Acronym

It was a remarkable night last Thursday, when I joined 300 other association professionals at a unique “Evening of Thanks” to hear and meet a world leader whose work I and so many millions of others have admired for decades.

Hosted by the American Program Bureau in Washington, DC, we laughed, clapped, and let ourselves be inspired as the ever-charming Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu urged us to “lift each other up” and to help make the world “more passionate and more caring.”

Tutu noted that God “can’t do it without you” and referenced President-elect Barack Obama’s call for greater service and personal responsibility as well. He pointed to Obama’s election as “something like our Mandela moment” … despite the fact that “racism in many places is still rampant,” and recalled how he had been only 8 or 9 years old when he first saw a magazine story about Jackie Robinson’s rise as a baseball legend.

“I didn’t know baseball from ping pong, but it didn’t matter,” he laughed. “… You don’t know what you’ve meant for our struggle [for equality].” He added that, with Obama’s election, Martin Luther King’s “dream has come true. The day has dawned where his children will be judged on the basis of their character [alone].”

Mentioning activist Rosa Parks, Tutu said, “She marched so Obama could run. He ran so our children should fly.”

Tutu also shared some personal stories about his struggle against prostate cancer and how “this messenger, which could have been of doom, was instead a messenger of grace” that “suddenly awakened a sense of saying thank you” and of greater appreciation for laughter and fun with grandchildren.

He advised us all to “see yourself as a pool of serenity, letting the ripples move out to touch others [in an uplifting way]? Try it this week” … and “give thanks” for all that we have and are.

A great message for this special time of year! You can hear himself yourself, since APB has now posted the full speech online.