My frequent critique of social media (and repeated reference to the dire predictions of Jacques Ellul) often feel justified when examining my Facebook feed, but I also try to admit the irony that I bemoan social media on social media, which just feels wrong.
As is typical, others say what I hope to say better, and I recently stumbled across a YouTube video from author John Green titled, Am I Cigarettes?
Green had the courage to ask whether the content he posts contributes to societal demise in a similar way that cigarettes served as a pathway to cancer. Am I cigarettes? he asked.
His brother took the bait and countered with a separate video and different metaphor, arguing that those that contribute content, including he and his brother, are more like food than cigarettes, with food possessing the potential to be good or bad, while cigarettes are always bad. As Green described to the New York Times, his brother argued, “We’re food, and there’s a lot of bad food, but hopefully we’re good food.”
I found their exchange interesting and now ask about my use of social media: Can I be broccoli?
Once upon a time in my twenties, in a decade far, far away, a biographical sketch of Abraham Lincoln argued that Lincoln had a “passion for distinction.” That phrase had a major impact on me because I thought that maybe I did, too. The author proposed that Lincoln used his personal passion for noble purposes, and I wondered at the time if others would look back at the life in front of me with similar positive reviews.
Now, playing the back nine of life, it seems rather obvious that no one is going to name the capital of Nebraska after me. And I figured out a long time ago that this was a good thing. I recently watched the new Charlie Sheen biopic and remembered that fame would have gone poorly for me, too.
I grew up naive. I guess everyone does to some extent, but I grew up extra naive. I was raised in a small town in a family with little money that kept to ourselves. My Dad was a provider but also a shelterer and reclusive. My Mom successfully taught me to be a good boy and raised me in a religious environment with the stated goal to protect us from a scary world. All that to say it took me a long, long time to grow up, to use that tired phrase, but as an adult, moving to new places, reading a lot of books, and the introduction of the internet combined to procure a long, slow education. My life turned out okay, and I cannot complain, but it is now abundantly clear that any acceleration that would have come with fame would have been disastrous.
So while the desire to produce something significant on a major scale still pokes its head up periodically, I now tend to play whack-a-mole with it more often than not. I may be a slow learner, but I want to remain a learner.
Which brings me back to my little blog and personal social media presence. What I write and share does not attract high-profile attention, and not only am I okay with that (now), what I do does not fit the popularity profile anyway.
But I hope it is good. I hope it is not part of the destructive side of social media. To return to the metaphor, if what I do is a bit of food, can it be broccoli? Something not very popular, but healthy?
Should I get to retire someday, I plan to have already done all the traveling that I want to do. Should I get to retire someday, my plan does not involve golf or fishing. Instead, should I get to retire someday, if my mind and health permits, I want to write.
And I have come to terms with the fact that it is not to write the great American novel or a blockbuster movie screenplay. If you can believe it, I am not even that invested in writing to be remembered. No, if I get the privilege of looking back and sharing my thoughts in written form, it would primarily be for my daughters, should they be interested, and whether they are or not, I want whatever I leave behind to be healthy and good.
In the meantime, for now at least, I plan to keep contributing to the produce aisle of the world and go to sleep at night hoping that my meager contributions produce more good than bad.
Although to be transparent, I’m not 100% convinced that the cigarettes idea is entirely wrong.
If we never deny / the inevitable end / of the story, / we will write it / more beautiful / while we’re alive.
– Andrea Gibson, from Time Piece, in You Better Be Lightning (page 21)
I saw clouds the specific color of antifreeze as I jogged into the woods this morning, which confirmed that despite the calendar, today is our first taste of winter. Temperature in the upper twenties, which equaled the wind’s miles per hour, so the math equation determined that it felt like thirteen outdoors. I went out overdressed but unashamed.
When we first considered Wisconsin, I heard that the people here tend to embrace the winter rather than simply endure it, which I later discovered to be true. Instead of hunkering down for survival, Wisconsinites engage in winter festivals, winter sports, and carry on age-old winter traditions. I like the entire idea, especially as I grow older.
I am fifty-five years old now and wondering how that happened. Age is relative, of course, but my parents passed in their seventies, so it isn’t crazy to guess about twenty years remaining in this hotel stay called life.
Until recently, I had generally been the youngest person in a room. I was a late-in-life child and the youngest in my family. My birthday fell so that I was always the youngest in my class, starting kindergarten at age four and college at seventeen, and I was still twenty-one when I became a high school coach and teacher.
I married at twenty-three and with it had the crazy-cool (but still crazy) opportunity to be a parent for the sweetest little seven-year-old, and to make it even more outrageous, a year or so later my wife and I became full-time “houseparents” for courageous teenagers overcoming troubled pasts. We were always the “young” parents for all of the people we have considered “our kids” regardless of where their lives started.
Over and over and over again, I felt young for fill-in-the blank. I was in my late twenties when I completely switched careers to lead an entire church. To just be gross, I had a colonoscopy in my thirties, one thing I wished had been more age appropriate. My dad died when I was twenty-four, and my mom died when I was forty-one, which to me surely felt too young to be the top branch on a family tree.
