The following contains excerpts from the book, The Daniel Dilemma (The Moral Man In the Public Arena) (Peggy Stanton).
At our music school in Midland, Texas we believe that music is more than sound, it is relationships. In the study of the subject of Leadership, relationships matter, and how integrous our relationships are become the foundation upon which all leadership is built.
“What is The Daniel Dilemma? Very simply, it is the dilemma of the principled man in the public arena, the tension between personal morality and the possession of power. In the Old Testament, the story of Daniel is the story of man’s relationship to power and the Creator of power…The king’s authority exists only by a grant from God. If the kings abuse their power, it will be taken away from them…Daniel’s faithfulness to Go0d did not remove pressure from his life…But never did Daniel defect to mere earthly authority. Never when his power was taken away, as in the lion’s den, did he cease trusting God. As a result, he always survived the circumstance. Today, swimming in an unending stream of scandalous headlines about public figures, we find ourselves wondering if Daniel was the last man to resolve his dilemma in favor of morality…What emerged was a book…stories, amazingly varied but remarkably striking in some similarities…All have achieved worldly success. Most have been recognized as leaders of their fellows. All of them believe in God…Ultimately, each was able to see his crushing letdown as a disguised benefit, a refining, a shaping, a honing of themselves, an occurrence that was inevitable and necessary for their betterment…The can accept the fact that, no matter the evidence, without supernatural aid from the Almighty, man struggles hopelessly with his existence.”
We believe, at our music school in Midland, Texas that the study of music and the arts fosters more than artistic disciplines but rather is foundational in the development of life-skills and character traits in things such as patience, perseverance, courage, poise, empathy, listening skills, and so much more.
This book shows several lives of public figures in the author’s generation (the 1970s) in America, going into detail in their struggles of leadership and their faith in God through the difficulties they faced. Although the book is dated, it gives clarity on many issues facing today’s leader in the public arena.
John McCormack
- “In the history of the country, the President told McCormack, the people with real character, almost without exception, had had wives who were very supportive. He knew Harriet McCormack had been such a wife to John, and had made it possible for him to be the fine Congressmen, Majority Leader and Speaker that he had been…Harriet would have dinner with her husband in the House restaurant and then wait in his office, sometimes till three or four in the morning, until John was ready to go home…Harriet Joyce …was an opera singer who had sung with the Metropolitan opera company and who gave concerts in churches and sold out house around the country…Not all of Harriet Joyce’s talent reside in her throat. Considerable ability flowed through her finger. She played the piano with skill and she was a painter of merit…She gave her last concert in Little Rock, Arkansas. ‘When I married John,’ everything else stopped. I gave it all up for the greatest boy in the world.’ There would be only one career in the McCormack family.
- “If Harriet hadn’t looked out for John, Jerry Taylor was sure of one thing: he would never have looked out for himself…She possessed a superior intellect…Harriet assessed people by instinct.
At our music school in Midland, Texas we teach students the difference between choice and decision. Choice is when you add new things to your life, like going through a buffet line at a cafeteria. Decision, however, is more difficult: it is when you cut away things in life, in order to focus on the things that are important.
- “Love, John McCormack firmly believes, is the power that moves men to build personal relationships, to build countries. ‘Where are we without it?’, he asks, ‘The very fact that you and I are sitting here with our way of life and our form of government comes from the love of God and love of neighbor…Now take the opposite way of life, the Communists. The origin is hate. When a man is willing to go to jail because he has written a book, where did he get that thought? He may not realize it in his conscious mind, but he got that thought because he has a right to write that book. What’s the origin? Love of God.”
- “But even in anger, ‘He was always in control of himself,’ according to John Monahan. ‘There was a case one night, when another Member violently abused him on the House floor…’ Instead of returning the invective, McCormack rose and quietly informed the man, ‘I will have you know, sir, that you are a former friend of mine and you are the one who has put yourself in that category from which you will never escape.’
Character and relationships matter in life, and at our music school in Midland, Texas we help students learn the value of these life-lessons through interacting with one another in ensembles.
- “Harriet’s involvement was in not way ‘haphazard,’ according to Edward’s brother. ‘She believed all along that she was contributing to his career. She used to quote, ‘behind every grate man, there’s a woman.’ She is proof of the puddin’ of just how strong a woman’s role in marriage really is…she spent a great amount of hours working fro charitable causes, although, according to her nephew, Edward, ‘No one was to know about her works of charity…she was visiting the sick and the elderly, sending food baskets to the impoverished in Boston, lobbying for appropriations for new hospital wings, promoting operettas for charity, counseling and helping troubled friends. ‘She never liked,’ recalls Jerry Taylor, ‘to see anybody in want.’”
- Billy Graham credits the former Speaker with launching his evangelistic mission in Washington. When Graham began his ministry in 1950, he was just the president of a small mid-western college. McCormack hosted a luncheon for Graham in Washington and later got permission for the budding preacher to speak on the Capitol steps to a crowd of forty-thousand people. ‘John McCormack was the first person to introduce me to a President of the United States,’ Graham recalls. ‘He asked me if I wanted to meet Harry Truman.’ The then obscure Reverend Graham…had asked the President if they could have a ‘prayer together,’ to which Mr. Truman had agreed. ‘The press asked me if I would mind reenacting that prayer and, like a fool, I knelt right down on the White House lawn.’”
There is a component of faith in every aspect of life, and we encourage students of all creeds to find ways to express their beliefs through their musical aspirations at our music school in Midland, Texas.
- It amazed a reporter “that the McCormacks really did eat dinner together every night. ‘I thought nobody in public life every ate dinner regularly with anybody. The fact that that marriage made it in the wat that it did frankly awed and intrigued me.’ So much so, that she finally worked up ‘the nerve’ to ask Harriet McCormack how she and the Speaker were able to live that kind of life. Well, Mus, McCormack replied, you have to make great sacrifices to attain what you want in life. She and John had decided that they both wanted this portion of their life to be shared, that this was the most important priority….But we never, the old woman told the young girl, let these loves divide our love from each other and for our God. And that is the mistake a lot of people make. And when you do, that’s when the whole thing becomes so confused that you sometimes can’t put it back together again.”
Learning to keep life in balance, prioritizing family and faith, is an ethos we adhere to at our music school in Midland, Texas. Music is woven in the tapestry of our rich and fulfilling lives when we keep our priorities in line.