By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird
Who in their right mind would want to be sent to a toxic
island where everyone was a pirate, including the grandmothers, grandsons, and
everyone in between? Who would want to
be sent to an island where all islanders were liars, evil brutes and lazy
gluttons? The Island of Crete which my
wife and I visited had been a pirate stronghold for over 800 years. While in Crete, we learned about Titus who was
just the man for the job. He did not
flinch. Titus taught toxic Cretan
pirates how to become radically healthy: how to love, how to lay down their
lives for another, how to be the faithful husband of but one wife, how to be
gentle and patient. He taught the female
pirates how to be best friends with their husbands and their children. This is true health. If the wisdom in the 45-sentence book of
Titus can revolutionize a pirate island, it can even transform a pirate
continent like North America. Signs of
our North American toxicity include gun violence and the insanity of the
shooters, obesity when there is no shortage of food, and a wealth of
communication tools while many are no longer talking any more.
Is it a mere coincidence that the late Steve Jobs defined
Apple employees as pirates, even raising a pirate flag with the Apple logo as
the pirate eyepatch? It is better, said
Jobs, to be a pirate than join the navy.[1] In the 1999 movie Pirates of Silicon
Valley, Jobs accused Bill Gates of ripping him off by producing the Microsoft
Windows mouse-based graphical user interface.
Gates, the wealthiest person on earth, memorably said to his outraged
fellow pirate Steve Jobs: “we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I
broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already
stolen it."[2] Ironically Jobs loved to quote Picasso’s
comment: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” So do great pirates.
Titus was a first-century go-getter. He reminds me of my father, Ted Hird, who
always gets the job done. At one of my
father’s retirements, his company, Microtel, gave him a statue of a horse in
memory of my father’s billing the company for a dead horse. Working in Newfoundland for three months with
the snowy roads sometimes impassible, my father hired a farmer’s horse to drag
the telecommunications equipment up the hill. The microwave tower was finally
finished, but the horse died. Titus-like
leaders make things happen against impossible odds.
If the toxic Cretan pirates can become healthy, anyone can
become healthy, even North Americans.
Dr. Brene Brown, whose TED talk has been seen by over sixteen million
people, said that we in North America “are the most we are the most in-debt, obese,
addicted and medicated adult cohort in (our) history.”[3] In an age of many regrets, Titus is a symbol
of hope for healthy leadership in the twenty-first century. With the huge global changes happening, the
need for healthy leaders like Titus has never been greater. A key solution to our North American toxicity
is rediscovering Titus, the epitome of integrated healthy leadership. Titus planted significantly healthy
communities by identifying and training indigenous leaders in every one of the
over hundred Cretan cities. The book of
Titus gives you the keys to healthy communities, healthy families and healthy
lives.
The book of Titus calls us to become whole people – in mind,
body, and spirit. That is the theme of
my brand new book ‘Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit.’ So often we North Americans are toxically
fragmented in areas of our lives. We
need the Great Physician to give us a full check-up to determine whether our
lives, our marriages and families, our churches and communities are sound and
healthy. Many of us are out of balance
in our health emphasis, neglecting either the body, the mind or the
spirit. Too many good people have bought
the lie that they can eat anything they want and not bother to exercise. The Bible says that our health choices have
consequences. We reap as we sow. People who neglect their bodies lose the
ability to travel cross-culturally as they get older. People who neglect their minds go stale and
have nothing worth saying. People who
neglect their spirits go shallow and self-absorbed. Healthy leaders embrace
their bodies, minds and spirits for Christ’s sake.
My prayer for those reading this article is that we will
choose the way of holistic health in every area of our lives.
The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission Canada
-an article for the November 2014 Deep Cove Crier
-Ed’s brand-new sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind 
and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form. In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available inpaperback and ebook. It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook ), Amazon France (paperback andebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).
Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form. Nook gives a sample of the book to read online. Indigo also offers the Kobo ebook version.
-In order to obtain a copy of the prequel book
‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘ED HIRD’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPALusing the e-mailed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
[1] Walter
Isaacson, Steve Jobs (Simon &
Schuster, New York, NY, 2011), p. 145.
[2] Andy
Hertzfeld, “A Rich Neighbor Named Xerox”, November 1983; Martin Burke, Pirates of the Silicon Valley movie,
1999. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.txt
(Accessed Feb 1st 2014)
[3] Dr.
Brene Brown, The Power of Vulnerability, TED
Talk, June 2010, https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability/transcript (accessed June 22nd 2014).
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