The first chink in my youthful armor came when I went to law school in my late thirties, but even then, although I joked about being old all the time, the truth was that going to school in sweatshirts and blue jeans with a group of generous young folks who treated me as a colleague made me feel like a kid again.
I guess it was about three years ago when the shift happened. I was a member of a college president’s cabinet at the time, and I recall the day that I looked around the room and noticed that I was one of the oldest there. That felt so bizarre, but that feeling has happened so often since that it is now familiar.
Recently, Jody and I started talking a bit about retirement. You have no idea how unusual that is for us. My standing joke is that one thing we have always agreed on in our marriage is making poor financial choices for our future. But, truth be told, my approach to my own faith never made the words “wealth accumulation” super interesting, and I actually like to work. Add in my suspicion that I won’t live forever, and the idea of retirement never garnered much attention. But suddenly, we find ourselves talking about it some. Maybe in ten or fifteen years if all goes well…
All this has me thinking about embracing the coming winter.
I do love the fall season, but there is a reason that the leaves transform in blazing beauty and then fall to the earth en masse. The trees lose energy and nutrients, which produces gorgeous colors and signals that the leaves won’t survive. Those brilliant colors soon fade, and the trees are laid bare for the dark, cold winter.
So what posture should we adopt for the winter that approaches in our own lives? Not a popular conversation opener for a cocktail party, I suppose, but since I have never been a fan of living in denial, I choose to consider it anyway.
I like the idea of embracing it. Not hunkering down and withering away. Well, withering away may not be optional, but I like the idea of somehow withering with one’s head held high (as possible).
Bears hibernate in winter, but everyone here in Packer Country hates (the Chicago) bears anyway, so I am in friendly territory to adopt a different approach. I am grateful to my friend Mikey for introducing me to the incredible poetry of Andrea Gibson recently, and her conclusion to Time Piece encapsulates what I want to say—and do: “If we never deny the inevitable end of the story, we will write it more beautiful while we’re alive.”
Yes, that’s it. Seeing the coming winter with clear eyes creates space for something more beautiful. Winter approaches, and that is okay.
Imagine stargazing alone on the darkest night and witnessing a glorious cluster of shooting stars hurtling across the sky with such beauty and brilliance that you are forever changed, and then imagine the sadness that comes later when you recognize that you experienced something both powerful and personal that can never be recaptured. That is the sadness and the void in the universe that I feel today.
I met Kimberly Hebert eight years ago by email – at 8:31pm PST on October 23, 2017, to be exact. It was a rough start for me. I had preached a sermon that morning at the University Church of Christ in Malibu, California, on the campus of Pepperdine University titled, “On Behalf of Another.” I opened with the YouTube video “Oh Freedom!” that featured powerful images from the Civil Rights Movement—marches, sit-ins, legislation, Reverend King, Rosa Parks—all set to the haunting lyrics, Before I’ll be a slave / I’ll be buried in my grave / And go home to my Lord / And be free.
I followed what I considered to be a powerful opening with my own story of growing up in a Southern sundown town, and with my preaching foot on the accelerator then told of Oscar Romero giving his life for those being raped and murdered in El Salvador. All that led to the sermon text in Exodus 33 where Moses stood up to God on behalf of his people, and my message was that being “the Church” means standing up on behalf of others. There was even a photo of a sign from a Civil Rights march in the opening video that read “Where is the Church?” that in many ways characterized my sermon’s thesis.
I was sort of proud of it, but Kimberly wasn’t buying it at all. I had no idea who Kimberly Hebert was at the time, but she was in the audience that morning and shared her impressions with me that night in an email that she titled, Where IS the Church? She said the sermon felt “emotionally manipulative.” She said “[t]he church is still silent on issues of race” and that in my sermon the “silence was deafening” and that such silence “is one of the many reasons that the church is impotent in this area and does not show up.” She challenged me to have the “courage to tell the whole story in truth and love” and characterized sermons like mine as “tepid” before closing with the hope that I could receive her message “with the love in which it is being shared.”
It was hard for me to read. It was hard for me to read in part because there was not a doubt in my mind that she was right, and because the message that I had delivered, which was strong for me, failed to address the present nature of American racial politics and had had its true measure revealed: Tepid. Weak.
I wrote back that night – at 10:16pm PST to be exact (I have kept and treasured much of our correspondence). I expressed both apologies and gratitude. I said that she was right and that I had much to learn. I shared my hope that we could visit so that I could learn and grow. I had no idea what I was asking for, but as I have often said, I do my very best work by accident, because from such an inauspicious start that initial email exchange in the space of two evening hours produced for me a brief and beautiful friendship that changed my life for good. Kimberly became my teacher, my consultant, my advisor, and my friend.
In the following months we exchanged emails where I asked ignorant questions and she shared brilliant answers Then we became book partners in a campus ministry effort that worked through the book, Welcoming Justice, by Charles Marsh and John Perkins. I found the book insightful and helpful. Kimberly didn’t care for it. We met for lunch at Le Pain Quotidien, a French bakery-restaurant in Calabasas, on multiple occasions in early 2018 where I slowly caught on to how Kimberly received the book from her lived experience. Each time we met someone would recognize her and sometimes ask for a picture.
