Another info : It's hard to believe that it has already been a year since I was installed as Leader of the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island. And what a year it has been! Full of new people, places and experiences, and yet a sense of having always been here. An anniverary is an opportunity to reflect and take stock. I am reminded that first wedding anniversaries are marked by gifts of paper as I survey the stack of files on my desk. What goals and expectations did we have? How many were met? Were those unmet goals unrealistic? Do they draw our attention to areas needing improvement?

Last year I had a goal of visiting every member's home. I made a good start, but I still have a long way to go. I have also used other ways to make connections: telephone calls, email and snail mail, lunch discussions, and meetings - lots and lots of meetings. I also had a goal of community outreach. Through conferences like Smart Growth Development and Jobs With Justice, co-sponsored events with organizations like New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty and Planned Parenthood of Nassau County, and participation in interfaith groups like the Garden City Clergy Fellowship and AIDS Interfaith, I have come to learn about the larger community within which our ethical community dwells.

This month we are embarking on a long-range planning process. Every vital organization needs to envision its future. And before its members can do that, they must remember who they are and decide what they stand for, what values they will actively promote inside and outside of their community. This visioning provess must involve all of you to be successful, so I urge you to attend the participatory Sunday platform on February 22: "What the Future Holds."

Finally, another goal I had a year ago was to encourage us to become a community of leaders, serving each other, guiding our community in harmony with our ethical values. To that end, I envisioned what that kind of leadership would be and came up with the following three components:

1) If possession is 9/10 of the law, then surely presence is 9/10 of leadership. You can’t lead if you’re not there. I mean really there: present in the community; listening, seeing, holding, learning something about the people you serve beyond the obvious, deeper than the surface. It is a spiritual presence in the sense that our Ethical Humanist faith understands spirituality: in the personal connections we make and in the caring relationships we nurture. We create sacred space and frame time that is made sacred by the ethical intent we bring to it.

2) A leader is responsible for process - being aware of it, facilitating and planning for it, honoring it. Process is a dynamic river that flows through our lives. We ignore it at our peril. We need to listen to what is not being said; look for what is happening beneath the content; and be attuned to the way that people respond to the role we play more than to the person we think we really are.

(3) We have all heard the expression “It’s lonely at the top.” Well, it’s only the top if you make it so, and it’s only lonely if you make it so. It is a human paradox that while we are unique individuals, still we share universal experiences. Anything that is human is not unknown to us. Therefore, there is always a ready source of help available to any leader.

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