Today in the pouring rain, 10,000 or more brave souls joined 400 plus proud Morehouse College graduates --- all crowded under ponchos, hats and even program books -- to hear their President "bring the message," to and for young black men of the future.  And rain or no, the President did not disappoint.

And yes, I was one of those 10,000 being pounded by rain that seem to come on schedule. But no regrets here. Dr. King, my personal hero Ambassador Andrew Young, and countless others in the civil rights movement dealt with much, much worse, for much, much longer.

President Obama spoke directly to young black men who come at a critical time for America, as well a critical time of and for the traditional African-American experience in America.

Young men who, if pointed in the right direction and truly inspired to make a difference, could very well remake and reset the very future of Black America. A Black American community that is arguably at a historic tipping point nearly 50 years since Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

Of course, Dr. King was himself a Morehouse Man, arguably in a very different era and time. Nonetheless, these 400 Black Morehouse Men can rise to today's challenges, just as Dr. King rose to his back then. That was President Obama's message today. The President also noted that Dr. King was only 15 years old when he entered Morehouse as a student.  Talk about a young impact player for America to bet on. How many of us wouldn't make that same bet 100 times over today?

I was proud to be there in attendance today, braving the pouring rain just like countless others.  It was the least I could do to encourage these Black young heroes in the making. It was the right thing to do, paying respect to Morehouse College.  It was a public 'tipping of a respectful hat' by me to our President, the Honorable Barack Obama.  A President I am likewise honored to serve as chairman of the Subcommittee on the Underserved and Community Empowerment for his U.S. President's Advisory Council on Financial Capabality.

No doubt, countless attendees were drenched, and if they were honest, even a little frustrated today by the weather conditions (just like I was -- smile), but I am also sure that when they got home, had a good meal, and sat back to reflect on the 'thing' they just witnessed  ---  well, I am sure they were proud to have sat through the pouring rain too.  

The President poured out his heart, made it plain, and made the message (to these young graduating men) personal.  It was a side of this President that I am frankly not use to seeing much.  But because of all these reasons, it was a powerful and important message. One that should resonate and ricochet widely through inner-city, under-served and otherwise challenged Black and Brown communities America-wide.  And now that I think about it, make that middle-class and well-to-do Black America too.

Go ahead Mr. President.  Today you stood in the rain (well, sort of -- smile again), but you also helped to set the stage for the "rainbows that only and almost always follow storms."  It is a scientific fact that you cannot have a rainbow without a storm first.  

We should not turn away from our problems, our challenges, our responsibilities and our pain -- but towards them.

Commendations to the President for a job well done.  Read the President's complete remarks here.  Share them with others.

Okay, let's go.

John Hope Bryant is an empowerment leader, the founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Companies, Inc. Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass), the only African-American bestselling business author in America, and is chairman of the Subcommittee for the Under-Served and Community Empowerment for the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, for President Barack Obama.  Mr. Bryant is the co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the U.S.

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"Operation HOPE is the global leader of financial diginity. This includes the financial literacy empowerment, financial inclusion, and the ecomomic empowerment of the working poor, the underserved and the struggling middle class here and around the world. We call this the new 'silver rights' movement for all."

John Hope Bryant

"Take the world seriously, but don't take yourself too seriously. Never come down with a case of seriousness."

John Hope Bryant

"With the Internet, and the ability to do a Google search, there is just no reason in the world that someone should be dumb."

Cosmo Griffiths, entrepreneur in Atanta

Let me start by saying I am not a medical professional, and on the topic of the medical sciences, I hold zero credentials. I know nothing in the medical sciences which can be relied on.

That said, I believe this -- most disease is not disease at all (in its origins).  It is dis-ease, that turns into disease.

We are all 70% water. That is our makeup, and yet we obsess about the physical body.

We are, to quote author Deepak Chopra, "not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings, having a human experience."

To quote David Brooks in Social Animal, "the human mind can take in 11 million pieces of information at any given moment.  The most generous estimate is that people can be consciously aware of forty of these." Brooks goes on to note that "some researchers have gone so far as to suggest that the unconscious mind does virtually all the work and that conscious will may be an illusion."  He concludes this section by noting "the conscious mind merely confabulates stories that try to make sense of what the unconscious mind is doing of its own accord."

We value the feelings of life most, but we obsess mostly on the things of life.

The mind processes 99% of content in the moment which we pay little to no attention to, but we obsess on and totally value the less than .01% we can wrap our conscious minds around.  The stuff we see and can understand.  Is it possible that the 'other stuff,' is this being some call God?

We are looking for love in all the wrong places, and possibly our meaning with it.

If any of this is true, then this also might hold water ---- if we are clogged up with hate, self-loathing, feelings of illegitimacy and harm towards others. If we are jealous and raged. If we are insecure and petty and hating on others. If we are negative and constantly doubting everything and everyone around us. If we have lost our hope, and filled that cup with cynicism instead. If we do not believe, in anything beyond what selfishly serves only our own purposes. If we are about me, and never about 'we.'  If we about what we get, rather than what we have to give.  If we are constantly sulking and complaining --- then what is left of life?  

If love is work, and the energy of love is always in (positive) motion, then what happens with a negative and corrosive energy that just sits there, scratching away at your inner-meaning?  Could it be that most disease, is dis-ease instead?  I think so.

Now, am I saying that disease is not real. Of course not. Furthermore, I am saying that some disease is genuinely the direct result of the physical body, and the things that man does to man over generations (see my last post On Life).  