Did I mention that Kimberly was also a movie star? I had no idea when we first interacted, but this later discovery made this special human being even more fascinating.
I’m sure it was our good friend, Google, that shared the news with me when I first wondered about this person that called my sermon on the carpet. At our first Calabasas lunch she was so embarrassed when I told her that my wife was a major fan of her portrayal of Dr. Belinda Brown when she starred alongside Walton Goggins and Danny McBride on the somewhat (okay, more than somewhat) raunchy HBO comedy, Vice Principals. But she was so much more than a brilliant actor. There was a depth and a breadth to her life and an enormous intellect that I was privileged to access. Kimberly grew up in Houston and later received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and then an MSW from the University of Chicago before launching a successful career on stage and screen. In my eyes she was larger than life.
I sense a mischievous smile when I remember that I eventually got to turn the mirror around and invite Kimberly to face challenges, too. I invited Kimberly to lead an adult Bible class in beautiful Stauffer Chapel in the summer of 2018 in a series on our personal “cloud of witnesses,” and the thought of bucking the restrictive male-only posture of our shared faith tradition forced her to reach for some courage of her own. But she did it, and the stories of those that shaped her life trajectory were incredible. I even convinced her to share her story in front of the whole church in a worship gathering that September, which just about blew her mind but gave me the greatest joy!
I learned that Kimberly died on Friday. I do not know the details, but I am heartbroken.
I will never forget the awkward nature of our initial contact, but more importantly, I will never forget the deep friendship that developed in such a short time. Kimberly welcomed me into her story and shared physical health challenges that she battled for decades. She invited me to sit with her mother at Cedars Sinai just one year after our initial emails during a concerning procedure that turned out well, just as we had prayed, which proved that we had traveled a long way from suffering through an emotionally manipulative and tepid sermon. Prior to the procedure, Kimberly wrote to me of her gratitude “that God knitted this relationship for such a time as this” and that, “I didn’t see it coming, but God knew I would need a community.” When I announced my move to Nashville a few months later in the spring of 2019, it is crazy to sift through our email correspondence to see how our awkward initial exchange had grown so that we felt such deep loss for miles to separate our friendship.
Just prior to our move to Nashville, Kimberly starred in a play at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles titled, Black Super Hero Magic Mama. Appropriate, of course. Kimberly secured two premium tickets, and Jody and I felt so special to sit in the audience and watch our new friend, the star of the show. The movie premiere for Five Feet Apart, which Kimberly starred in as well, also occurred that night, and since she couldn’t be in two places at the same time, a limo was arranged to whisk her to the premiere afterparty at a Hollywood club after the play, and she invited us along for the experience. I hope you can picture my wife and I, a couple of actual Beverly Hillbillies, stepping out of the limo to the flashing cameras and entering the strobe-lit club where Kimberly introduced us to celebrities such as Cole Sprouse, a co-star, and Justin Baldoni, the director.
I think of that night in March of 2019, the last time I saw her in person and “hugged her neck” (as she would say), as I might think of an appropriately spectacular ending of a fireworks display. I knew that we were moving away from one another quite literally, but I had no hint of finality.
Our email correspondence soon became fewer and farther between, but a couple of years later we had one brief opportunity to reconnect. By that time we had all encountered the murder of George Floyd and the Covid pandemic, and I had moved from Nashville to work at a small college in Illinois. When our volleyball coach at the college planned a fundraiser for cystic fibrosis, I remembered Kimberly’s movie, Five Feet Apart, which was a beautiful love story of two young people with cystic fibrosis who were not allowed to be within five feet of one another (ironically, a movie released a couple of years before “six feet apart” became a part of our national experience), and I reached out to see if Kimberly would meet our students in rural Illinois via Zoom. To which, as you might guess, she graciously agreed. We not only invited our volleyball student-athletes to hear Kimberly share what she learned about cystic fibrosis from her movie role, but also our theater students to hear of her acting career, and also our Black students to learn of her thoughts in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and her experiences as a Black woman navigating a career in the United States. As expected, Kimberly was gracious with her time, and profound, and hilarious, and inspiring, and unforgettable.
Jody and I stayed afterward, and that post-Zoom conversation was the last time we spoke and shared the love of our friendship.
In the summer of 2023, Jody and I unexpectedly moved back to Malibu. We thought we might be back in California forever, and Kimberly was one of the first that I emailed. Not long after we arrived, she responded that “[y]ou know I’ll make some time to see you” and that she looked forward to reconnecting. I responded with my new cell number, and that turned out to be our final exchange. We both got busy, and California turned out to be just a bonus year for us that led to a move to our new home in Wisconsin, and my regrets are now deep. I knew that Kimberly’s life remained full without regular installations of our friendship, but it never occurred to me that she might move on from this life so soon. And I wish I had been there for her in the end.
I have been too rattled to think clearly, but I have been trying to think clearly so that I can do honor to the lessons I learned from Kimberly Hebert. I kept our correspondence, and I have been sifting through it since I learned such sad news this weekend, and one lesson I have remembered is found within these words that she shared when we were praying for her health seven years ago: “Again, despite what we are going through, God has not abandoned us. He is always right there with us, even unto the end of the ages.” There is comfort in those words, and my hope remains that her words are true.
