Tiospay - Spirit of Community

Good Morning - I would like to begin by saying Thank You - for the work the Association of National Park Rangers has done for our service, and all our service will do because of you.

As leaders, advocates and nurturers, your work has guided our parks, our profession, and our people. You give us renewed purpose when we gather. You remind us what it is to belong, what it is to be a ranger.

My smaller, 25-watt vision of the future, is presented today because our founders' vision shone brightly. They gave us something simple - another reason to get out of bed in the morning, a shared voice, a family.

The great generals trade on simplicity. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, and Mother Teresa showed us faith, works, and the spirit of community, could change entire continents. Faith without works, is dead.

One day - I will be replaced, or so I have it on no less regal authority than that of my, now teen-aged, daughter. I remember, her face, when more than a decade past, she served me a cupcake she had decorated all by herself with ketchup. Her work was a gift from her heart, given in faith, which under close scrutiny - and in the spirit of community - I ate.

There was hope in that little face. With her look, I had a feeling we but glimpse, when we are humbled to look beyond ourselves, less for redemption, than for purpose. It was easier to be a hero when they don't know what to expect.

It was a moment I recall when I need patience, when having faith in being a father, means working to explain to some seemingly random boy, the relative hierarchal differences in our biological imperatives, to awaken some collective unconscious. Because in the spirit of community, we behave more wisely, when we share what is in each other's hearts.

In the span of our species, we are none of us more than the blink of an eye from our own tribal beginnings. Gerard Baker, superintendent at Mount Rushmore, a Mandan and Hidatsa descendant, including of Chiefs Four Bears, says it is time to return to our villages. He doesn't mean his stand on immigration has a history of 500 years.

I think he means we need to embrace that we have more influence through inclusion. In that community, leaders were an offering to their people, a form of humility that requires listening more than speaking, giving rather than receiving; respecting differences and settling differences so the people would not have to. Leadership was in how they lived.

Among the Ogalala Lakota and others of their tradition, "Tiospay" is a word that refers to the spirit of community. It evokes the power of reciprocity within the band, the relationships of one's extended family and friends.

Through kinship and kinship of the heart, what we do is not lost, and we are as real as what we do.

The silverbacks of this troop may remember that long ago, in the mists of our early understanding, our oldest ancestors embraced empathy, a form of biological insurance. As creatures, we are bound by what we love to know fear and hope. We share a fear we shall pass into dust with all we owned. We share a hope what we give our people will endure.

We are in every way influenced by our relationships, their power to transform us. That is how we are, among us humans. Food from a caring hand is medicine. All real power begins with gratitude.

In this way, listening becomes sacred. Words become sacred. Time becomes sacred. In gratitude, we are lifted up as we lift each other up. Each breath is spoken for, sacrificed by someone else, even our laughter.

Leadership is understanding. Helen Keller reminded us: "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." We must be open to inquiry, and understanding each other.

Scott Bentley at Assateague Island National Seashore will tell you, no park is an island; not even those that quite clearly are. Each exists in a context. We know that we are not the only subject-matter experts.

In our quest for inclusion, we must also work to strike a balance. In providing for the enjoyment of our parks, it is in our best interest to be honest and transparent in their operation, earnestly, but without allowing any erosion of their integrity.

Leadership is hard wired to be curious about our collective condition. In these peaceful places we gather, among the poignant artifacts of the precious heritage we protect, in the depths of our forests and our fisheries, we share an inclination towards introspection, which makes us question what will become of us?

This far into the dawn of the twenty first century, when followers of the Abrahamic faiths constitute over half of the world's populace, we may wonder why our convictions should still be called upon to sacrifice on the altar of conflict. We needn't look to a land war in Asia to know there exist consequences yet undreamt.

Here, in North America, when you visit Minuteman Missile National Historic Site and peer into the dark of the silo, you might ask: if technology could take us to the moon, how far will we go before we live in peace?

I don't know if anyone in this group would have noticed the election last week. I was struck in awe, not by what can happen in two years; but that we live in a civil democratic society secure enough for the peaceful transition of power.

Leadership must call us to take a stand. The lesson of Rwanda is someone must stand, if it is not all to end in suffering. In the company of Rangers, it is not so hard to take a stand for understanding.

Our sites recall conflict, clash of cultures and competition for resources, all of which are going on in our world today as we speak. They speak of courage and cooperation, species survival and symbiosis, all things we need now. We repeat our history, so our history will not repeat without our consent.

We serve our people, as memory serves conscience. Selma to Minidoka, Saipan to Sitka, and banks of the Washita to the mall in Washington - any one place in the National Park service - has the power to give us pause.

Leadership provides purpose. We make it our purpose to uplift and enlighten, to provide a place for rejuvenation and reflection, to reset our moral compass. Context is crucial. George Santayana said: "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts, when you have forgotten your aim." The ashes of Buchenvald show us what work, without moral context, will accomplish.

From the time of fire came observation, innovation, and allegory; when religion and science were still close siblings. We knew then any worthy aim would require work, and worthiness of our work will be judged in what we do.

Leadership is less about prophecy than it is about community. There is always hope prophecy will protect us; that responsibility will help us avoid extinction. Or alternately: that prophecy will imbue us with a sufficient sense of extinction, to help us avoid responsibility. Many prophecies will pass without coming to pass, but faith, work, and the spirit of community, will endure.

Leadership is inclusive. In certain northern plains Native American Indian ceremonies, participants annually recreate elements of the society in the original context of their purpose. Among the elders and the young, a sense of purpose, itself, is exchanged. There is wisdom in stopping to know to why we do things, and in engaging all of our society. We need to stop more often.

Leadership is by nature, political. Politics is the basic ecology of the nest, the consequences we learn to trust in fables, which tell us we all matter, even those of us we don't at first suspect. There is no more political organization than the family. We learn we cannot win if we make others lose, that a sandwich tastes better when we share it, to ask when we feel like telling.

We come to understand it does matter how we argue, that humility avoids humiliation, that if we do not pull together - we will be pulled apart. We remember trust, and most of all - how we make each other feel. As Margaret Amelia Burns said, "It is nice to be important; it is more important to be nice."

As a family we share a common body of work, even we socialize. We are a community unto our self, and part of a larger community in the National Park Service. We are spouses, partners, and sainted others for whom we are grateful to have breathe good life in our service, and not into other pressing things.

Leadership motivates and recognizes the entire order, not merely the few. Theodore Roosevelt said: "Americanism is a question of principle, of purpose, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace or creed or line of descent." We are each of us, gray and green blooded; it is not a matter of wearing a uniform.

Leadership challenges us to be better, to live our faith through works. We need to each invite someone new to our ranks, tend to their needs until they can tend to someone else's. For in any definition that is what families do.

What we breathe life into will revisit according to the energy we gave it long after we break the umbilicus that holds us here.

Some of us will not be here when this clan gathers a decade hence. But in the next century thereafter, our simple legacy of leadership will still be that this family - our parks, our profession, and our people - prospered. We will be together because of you.

It will be said we began with inspiration, succeeded through perspiration, and through our service called others to serve. We worked together, played together and when it was time to rest, we had earned our rest.

We belong. Our heroes are here, among us; and here in spirit. They live in us. They urge us on. No matter what we believe, the spirit that called us to this service lives on in what we do, and because of what we do.

In the end, let me thank you for your faith, your works, your leadership, and your spirit of community; for your Tiospay - and for letting me share cupcakes with ketchup.