But maybe that percentage of disease (still a tragedy I might add, and we still very much need to working every angle of scientific solutions here) is more like a mere 30%? Then more than 60-70%, would be about the care and feeding of your spirit, of your attitude. Your God-given life energy.

By the way, what do you think the physicals and medical professionals are actually talking about, when they speak to your "well-being?"  It is certainly not your physical body.

Something to think about.  Something also, you can control.

John Hope Bryant is an empowerment leader, the founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Companies, Inc. Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass), the only African-American bestselling business author in America, and is chairman of the Subcommittee for the Under-Served and Community Empowerment for the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, for President Barack Obama.  Mr. Bryant is the co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the U.S.

Today I was speaking with one of my HOPE Team members, who recounted a story to me of a friend who had passed, and the subsequent conversation with that friend's parents.  The parents, were obviously and understandably in grief over their loss.  The question though, that one of the parents asked the priest, got me thinking about a larger issue.  The parent asked, "if there is a God, why did he take my child?"

It is a good question, but in my view, respectfully the wrong one.  God gave life, breath and discernment to mankind.  God gave this one creation of His -- this one 'animal' in His Kingdom -- the ability to think, reflect, to love, to grow and to evolve in our consciousness.  To the point, I want to say again, God gave us consciousness.  

He put us in charge of His planet, and asked us to do a good job taking care of it.  

He also put us in charge of the other animals, and asked us to be responsible to and for them too.

Importantly, He also asked us to take care of "the least of these God's children."

The short version here, is that God placed his children -- mankind (and of course this is shorthand for mankind and womankind) -- in charge of things.  Most important of all, He gave us free will.

To do as we like.  

To select the red pill, or the blue one.

To go left in life, or to go right.

To do the right thing, or to do something else altogether.

Think about the traditional Christian definition even of Lucifer - the so-called Devil.  Even he is only a mere fallen Angel.  God gives even Lucifer, permission to exist.  We all make choices. We are all human choice makers. Choice makers, for God.

We all 'play god,' so to speak, everyday of our lives.

Think about the next time you pull up to a light. You sit there in your car, your foot pressed on the brake pedal.  As people stream by the front of your car -- and as they have put their life trust in you as they each walk from one side of the street to the next in front of you -- you actually have a choice to make.

You can keep your foot on the brake, or you can 'choose' to release it.  If you release it, and worse still, if you press the gas, you have 'played god' in the worse way imaginable. And you have changed the lives of those you have come into contact with on this day -- forever.

Or think about the fathers who plant seed, and the other individuals who flew planes for years spraying pesticide on that farmed land.  And then think about months and years later, as others ate the food that came from those lands.  From those seedlings, that planting and farming, from the spraying of pesticides. And then later, we find that some children got sick, or maybe others in their adult lives were told to have a disease in their bodies.  Could it be that one thing is connected, to the other?  

And if this is the case, who did these actions?  It was not God out there in those fields, or working the controls in that plane.  It was you and me.  Human beings, taking actions every day, on this planet, in this world.

This, I believe, is a powerful example of what Gandhi famously had to say.  "We must be the change we want to see in this world."  

This is why I continue to stress how interrelated each of us really are, with each other. We may not strive to be dependent, but we are indeed interdependent.  One one does in one part of the world, actually impacts another in an entirely different part of the world. What we do, wherever we are, changes our world, daily.  

So father of a grieved and fallen son, I grieve with you sir.  That said, please do rest in some comfort knowing that the God we love and respect, does not 'kill people,' or at least not in this way (you and I will know it clearly when He does).  He did not kill your son.  Unfortunately, we all did that. And now, we must be part of the larger healing process, for you -- and for our world. 

This is indeed our planet, to fix, restore, or to screw up for good.

John Hope Bryant is an empowerment leader, the founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Companies, Inc. Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass), the only African-American bestselling business author in America, and is chairman of the Subcommittee for the Under-Served and Community Empowerment for the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, for President Barack Obama.  Mr. Bryant is the co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the U.S.

Acquisition of DUS® Lender with $3.9 Billion Servicing Portfolio

Expands ACRE’s Product Offering Into Fannie Mae and FHA Loans

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation (NYSE: ACRE) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire EF&A Funding, L.L.C, d/b/a Alliant Capital LLC from The Alliant Company, LLC and Alliant, Inc., for approximately $62.8 million through a combination of cash and stock.

Under the terms of the transaction, Alliant Capital LLC is expected to become a wholly owned taxable REIT subsidiary of ACRE. Alliant Capital, Ltd., which on a national scale provides tax credit equity for the financing and development of affordable housing, is not included in the acquisition and will remain a part of The Alliant Company.

ACRE is part of the $60 billion Ares Management family.  

I am proud to serve on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate. Read the complete release on the acquisition announcement here.

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This week I was reminded of a nice piece of shared history, when a friend in change and leadership, U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, reminded me during her opening remarks that both she and I were once part of the TIME Magazine "50 for the Future" cover story on future leaders in America.  Former honorees include future President Bill Clinton and news pioneer Dan Rather, amongst others.

The organization I founded after the Rodney King Riots, Operation HOPE, was honored to host a special HOPE Forum this week at the HOPE Financial Dignity Center Ebenezer.  The HOPE Center Ebenezer is the signature partner for the new Martin Luther King, Sr. Community Resource Compex in Atlanta, Georgia, across from the King Center.

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