Further, as I reread the challenges in her initial outreach to a preacher she did not know, I am emboldened to remember the challenge to my humanity and my personal courage in a culture that seems hell-bent on regressing instead of progressing. She wrote, “A revisionist approach to history is dangerous, particularly when inserted into our religious arena. If you want to challenge the body to be self-reflective in this area, there has to be courage to tell the whole story in truth and love.” Now, more than ever, I want to do better. I want to tell the whole story. I want to tell the truth. I want to tell it in love.
Kimberly’s salutations in our friendship correspondence were the words: Big Love, Kimberly. That is how I remember her today. A special person who loved big.
It was an incredible honor that she loved me in spite of everything that conspired against it, and it is intimidating as hell to remember the courage she challenged me to live with from the very start. May she rest in peace and power, and may I live with greater “courage to tell the whole story in truth and love.”
Farewell, my friend. As the curtain falls and the credits roll, know that I am moved to stand and applaud your extraordinary performance.
I find it especially important in dark and troubled times to closely monitor personal emotions, and we seem to live in dark and troubled times. This came to mind as I drove to the office before eight o’clock on this Sunday morning. My wife is out of town, so I felt justified putting in early Sunday work hours, but such behavior indicates that my emotions could get out of whack.
But it was sixty-three degrees on a lovely morning, and I lowered the window to feel the cool breeze while listening to a station that features soothing acoustic music. And as I drove past farmland I was surprised to see several normally-stationary horses galloping together on a gentle morning run. And then I rounded a curve and noticed that the self-serve produce stand is now decorated with pumpkins and flowers on this first day of autumn. And I sensed in a powerful form the intoxicating feeling of peace.
There was more.
A little farther along, I met an older woman riding her bike on the lonely back roads. We have passed one another on several mornings and now wave with smiles as if we are dear friends, which we did with even more enthusiasm this morning. I then turned toward the office and noticed my friend, Kelly, out walking her dog, which led to another wave and another smile. And as if the world was conspiring for my good, I then noticed a wonderful student, Emma, walking across campus on a Sunday morning, and I stuck my arm out the window with another wave and smile.
And for a moment, if I didn’t know better, I sensed every reason in the world to be happy.
David Brooks published a column in The New York Times three days ago titled, “The Era of Dark Passions.” I surely do not agree with David Brooks on many things, but I typically benefit from reading his thoughts, and I especially appreciated that particular opinion piece. Brooks shared his belief that “something awful has been unleashed” in our current times and that “[e]ven before the Charlie Kirk assassination it was obvious that the dark passions now pervade the American psyche, and thus American politics.” Brooks identified dark passions as Anger, Hatred, Resentment, Fear, and the Urge to Dominate, and he distributed blame for stirring dark passions for personal benefit to his own industry, the media, and to both sides of the political aisle. Brooks then posed the question:
Why does politics feel so different now than in times past? My short answer is that over these years, demagogues in politics, in the media and online have exploited common feelings of humiliation to arouse dark passions, and those dark passions are dehumanizing our culture and undermining liberal democracy. My intuition is that we’re only at the beginning of this spiral, and that it will only get worse.
With that cheery outlook, what is there to do? Well, for starters, Brooks begins:
First, let me tell you how not to reverse it. There is a tendency in these circumstances to think that the other side is so awful that we need a monster on our side to beat it. That’s the decision Republicans made in nominating Trump. Democrats are moving in that direction too. Back in 2016 Michelle Obama asserted that Democrats to go high when Republicans go low, but the vibe quickly shifted. As former Attorney General Eric Holder put it in 2018: “When they go low, we kick ’em. That’s what this new Democratic Party is about.” If Republicans soil our democracy with extreme gerrymandering in Texas, Gavin Newsom and the Democrats will soil our democracy in California. The problem with fighting fire with fire is that you’re throwing yourself into the cesspool of dark passions. Do we really think we won’t be corrupted by them? Do we really think the path to victory lies in becoming morally indistinguishable from Trump? Do we really think democracy will survive? Surveys consistently show that most Americans are exhausted by this moral race to the bottom and want an alternative; do we not trust the American people?
Brooks then advises as “the most effective way to fight dark passions”…
History provides clear examples of how to halt the dark passion doom loop. It starts when a leader, or a group of people, who have every right to feel humiliated, who have every right to resort to the dark motivations, decide to interrupt the process. They simply refuse to be swallowed by the bitterness, and they work — laboriously over years or decades — to cultivate the bright passions in themselves — to be motivated by hope, care and some brighter vision of the good, and to show those passions to others, especially their enemies.Vaclav Havel did this. Abraham Lincoln did this in his second Inaugural Address. Alfred Dreyfus did this after his false conviction and Viktor Frankl did this after the Holocaust. You may believe Jesus is the messiah or not, but what gives his life moral grandeur was his ability to meet hatred with love. These leaders displayed astounding forbearance. They did not seek payback and revenge.Obviously, Martin Luther King Jr. comes to mind: “To our most bitter opponents we say: We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you.”
