The ritual of March madness is upon us.
For those of you from another galaxy, this is the annual event of the determining the best college basketball team in the USA from a field of 65. It is equivalent to the fervor of the world cup on steroids. This ritual affects the work life as many folks soak up precious work bandwidth watching the games (using work your computer to watch the games- a habit that could spike your unemployment rate) during the work day. I heard of a new software routine called boss button that at the touch of a single key brings up an Excel spreadsheet to mimic real work. You better be into accounting!
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I am a football man myself, and can’t wait till draft day, and then the July pre-season. Till then, I have to live with anticipation, but I will probably watch the championship game.
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Another term that will become a part of our vocabulary for the next few weeks will be Cinderella teams, and giant killers. This takes us back to our kindergarten days of wishing and hoping when teams compete against the number one seeds on a hope and a prayer. Sure Chattanooga will beat North Carolina. My snide response would be -” David and Goliath happened once”. Well, enough trash talking.
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Permit me to take you away from the madness, to a urban monastic setting; to a place where nuns, not coaches are molding lives. For 129 years, these nuns have dedicated themselves to taking boys without life direction and turn them into men on a positive life mission. I am speaking about the nuns of the Alpha school for Boys in Kingston.
Sister Mary Ignatius Davies (1921 – 2003)
became the embodiment of the spirit of dedicating one’s life to a cause, much bigger than the NCAA trophy. In fact, when you check out the many famous musicians that got their start at Alpha, you will be amazed, and will agree that Alpha played a major role in the development of Reggae. It would not be far fetched to call Sister Ignatius the Mother Theresa of Reggae.
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In February, the USA PBS show Frontline featured this great institution.
Click to see Frontline Program
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Let me not steal the program’s thunder, but simply re-state the principle of sowing – whatever we sow, we will reap. The nuns of Alpha school dedicated their lives to sowing seeds of worth, value, and vision in these young men, and we today, reap the harvest of pride in a world renowned music program, and musicians. This music program is just icing on the cake of giving these young men vocational, and life skills.
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I have been told that the toughest arithmetic to master is one that enables us to count our blessings. We can count our blessings by remembering how others invested in us, and we can invest in some life that will afford others to taste of the bounties of such a future harvest.
Here is an idea -why not take your winnings from your March madness pool and make a donation or purchase, even to/from the Alpha Boys School?
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