We must lift the smallest, so that all may be great.

This was a line in the sermon yesterday at Fountain street church. Our pastor is W. Frederick Wooden, whoose blogs "Aside from the Obvious" and "Ranting Rev" you will find on this Blogspot site. This line resonated with me on many levels. I am currently Director of Development for Special Olympics Michigan. This means that I raise money for our oganisation, while hopefully directing the organisation in a meaningful way, to utilize these funds in smart ways. I will take a sidetrack and say that for the most part Special Olympics is really good about being smart with its spending, most of the monies raised go directly to the programs which we put on. Our cost to raise a dollar is lower than most nonprofit companies at around twenty five cents. The reason that I hold my current position, is my lovely wife Amy. Last year, as we were planning my wedding, I was employed by ISC Corp, at Michigan National Speedway. ISC is owned by the France Family. For those of you whose lightbulbs did not go off, The France Family is the owner and operator of NASCAR. The original redneck billionaires, whose reach gets wider, and stronger each year.

Anyhow, I was good at my job. I was a Corporate Partnerships executive. This means that I spoke with corporations about the benefits of spending money on NASCAR. And lo the benefits are large, so large that I never had to sell anything. NASCAR today is so huge, that the benefits of dealing with it are well documented. Many negotiations have been finalized with "well your competitor is interested in this package, if they sign before you, you will get locked out of NASCAR". The monies involved are staggering, in the Billions, larger in fact than the gross domestic profit of over thirty percent of the small countries in the world!

In may ways I am lucky to have met my wife. She is a great person, full of the fire of life, and a sense of goodness that is not regularly found today. In her own quiet and kind way she forced me to realize that all I was doing for the world, was lining a very rich few persons pockets. As I began to ponder this, and with my upcoming nuptials, I decided to make a change.
I think I will break off and continue this post later, as I have realised that a lot of writing ideas are again flooding my head, and interfering with the actual writing. Next Up: How I cam to the Special Olympics, and changes in my outlook...