You might not be surprised that this resonates with me given my latest blog post published a few days prior to Brooks’s column. But it especially came to mind this morning on a lovely ride into work. I place no value on being unrealistic or ignoring the obvious, but I place great value on noticing the good and living with hope, for what is the future without hope?
I guess what I’m saying is that I unexpectedly caught a glimpse of the bright passions on a drive to work this morning, and I am now extra inspired to resist the forces that push the dark passions and choose to cultivate the bright passions more and more instead. As David Brooks concluded his recent column:
The dark passions look backward toward some wrong committed in the past and render people hardhearted. The bright passions look forward toward some better life and render people tough-minded but tenderhearted.
May we look forward toward some better life as tough-minded and tenderhearted people.
At the beginning of David Foster Wallace’s famed commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005, two young fish encounter an older fish as they are swimming along, and the older fish says to them in passing, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” As they swim on, one of the young fish eventually looks at the other and asks, “What the hell is water?”
The profundity of Wallace’s illustration has many applications, but I’m thinking today of how we swim in a culture of violence.
At almost the exact same time on Wednesday and hundreds of miles apart, two acts of violence occurred in school settings: a 16-year-old with reportedly anti-Semitic and white supremacist views murdered two high school students before taking his own life, and a 22-year-old with reportedly anti-fascist views murdered an enormously popular politically-conservative speaker on a college campus. And both happened on the day before the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The confluence of these terrible tragedies produced a flood of emotion, naturally, and many in their grief offered expressions like “this is not who we are” and “how did we get here” and “who have we become.” Sadly, my thoughts turned to Wallace’s little parable.
I am (always saddened but) no longer surprised by acts of violence, although I am often surprised when others are surprised by acts of violence. We live in a culture of violence, and I’m not talking about the United States of America (only), and I’m not talking about something that has occurred in the past few years, or even in our lifetimes. I believe that humanity itself, at least human civilization as we understand it, has historically and continually believed at its core that violence can make things better, that violence solves problems, that violence produces justice. We condemn certain acts of violence and condone (sometimes celebrate) others as good, and as a result, violence is as ubiquitous to our lives as water is to a fish.
Governments seek the death penalty under the banner of justice. Nations go to war under the banner of justice. Cartoons and movies and television series create heroes who beat the hell out of villains and in so doing make the world a better place. Logically, while we (can and should and do) condemn the actions of abusers and assassins and terrorists, it should not surprise us when others perform terrible, violent acts that they believe will somehow make something better, too. This is water, as Wallace might say.
Theologian Walter Wink called this “the myth of redemptive violence” and claims that this really is who we are, at least in the sense that this concept is the water in which we swim unaware.
I was a pastor in my early thirties when the 9/11 attacks shocked our nation. At the time, my job was to think deeply about Christianity and translate that into the life of a church. I recall that I quickly became troubled by the natural (and national) response to the tragedy. To be specific, I had understood that my faith tradition looked at war as a terrible event, although for many the just war theory stood as a reluctant option that was developed in an attempt to wrestle with the moral challenges with classic pacifism. All that went out the window quickly when our nation was attacked, and shortly, even preemptive attacks on nations unaffiliated with the attacks seemed justified by large swaths of Christians regardless of the wisdom of centuries of church teachings.
Wink clarified for me at the time that a belief that “violence is both necessary and effective for resolving conflict and achieving justice” may be a far deeper value for many who claim Christianity than Jesus’s call to “love your enemies.” Wink went so far as to claim that “[i]t, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is the dominant religion in our society today.” I recommend his book “The Powers That Be” if you truly want to wrestle with his thoughts and address the “what-ifs” that probably come to mind first (i.e., What if someone breaks into your house to threaten your family? What if nobody stands up to Hitler?). Those are valid questions, and Wink takes them on, but that is not my point today. Instead, I simply point toward the ocean that we swim in together. Violence is an ugly word that we condemn in times of tragedy, yet violence undergirds and defines our culture, and we should at least be aware.
The diagnosis runs deep, and the prognosis is not encouraging, but after decades of wrestling I have adopted an approach to life that does not include despair. While I personally support pathways leading to fewer dangerous weapons instead of more, and while I long for vast improvements in mental health care, neither strike at the root of the redemptive violence mindset. So, what to do?
My choice is simply to reject violence in all its forms, including those popularly conceived of as redemptive. I choose, if you will pardon the metaphor, to attempt to live as a fish out of water.
How to do that is ridiculously complicated, but at least the why is not. Why I choose to pursue a path that rejects all forms of violence is because the ocean I would like to swim in is one where every human being is imbued with dignity and respect and worthy of love. With that perspective, violence is no longer an option because violence is inconceivable toward someone that you truly love.
I know. When someone told me I live in fantasy land, I nearly fell off my unicorn. But I’m not talking love in the silly sentimental sense. I’m talking love in all its messiness. The sort of love that will do the hard work of creative resistance, but never attack or demean or destroy. How can you attack someone you love?
