Invocation at the LA County's Productivity Conference

Thursday, May 26, 2016

This morning I had the privilege to give the invocation at the LA County's Productivity conference. It's always inspiring to share your vision with others. Especially those who enrich the loves of so many.

"Thank you for having me here this morning, and a special thanks to my friend Shawn Landres for asking me to come to share a few words with you.

It's not lost on me that we are hosted today in the Music center. The famed writer Edgar Allen Poe once said that symphonic music is the highest form of art because it only works when a hundred individuals who are extremely talented in a very particular are each come together for a short period of time to make something transcendent and beautiful. As a musician, I can tell you that truly beautiful music is made better when you feel the player playing next to you. If you play clarinet you know your instrument, you know how to play it. But real music is made when you listen to a violinist who sits on the other side of the room. To make beautiful music you must move beyond the notes, the sharps and the flats. You must listen to the emotion, the empathy behind the notes that drive the piece forward. When musicians, experts connect with each other art is born of such moments.

The same is true for the art of governance. If we listen to each other as we play our score, governance can be a symphony. It is not just the report that matters, or the survey or the budget meeting. They are important, but on a deeper level it's empathy, it's connectivity, it's listening to each other to say how can this make my work better, that turns the machine of government into art.

The consequence of not being connected to each other is that we become blind to another's life. That blindness is moral. It is learned. And if we want to grow deeper, be better, and make the dreams of those who come here, then we must learn how to see again. How to hear again.

For you and me not seeing each other means missing deadlines or hiding facts or errors from each other. But down the economic ladder it means feeling left out of prosperity. It's that formerly incarcerated man who doesn't get a job because he has a conviction. It's that homeless mom who lives with two kids in a van who watches thousands drive by without so much as a glance in their direction. It's the family with a member who has serious mental health issues that feels the shame and isolation from the world.

Your departments are not mere offices, they were founded to shape the living fabric of the county. Let's try to model the culture that we want to see out there beyond the walls.

So let us take a minute to lift up our voices and invoke the great spirit of togetherness before we begin our day.

Creator of the World, Author of life, Composer of the Universal Song. Help us to open our ears to hear, our eyes to see, and our hearts to feel your rhythms. Let us use our connected lives to be your musicians that shape the Southland into a place of our dreams and home for Your dreams as well.

And let us say
Amen"