I’m not very optimistic about the year out ahead. That’s a hard statement for me to make. I always tend to be the optimistic one in the bunch. But there is some sort of malaise that has settled down on our planet, on our country, on our various communities. I keep looking for the right vision for what’s ahead, and most of what I see is trouble, uncertainty, even fear. And I look for the right kinds of leaders, but feel only a growing impatience for someone to show real depth and clarity and substance.

I trust you are off to a wonderful new beginning of 2013. As we look around our world, it is abundantly clear we have a lot of work to do. Things are a mess, aren’t they? We need to do a lot of thinking about how best to move forward. We need to roll up our sleeves to get the job done. I find myself eager to tackle these tasks in the year ahead.

The President of MIT, Rafael Reif, said recently in the Wall Street Journal, that because of the “upheaval today coming from the technological change posed by online education,” we find “higher education . . . at a crossroads not seen since the introduction of the printing press.” That is quite a claim! If true, it is remarkable news we must absorb.

I received comments on my last post on the “Christian university by the numbers” that leads me to believe I may not have been fully clear. My point was not that Seattle Pacific is failing to attract its share of students and needs to shift strategies. This is certainly not the case. SPU clearly is one of the most attractive Christian universities in the country. Nor was I saying that other fine Christian universities are failing to be attractive. Most of our premier institutions, like SPU, have by far more students than they can accommodate. Most importantly, most of these institutions are delivering incredible value.

Last spring, the presidents of the thirteen institutions in the Christian College Consortium were gathered at our annual meetings in Palm Desert. We were talking (enthusiastically) about the future of Christian higher education, as such Presidents tend to do, carrying on about the incredible value we have to offer our students, their families, and the world. We all believe that. We were quick to note how well things are going on our campuses. Presidents do that too, when they get together: Everything is always going great.

My mother told me never to call someone a liar. In our otherwise energetically verbal family, calling someone a liar was crossing a bright line. “Don’t go there, ever,” my mother would say. To call someone a liar was to make a statement about person, about character, about motives, and not about content. The person-part mattered in my family.

I feel sorry for those replacement refs. Wanting to be a replacement ref would be like me wanting to be the CEO of Boeing or Microsoft for a few weeks. This is cool, I might say for a time. The extra pay is helpful. The taste of real power is exhilarating.  But then suddenly, in the heat of a major decision—involving thousands of employees, millions of customers, investors ready to pounce—I would probably say, yikes, get me out of here. I’m in over my head.

David Brooks’ column today ends up being about the Chicago teachers’ strike. But what interests me most is his opening overview of the two tracks of our modern economy.Here is what he says:

For years I've sat through anguished discussions about why more women than men are going to college. A lot more in fact. In most colleges and universities these days the numbers are at 60% women, sometimes creeping even higher. We used to think this was a phenomenon of the Christian campus, that parents wanted their daughters to attend a “safe” college. Little did we know that we were on the front edge of a massive culture shift.

In his acceptance speech for the nomination of his party in Charlotte last night, President Obama made glancing reference to reducing college tuition, pledging to “work with colleges and universities to cut in half the growth of tuition costs over the next 10 years.”This is an echo of his State Of The Union Address in January 2012 where the President suggested withholding federal student financial aid from universities that did not reduce their costs. At that time he suggested as well that federal financial aid should be tied to measured outcomes for student learning.

Ego is the curse of good leadership. I have come to believe, out of a lot of painful experience, the ego is a monster under the bed waiting to pounce on leaders, waiting to eat them alive, waiting to suck the life out of worthy ideas.Here then is my advice to leaders: Don’t let your ego get hold of you. It took a lot of confidence to get where you are. It even took some self-promotion. But now you have arrived. Now is the time for that spiritual journey to get the ego under control.

I have been thinking again these days about  the notion of joy. We all want the gift of joy, don’t we? And it sometimes seems like a gift, not something we can conjure up. And so I have been asking myself: Well, what then is the source of our joy? What must I do to live joyously? And why does joy seem elusive to so many? On the other hand, why does joy have such power to make our lives better, to make the lives of others better, to make organizations vibrant and healthy

I usually agree with most of what David Brooks writes in his twice-weekly column in The New York Times. He is one of my hero-commentators. I love his balance. I love his consistent insight that politics is understood through culture, not the other way around. After two visits to my campus, at my invitation, we keep occasional email contact. I read him faithfully.But Friday’s column misses the mark.

I find myself wanting to say some things to our presidential candidates. I offer this advice, of course, for what it’s worth, which, considering the price, isn't much.First, I want to say what our candidates surely know: We have some very real problems in our world, and those problems require strong leaders to step up in fresh new ways. There is a deep current of unease over our national decline, and people are yearning for intelligent discussion about real solutions to real problems. This is not just a political game we are in.People are out of jobs. And here’s what I worry about:

So many writers these days are talking about America as a nation in decline. I am one who happens to feel there are some dangerous signals of such decline. For all of my usual instincts toward optimism and hope and opportunity, I am troubled these days, fearful about the future.Most of our broader national discourse focuses on economic issues, and those are real. And the solutions proposed are almost always political, and those are necessary. But for me, the focus must eventually zero in on culture.

Great writing grows out of the specific content of a writer’s life. I believe the same could be said of leadership. The writer’s instincts are guided, in the best of writing, by the axiom that the more particular the story, the more universal the message.This is tricky business, to be sure, risky because the probing of individual content can slip easily into self-serving, and that cannot be the goal of writing or leadership. Knowing the difference—between genuine, authentic personal content, and self-absorbed, self-focused content—is, well, the art of writing, and the art of leadership.David Brooks makes this point so beautifully in "The Power Of The Particular,”one of his recent columns in The New York Times (June 25, 2012).

In the third and final part of President Philip Eaton's 2012 Commencement address at Seattle Pacific University, he explains, "Putting out into the deep calls us to a life of hope, even on the other side of darkness."

In part two of President Philip Eaton’s 2012 Commencement address at Seattle Pacific University, he encourages the new graduates to “stop fishing in the shallows.”

On June 9, 2012, SPU President Philip Eaton delivered the Commencement address at Seattle Pacific University’s 2012 Commencement. His Commencement address is being published here in three parts.