This is how I still claim to be a Christian, despite myriad reasons to disassociate based on popular conceptions of what that means. I believe that indiscriminate love, which includes your worst enemies, is the heart of Jesus’s message, and I am bought in. I cannot imagine that such a radical thought would ever be popular, but I can imagine what it would be like if it were, and that is enough for me.
I recently experienced the whiplash of traveling from the serenity of rural Wisconsin to the frenetic pace of Midtown Manhattan and found myself standing in Grand Central Terminal imagining De Niro and Grodin in Midnight Run and marveling at the fact that I was one of around 750,000 people that would pass through that day. It cost me ten bucks to travel from there to the JFK airport, which is basically a miracle.
My trip to NYC was for a conference on higher education thanks to my dear friend, Novita, whose technology group hosted the event. Conference attendees were mostly tech leaders at colleges and universities alongside vendors from the tech industry, and you might not be surprised that a major topic of conversation was “not” the trains at Grand Central. No, Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) was the topic de jour.
My primary relationship with AI had been jokes about how typing Capital A, Capital I (for Artificial Intelligence) in many typical fonts looks exactly like Capital A, lowercase l (for my name, Al), leading to all sorts of fun headlines for me personally, like “How Al Is Changing the Music Business,” and “Stop Talking About Al.” When it comes to new technology, I am intentionally a late adopter. I recognize that the world changes and that I must adapt to remain engaged, but I am critical of our collective tendency to jump at the new and shiny without thinking, so I choose to arrive fashionably late to the party.
But the conference conversations were timely for me as I reluctantly board the AI train. I heard multiple people quote a leader of the tech giant, NVIDIA, who reportedly said, “No, AI is not going to take your job. Someone who knows AI is going to take your job.” That will catch your attention (although it is still funny if you read that inserting my name instead). And I was struck by a side conversation where a couple of high tech leaders said that the very developers of AI are shocked by the speed of its development. That is actually frightening.
My perspective is that as with most things AI is neutral on its face with both good and bad potential. And yet I also identify with the camp that meets this particular technology with great apprehension. I should explain my perspective on the latter.
I feel like a broken record referring to Jacques Ellul and his prophetic 1954 book, The Technological Society, as much as I do, but Ellul’s warning about “ever-increasing means” toward “carelessly-examined ends” seems on steroids when it comes to AI. Not only are the means much more powerful and increasing much more rapidly than ever before, but also the conversation on ends is nonexistent, at least to my knowledge. It is my understanding that the developers aren’t even sure where the technology is headed, much less is our society engaging thoughtful conversations on where society is going to arrive given its current trajectory.
If it helps, I don’t just repeatedly refer to Ellul; I also refer to Jim Collins’s classic book, Good to Great, over and over and over. Good to Great examined companies that made the leap referred to in its title and shared lessons on how that occurred. I recently made a connection between the book and the AI Revolution. In Good to Great, Collins coined the term “Hedgehog Concept” and described it as identifying the one thing in the world that your business can do the very best and then described the “Flywheel Effect” as staying laser-focused on that one thing until the momentum builds to that breakthrough moment for greatness. Important stuff, but I had almost forgotten that Collins had a section on technology, too, and I had almost forgotten because he made the crucial observation that technology should never be the point; instead, technology should at most be a tool that accelerates your laser-focused work on the one thing that is the most important for your business.
This is ridiculously important right now, I believe. While I am fully convinced that society as a whole will not engage a conversation on desired outcomes, maybe you and I in our respective spheres of influence can fight the powerful head winds against us to determine with specificity sufficient for clarity on what we want our lives to look like someday (i.e., the ends) and then with desperation cling to that destination. If AI/tech can be useful to accelerate our journey to our worthy goals, then by all “means” (ha!), use it. But if not, do not get sucked into its powerful and seductive vortex.
I have long heard the saying that the ends do not justify the means, and that’s true in communicating that immoral or unethical behavior is still wrong even if it produces something good. But what I am trying to communicate today is that tenaciously establishing the ends first will help illuminate the means and allow you to banish all unhelpful distractions to the shadows. Put another way, establishing noble ends first illuminates the means that are worthy tools for achieving the noble cause.
Okay, that doesn’t have the ring of a future cliche to it, but I believe it reduces the likelihood that a cyborg devours our souls for lunch someday.
The word “hero” rarely fits those you actually spend time with up close, but I use it often to describe Gene Logan. I have told Gene Logan stories to people all around the world.
Gene was somehow both tender hearted and tough as nails, and I loved and respected him deeply. At many times in my life, I made intentional decisions because I thought it was what Gene would do. I think they call that sort of person a role model. When it comes to Gene, I prefer hero.
Gene died yesterday. Although separated by miles and years, I feel the loss deep in my soul.
There are many stories, but the most dramatic come from our shared leadership experience in response to Hurricane Katrina twenty years ago. To me, Gene’s leadership was legendary, and I suspect the historic element of that natural disaster is why I associate Gene with the heroic.
It was Gene who said “let’s go” just hours after the worst of the storm had passed, and I followed him in the dark with a flashlight, defying curfew, climbing over rubble, smelling and hearing the gas from the ruptured main, searching for one of our church widows who had chosen to ride out the storm at home.
