hall, he stumbled and almost fell. In the morning he told Ann what little he could remember: about this hunter who fed him; about looking for a giant in a castle; about having his head chopped off. “It was so real, as real as talking to you. But that’s all I can remember. I know there was more. But what? After dinner that evening, Ann was walking through their living room with an arm full of dirty clothes bound for the washing machine in the basement. She stopped for a moment to say something to Phillip. When she made a gesture with her hand, a single item fell from the small mound of clothes she carried. She stooped to retrieve it. “Hello, what’s this? This isn’t mine. I haven’t worn one of these in years. I haven’t even seen one in years. Phil, these are your clothes. What are you doing with a garter, a fancy golden one no less?” Phillip had a fleeting impression that he knew something about the garter. “Oh, that belongs to some dancehall girl I met,” he said. Ann smiled. It wasn’t the first time Phillip had brought home something strange or made some lame joke to explain it. She picked it up and went downstairs.