>     Well, it appears that Arkansas Governor and Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is very sorry for an indelicate question he recently posed during an interview with a New York Times reporter. After discussing whether or not Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith should influence a voter’s choice, Huckabee apparently offered up, unsolicited, the question/comment, “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”
    I have always believed that being a good listener is an art. When you know how to truly listen, you can learn a great deal about a person by what they say, what they don’t say, and what lies unsaid between their spoken words. So, listening to Mike Huckabee’s quote was, for me, not unlike listening to Mel Gibson rant anti-Semitic profanities after being pulled over for DUI. 
    Now your first reaction may be that this isn’t a valid comparison because Gibson was drunk at the time of his hateful speech and Huckabee was not. But I would say they are exactly alike in that both men revealed what is in their minds, and more importantly, their hearts. Any recovering alcoholic will tell you that it’s “never the alcohol speaking”…it’s you. While being drunk may cause you to be louder (or sometimes softer) than you would be sober…or have you make more of a fool of yourself than you would otherwise…it won’t cause you to say something that, substantively, you don’t think and/or believe. And while running for President of the United States may cause you to try and please too many for the sake of a vote, it won’t make you say what you do not think and/or believe.
    Even if I give Mike Huckabee the benefit of the doubt, which I must do as a spiritual Being, and conclude that his was an honest question in search of an honest answer, the fact that he posed it in such an inappropriate venue and directed it to such an inappropriate person, tells me that his judgment and common sense are simply not Presidential.  
    So what can we learn from Governor Huckabee’s indiscretion? I think a lot…particularly about right speech. It’s the origin of the saying “If you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all.” But it goes much deeper than the adage appears on it’s face. Because we literally create what we think, when we give “body” to thought by wrapping it in speech we manifest into our world that which we are thinking. That makes it pretty important that we be vigilant about both what we think and what we say.
    Mel Gibson and Mike Huckabee were both contrite when what they thought and said created a public backlash. That, at least, is a good thing. It is important to stop evil speech in it’s tracks so that we do not feed the beast and perpetuate a world of separation and baseless hatred.
    I repeatedly say that we are living in extraordinary times as human consciousness expands and evolves. I also repeatedly say that as the expansion is occurring, it becomes more and more difficult to hide truth and manipulate others.
    Governor Huckabee has told us who he is and what he thinks by what he said and how he chose to say it.
    Properly seen, it is a gift of truth that now frees up the Governor to re-evaluate what is in his heart and frees up the rest of us to vote for someone else.
    

     

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