But the story that I have told the most, and the one that will forever be my living definition of leadership is something that he did unannounced, which was his leadership style. So many of us in our church community lost our homes, but Gene did not. His home was not far from our church’s building, which was our relief headquarters, and for those first few weeks after the devastation those of us who were freshly homeless bedded down on the floor each night alongside incredible volunteers who continually came to our rescue. One night I noticed that Gene was sleeping on the floor with the rest of us, too, and it occurred to me that not only did Gene have a perfectly fine bed a few blocks away, but he also had a bad back. If you knew Gene you would know that this is not the sort of observation that you share directly with him, so I went to his wife, Eileen, and wondered what he was thinking. Eileen said, “Oh, he said that he would not sleep in his bed until everyone in the church had a bed to sleep on.”
I get emotional thinking about that every time, but especially today. If ever a single action defined a person — defined a leader — defined a hero — that is it for me. How wonderful to have someone in the world that will be with you in your worst moments and refuses to leave your side until your worst moments have passed.
And how sad that the someone who showed that to me isn’t with us anymore. It is his turn to rest, although I can’t see that making him happy, but I trust that somehow his extraordinary love will be rewarded on whatever is on the other side of this life.
“I’m the new dean of students at Ripon College” is a statement that has not been uttered in a quarter century, but I have permission to say it today. Yesterday, my friend and mentor, Chris Ogle, retired after an extraordinary forty-five year career (including the last twenty-five as dean of students), and it is an indescribable honor to be entrusted with the opportunity to carry on his legacy.
Although I have only worked at Ripon College for a single year and am brand new to this particular role, I have served as dean of students at three previous institutions in three separate states, so it is familiar work. And the succession challenge is somewhat familiar, too: two of the three administrators that I succeeded went on in time to be college presidents, so I know what it feels like to crawl under the microscope. But I confess that following Dean Ogle feels like uncharted territory.
Chris Ogle graduated from Ripon College in 1980 (including and concluding a hall-of-fame athletics career) and immediately transitioned to a full time staff role. So if you do the math and include his four years as a college student, yesterday ended forty-nine consecutive years on campus for this legend.
The longevity itself is extraordinary, but the person is even better. To know him is to love him. Nobody loves students more. Nobody is more disarming. Nobody tells better stories. Nobody has more historical knowledge. Nobody has more wisdom. Nobody is more beloved. Although he is not on social media, it was no surprise that the press release regarding his retirement generated hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of well-wishes and special comments of how he changed lives and inspired others. The press release also shared that the rotunda in the heart of campus would be named in his honor, so fitting for someone who represents the very heart of campus.
Imagine following someone like that.
Serving as the dean of students at a college or university is a unique experience. My wife once tried to explain the role by comparing it to a high school principal but at the college level. That’s a pretty solid analogy, but there is nothing exactly like it. You get to walk alongside so many impressive human beings at such a special time in their lives, which includes incredible high moments and devastating low moments. It is simultaneously beautiful and heavy work, and I absolutely love it. I know that Dean Ogle did, too.
I am prepared to tell my team and everyone that cares to know that the bad news is that there is only one Chris Ogle. The potential good news, however, I am honored to say, is that working together this past year revealed that we share a common vision for student affairs work, so I don’t think that there will be whiplash when it comes to leadership style. Regardless, a legend has retired, and we will do our best to carry on the work.
Today somehow feels both momentous and natural, mixed feelings in the very best of ways, leaving me in a good place both emotionally and quite literally. In fact, while knowing fully that I have impossible shoes to fill, in a certain sense it feels like my complicated past has somehow culminated in this special challenge at this special time in this special place.
So here we go. If you see me walking around campus wearing clown shoes, remember that I’m the clown; it’s just the size of the shoes that I am learning to navigate.
I published an article in The Smart Set in early 2024 titled, To Binge or Not to Binge: That Is the Question, and my friend, Sandi, responded by suggesting a couple of books by Michael Easter. Not wanting to binge (ha! not really, I have no excuse), I waited a year before finally accepting her excellent advice and recently finished, The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self. Now, I wish I would have read it thirty years ago (but since he published it in 2021, I can’t really beat myself up).
The opening lines inside the dust jacket frame the question that Easter seeks to answer: “In many ways, we’re more comfortable than ever before. But could our sheltered, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged lives actually be the leading cause of many of our most urgent physical and mental health issues?”
I hate to spoil it for you, but the answer according to the author’s research is Yes. In the long arc of human history, no generation has had more tools in the Comfortable Toolkit than ours — and yet we don’t seem to be better off for it.
So, what to do? How do we live balancing a natural desire for (and immense pressure to experience) constant comfort with a realization that this is not in our best interest? Well, if you are open to further spoiling, Easter intersperses five practical themes along the way:
Rule one: Make it really hard. Rule two: Don’t die.
Rediscover boredom. Ideally outside. For minutes, hours, and days.
Feel hunger.
Think about your death every day.
Carry the load.
I’ll make you work for it and read the actual book to get all the good stuff about each suggestion, but today I will share what is bouncing around my head and heart about each one:
MAKE IT REALLY HARD. DON’T DIE: I prefer the easy/fast/pleasant way. Like Goldilocks, I want everything “juuuust right.” From this moment on, I will remind myself that nothing worthwhile comes easy and choose to make “hard” a habit. Attempt things that scare me. Not succumb to cowardice. Embrace oppressive heat. Experience bitter cold. Test my limits. Chase the impossible. I want to keep at least one (non-fatal but crazy-challenging) life goal in the hopper at all times.
REDISCOVER BOREDOM. IDEALLY OUTSIDE. FOR MINUTES, HOURS, AND DAYS. I prefer entertainment. I like to keep busy. From this moment on, although the smartphone, laptop, and television are necessary evils in my world, I will learn to accept that necessary is the adjective and evil is the noun. I will turn the television off. Leave my phone in another room. Spend more time outside. Spend more time in silence. Go for long walks. Practice a Sabbath. I want to incorporate intentional boredom into my daily, weekly, and annual routines.
FEEL HUNGER. I prefer not hurting. I like the feeling of satisfaction. From this moment on, I will remember that there is also a positive definition for being “hungry.” I will grasp the difference between want and need. Learn to wait. Avoid the unnecessary snack. Practice portion control. Refuse the impulse purchase. Do without. I want to master the ability to feel hunger without resorting to instant gratification.
THINK ABOUT YOUR DEATH EVERY DAY. I prefer life over death. I like to revel in the illusion that I can emerge from all things unscathed. From this moment on, I will remember that I am a speck in a vast universe and not the center of it. I will acknowledge my mortality. Value each and every day. Not waste time. Live with intention. Worry less. Smile more. I want to (finally) learn how to appreciate and live in the present moment.
CARRY THE LOAD. I prefer traveling light. I avoid walking with a heavy load. From this moment on, I will emphasize getting strong. I will no longer make excuses to avoid strength training. I will challenge neglected muscles. Embrace pain. Experience soreness. Overcome weakness. Do my part. I want to be the best version of myself so that I can pull my weight.
I need to face the uncomfortable truth that being uncomfortable is necessary for a healthy life and that avoiding discomfort is, in fact, counterproductive. Accepting that truth will not be easy, but it will be worth it.
As Albert Camus once said, “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, there’s something stronger — something better, pushing right back.”
Sitting on a cliffside bench on the Maah Daah Hey Trail overlooking the Little Missouri River and the North Dakota Badlands
I am never short on plans and ideas, so when my wife mentioned that our youngest daughter invited her to fly to Europe to hike the last seventy miles of the famed Camino de Santiago with her this summer, I considered various options for my own solo vacation. Several came to mind, and when I asked my wife which sounded least interesting to her, she chose the road trip through North Dakota and into Eastern Montana. So that became my summer vacation. Jody wasn’t sad to miss out.
If you wonder, a road trip across North Dakota and into Eastern Montana allowed me to cover states number forty-four and forty-five on my bingo card, and it also provided the opportunity to add a few epic runs (and photos) to my growing collection, which included the Lake Wobegon Trail (Minnesota), Maah Daah Hey Trail (North Dakota), and Makoshika State Park (Montana). Adding states and running trails were the reasons I had the trip in the hopper.
But it turned out to provide much more.
It also introduced me to the North Dakota Badlands, which is a giant miss for globetrotters unaware of such a breathtaking place. And I discovered the Medora Musical, an outdoor production that is both fun (e.g., wonderfully talented performers in a spectacular setting) and strange (e.g., cheesy mascots and regular voice-overs from the deceased creators of the show sixty years ago) and simply too much to truly put into words. And it led me through the Theodore Roosevelt National Park where I encountered majestic bison wandering down the highway, a zillion adorable (maybe?) little chirping prairie dogs, and stunning wild horses posing on hillside pedestals.
I crossed the Mississippi River, the Missouri River, and the Yellowstone River. And I stayed in sketchy hotels and dined in country restaurants and ate raspberry sorbet in front of a tiny new ice cream place that can never make enough money to survive even though I tipped well. It was my own version of a special two-thousand mile roundtrip.
It also provided a moment far less magnificent but much more meaningful.
On the first leg of my journey home, I stopped for lunch at a Chick-fil-A in Bismarck, North Dakota. Other than the chicken, of course, there is nothing very special about stopping for lunch at a Chick-fil-A in Bismarck, North Dakota. But as I sat there alone in a crowded restaurant, I had an unexpected personal moment. For some reason, I thought of little me growing up in Arkansas, who even with quite the imagination never pictured that I would someday be eating a fast food lunch in Bismarck, North Dakota. I’m not sure I can adequately describe how that realization struck me.
I get that you might find it sad, this man in his mid-fifties eating his grilled chicken tenders alone. Others there probably felt that way about it, too. I, on the other hand, found it deeply satisfying. Of all my own personal critiques of my life, one of my favorite parts is the large number of unexpected places that my journey has led. That was the sweet thought that occurred to me there: Who would have thought that I would ever be in that place at that moment? I know that I didn’t, and that is exactly what made it special.
I don’t know, maybe that’s just a definition of wanderlust. Regardless, that moment made the entire trip worthwhile.
Starting to Look Up 