By RICK KRON
Leader staff writer
It was an epiphany while playing Pong on a Friday night in college and a bit of a practical joke, but it has turned into a movement of compassion and genuine love, according to Jon Talbert, guest speaker at the annual Cabot Chamber of commerce dinner.
Talbert, a faith-based motivational speaker, comedian and NFL and NBA chaplain, told the crowd of about 300 at the chamber’s 53rd annual dinner Friday night that “genuine love is contagious” and his organization Beautiful Day was an example of that — an example of what can happen in Cabot too.
The chamber also honored its member of the year, Damon Bivins, business member of the year, Hertzog Family Eye Clinic, and outgoing board president Karen Madding. All were honored at the event and the gavel was officially passed to the new president, Mark Stocks.
Talbert told the crowd that when he first got the invitation to speak at the dinner he was ecstatic. “I’m going to Cabo, I told my wife. She said no, Cabot. I said Cabo, she said Cabot, there’s a T in it. I told her Cabo, the T was silent,” he quipped, adding that he was truly happy to visit Cabot, with a T.
Talbert told the crowd that he grew up in a Christian home where his dad was a Baptist minister. “We went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night and Friday evenings. I once asked my dad if we could just put our beds there,” he said.
Growing up Talbert struggled with all the “do not’s.”
“We had what was called the Nine Nasties: No smoking, no drinking, no drugs, no chewing, no cruising, no movies, no dancing, no card playing and not to hang around girls that did any of those.”
He aid the no chewing confused him when he was young, but just to be on the safe side, he swallowed all his food. Talbert also said the no card playing rule bothered him too. “Dogs play cards. I know they did. I saw the pictures,” he quipped.
But all those no’s caused him to walk away from his faith. “It needs to be less about what not to do and more about what empowers us to do,” he explained.
He reconnected that fateful night in college. “I wanted to do something radically different.”
Talbert had seen the local church helping single moms, a group he called “lost women” who didn’t have food for their children and sometimes no money for utilities. “The church did all it could,” he said.
The idea hit him one night playing video games. “Pong, so you had a lot of time to think between hits,” he said.
He got the home addresses of the women from his church and he and his buddies pooled all their college money. “All right, all the money our parents gave us for college,” Talbert confessed. The group went out to a local Costco and bought bulk food. “We separated it and then delivered it to the front doors. He set down the bags and boxes and drove off fast. We got back to the dorm, called these families and said, ‘This is God, there’s food on your porch,’ and hung up.”
“We felt good,” he said, and from that grew Beautiful Day -- a growing group of government agencies, community organizations and people from all walks of life serving others by addressing all sorts of needs. Their approach is simple: To invest in communities with simple, direct and unyielding kindness.
“Each project is an act of no-strings-attached service for those who are otherwise unable to help themselves. Our goal is to aggressively spread compassion, to discard apathy in favor of activity and light fires of good will in the neighborhoods we work and live in,” he explained.
As an example he told the chamber crowd of a time he and his small group went to a local high school and asked what they could fix, clean, build. The principal said the best thing they could do was to attend a football game. “You see the school’s team was bad, really bad and the principal said barely 100 people would show up for a game,” Talbert explained.
He and his group put out the word. “It was like a flash mob at the game. We had 2,000 people filling the stands cheering for this team even though we didn’t know any of them. And guess what? The principal was right, the team was awful and lost. But they played before a crowd that cheered and loved them and that made them feel like winners.”
Talbert said he has learned three things about the genuine love that comes out of compassion and caring.
First, genuine love is contagious, virally contagious. “Once you start helping and showing genuine love, others join in,” he said.
Secondly, genuine love disrupts the status quo and, according to Talbert that’s a good thing. It lets people know there is something better out there.
Thirdly, genuine love is deeply spiritual. Talbert related a project that his group was doing rehabbing a house. “One of the last things we wanted to do was to paint the outside so it would look and feel new inside and out, but our painting crew didn’t show. We didn’t know what to do and I asked for an act of God to get the house finished.
Talbert said his prayers were answered when he approached a three-man painting crew down the street. Their reply, “We were hoping you’d ask us to help.”
And their names, Talbert said, “And I’m not kidding, Moses, Israel and Jesus—okay the last one had a Hispanic pronunciation.”
He ended by telling the Cabot crowd, “May you live in the practice of genuine love.”
Bivins was honored for his chamber support and volunteerism. He serves as the car line captain at Cabot Middle School North welcoming students as they arrive with fist bumps, kind words, and even a little dancing.
Bivins said, “I get way more out of it seeing the kids smile than they ever do. I don’t know what possesses some of the stuff I say and do but the kids get real happy and they smile as they walk in the building and that’s the most important thing.”
Madding, the outgoing president told the crowd that 2013 was a good year for the chamber with 26 ribbon cuttings and membership growing from 323 members to 370.
