Our Guru

In the spring of 1970, I exited a dark tunnel into a world of light and life as the mother of my youth gave me passage into this world I’ve come to know as Earth and more specifically all that is Atlanta.  I love Atlanta!  I’ve lived elsewhere in my travels, England, Peru, New Jersey, the Carolinas, Israel, Greece and a myriad of cities across the States United.

My understanding of the world has been most profoundly shaped by a number of men and women that I found to be most reliable, consistent and concerned about my well-being and the organizations we lived within.  While they indeed were far from perfect, my best was a portion of what they shared in their heart toward me.

The first significant organizations that felt like home to me were my College-aged Sunday school class led by Ruth Burgner.  She allowed me to be dumb and ask questions without really feeling dumb with others.  She challenged me and gave me significant literature to read and strengthen my understanding of God–not class exercises but individual ones.  Next, I lived under the rule and care of a man I called David Cancelleri–I true man of strategy who had crossed into a world that married machine and computer during a day when many were hot high on the understanding that this cyborg type philosophy could aid in the making and organization of business.  He was a true genius and man of passion and spirit with my same Italian heritage.  We lived within a homespun industry that grew out enterprising makers of roadside chenille into a world center for broadloom (what we know today as that soft fuzzy stuff that warms our feet at night).

In the emerging days of my third decade of travel, I found myself enamored by the political prowess of our Political Action Committee leader and the the thoughtful creativity of group of men I came to know as Bandlow, Mate, Gibson and woman known as King.  They shaped the world of  hardware and home improvement stewarding the moving and strong of things to sell at a margin of not less than 40%.  It was a good life and indeed our customers were at the level of king and kingdom economically with the merchants responsible for territories within controlling each a Billion or more dollars US.

As my 30s came to a peak my allegiance turned my ear to that of a preacher man that I came to know as friend.  Like me he could not have been further, I in my analytics and he in his relational moods and tears.  But he loved, he cared and poured his heart into the lives of those that he tended responsibility to and he opened my eyes to responsibility in relationship with those I admired in beauty and the like.

My forties neared my misunderstandings about power and religion feel on some deep hurts and anger as I had ignored the warnings from my spiritual grandmother.  The southern man that I was had grownup in a neighborhood of color as a minority colored by a dying group heritage segregationists who’d lost their harmful grip on reality to a man known as Luther King.  Now, the greatest sources of healing, understanding and spiritual growth were being nursed by a black man from Ghana send by God to call out the west African to faith and maturity.  Owusu now on his way to Doctoral level in knowledge has long based the practice of many men who have 1/3 his education.  No problem that I encountered was not met with sound truth-centric counsel and teaching.

Along this journey, I door to my purpose and role became clear to me though the promptings and challenging thoughts a men I call Stanley (of the 3 Ss), Jackson-T and Jackson-K, Lyons, GoodwinBrady, Crouch, DiMarco and Pettiway.  I’d stepped over the door of business into that of ‘Do Good’ and heard loudly the call to lead the revolution within among the creatives.  A way of art, beauty and spirituality connected with the true origins of creativity espoused from first truly creative performance of widespread influence–The God of the ages and a guide to the men of Abraham, Isaac, David, Solomon, Elisha and Josiah.

Allen Rodi, Founder and GURU of the FrogShway

PS if you have any questions give me a CALL 404.784.8560

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite