Missing History

Posted on March 18, 2026 | 1 comment

“At a time when some believe we should avoid any discourse about our history that is uncomfortable, we believe that an honest engagement with our past is essential if we are to create a healthy and just future.” – Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director, Equal Justice Initiative

I asked ChatGPT where the courthouse stood in Kennett, Missouri, during the 1920s, and it told me that it was “located in the center of the town square, essentially where the courthouse sits today.” It also shared that Dunklin County built the two-story structure in 1892 and that subsequent courthouses were built on the same location.

Why do I care?

My dad grew up in Kennett, Missouri. My dad was born in 1920, and when I was growing up just over the state line in Arkansas in the ’70s and ’80s he shared a gruesome story of a lynching that took place on the courthouse lawn when he was a child. Children were not supposed to attend, as he remembered it, but he was a precocious child who wiggled his way to the front to see what everyone was there to witness. My dad remembered that a Black man was lynched that day for allegedly raping a white woman and was asked if he had any final words. My dad remembered the man’s response: “Well, I didn’t do it, but I know that doesn’t matter to you all.”

My dad never forgot the sight. And I never forgot the story.

Why do I share such a horrible story today?

I recently returned from taking students and a fellow professor on a civil rights trip to Alabama. This is my third consecutive March to accompany students on such a trip, which includes time in both Montgomery and Selma, and one of the sites we visit each year is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It is a haunting, gut-wrenching place to visit. Bryan Stevenson, and his organization, Equal Justice Initiative, built the National Memorial as “the nation’s first comprehensive memorial dedicated to the legacy of Black Americans who were enslaved, terrorized by lynching, humiliated by racial segregation, and presumed guilty and dangerous.” The Memorial remembers the “[m]ore than 4,400 Black people killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950” by engraving their names “on more than 800 corten steel monuments — one for each county where a racial terror lynching took place.”

I share the shameful story from my father because I am gutted each year when I see that Dunklin County, Missouri, is not represented. On such hallowed ground that does such beautiful and important work, the omission is scandalous.

And how many more are missing? What actually affects me more personally each year is that my native county — Greene County, Arkansas — is also missing. It should undoubtedly be there, too.

I have conflicting emotions about my hometown, Paragould, Arkansas. I cannot help but love it because of how it loved me. I was born in its hospital in 1970 and listed it as my permanent address until I moved away in 1999, so when I remember the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s it was my home. Over the three decades I lived there I was honored and respected and valued, all of which continues through the first quarter of the next century since I moved away.

It called itself The Friendly City, and that was my personal experience. Its people taught and cared for me, but I loved other things about it, too: from fried pies at Batten’s to a chip and dip at Taco Hut; from reading Hardy Boys at the Greene County Library to summers full of ping-pong and basketball across the street at the old Community Center; from cruising Kingshighway on weekends to watching a movie at the Plaza Twin Cinema; from learning the old hymns in its churches to listening to the curfew whistle late at night; and from flipping baby burgers at Dairy Queen to learning how serious high school basketball action looks and feels—I have so many good memories.

But there are terrible memories, too, when I choose to remember. I still remember awful, shameful jokes that I learned as a child—an entire category devoted to a particular racial epithet—and I wish so badly that I could say that I never laughed. And I truly wish, and I wish this with everything within me, and I am sick to my stomach to admit it, but I truly wish that I never repeated the jokes. But I did. I block it from my memory as much as I can, but I know it is true.

My hometown did not sit me down and teach me white supremacy overtly, but I learned it growing up there nonetheless, and it took me far too long to unlearn it. And I’m still unlearning.

My hometown did not teach me its full history. I figured out from living there for thirty years that unlike many towns in the nearby Mississippi Delta, even Jonesboro just twenty miles away, it was for all intents and purposes 100% white—and that it was that way for a reason. Its website tells of its incorporation in 1883 and that it “took on a cosmopolitan appearance” during the early 1900s. But this leaves out an awful lot, and I say “awful” quite intentionally. No one ever told me about the Paragould Race Riots, and I am ashamed to confess that I came back to town after college as a young history teacher entirely ignorant of such racial terror in my own hometown, so I did not share the stories either. I probably suspected them and am shamefully complicit in that I never asked.

I learned of the Paragould Race Riots in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas and learned that Paragould received national attention in 1899 when the Arkansas Gazette reported that “a self-appointed vigilance committee” told the significant number of free Black citizens of Paragould “to leave the city of Paragould, bag and baggage, on or before next Saturday night, and never return again, for any purpose whatsoever, or suffer the consequences of staying.”

Here are some of the headlines from the turn of that century:

“Attacked a Church.” Daily Soliphone, April 14, 1902, p. 1.

“Disgraceful If True.” Arkansas Gazette, April 21, 1888, p. 4.

“Negroes Are Leaving Paragould by Hundreds.” Arkansas Gazette, August 8, 1899, p. 1.

“Negroes Ordered out of Paragould.” Arkansas Gazette, April 9, 1908, p. 1.

“Ordered to Leave the County.” Arkansas Gazette, November 1, 1892, p. 3.

“The Paragould Outrage.” Arkansas Gazette, April 27, 1888, p. 3.

“Paragould Whitecappers.” Arkansas Gazette, August 9, 1889, p. 4.

“Race War in Paragould.” Baxter Springs News (Baxter Springs, Kansas), August 12, 1899, p. 2.

“A Serious Race Riot.” Houston Daily Post, August 7, 1899, p. 3.

“Troops Not to Interfere.” St. Louis Republic, May 23, 1902, p. 2.

So I am sad when I read the website’s version that it “took on a cosmopolitan appearance” during the early 1900s.

In 1908, the Arkansas Gazette shared the article titled, “Negroes Ordered out of Paragould,” and reported that the remaining Black citizens of Paragould had their homes attacked by the self-named “Dirty Dozen” and were ordered to “leave town on pain of death.” By 1930, there were only twenty Black citizens in Paragould out of a population of 5,966. When I was born in 1970, there were fourteen Black citizens in Paragould out of a population of 10,639. To be candid, my memory is of zero Black citizens in Paragould for the thirty years I lived there.

I am certain that Greene County, Arkansas, should be called out in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

Also in Montgomery, Alabama, is another of the Equal Justice Initiative projects: the Legacy Museum. I am not an emotional person by nature, but my initial visit to the Legacy Museum moved me to tears. In one memorable instance, I stood at a wall filled with newspaper ads from freed slaves seeking reunification with their family members that they were separated from by slavery. In the bottom righthand corner I was shaken to read an ad posted in The Christian Recorder (Philadelphia, PA) on August 24, 1893:

INFORMATION WANTED –

Of my people: mother father, broth-

er and uncle. My mothers name

was Nancy Slater, my father Carlisle

Slator, and my brother name was

Peter Slater, and uncle Moses Slat-

er. We all lived on Main street,

Richmond, Va. My uncle had a

caste in the eye. Now I will give

a description of Carlisle my father,

he was very bright with blonde

hair, my mother was dark my

brother was dark and uncle was

dark. I was separated from them

just before the war and sold to a

man by the name of John A. Beale

in Alabama. So my name was

Pleasant Slater until I was sold and

now I go by the name of Pleasant

Beale. Any information concern-

ing there whereabouts will be gladly

received.

Address

Pleasant Beale

Paragould, Green, Co., Ark.

I do not know what happened to Pleasant Beale in Paragould, Arkansas, but when I read of what happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s, I can imagine.

I love my hometown, and out of love I want it to engage its past. It is just over 400 miles from Paragould to Montgomery and the various Legacy Sites that feel like they were built for me and the people of my hometown. It is painful to visit, but as an EJI attorney once told me and a group of law students, painful is different than harmful. And facing the truth, though often painful, is critical. As Maya Angelou wrote in On the Pulse of Morning: History, despite its wrenching pain, / Cannot be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not be lived again.

On my first visit to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, I suddenly had the strong need to tell someone that I am sorry. Two of my African-American colleagues were nearby, and I walked over to each, sheepishly, to let them know. Hard-wired into my psyche is to think that historic racial terror was not my fault. That it was forever ago. That I wasn’t there. But I suddenly knew, standing in the Memorial, far too late, and all too clear now, that I have so many reasons to be sorry. I am sorry for the jokes that I laughed at—and retold. I am sorry that I did not teach my students the history that they deserved to know. I am sorry that the ancestors of so many people were terrorized and tortured and murdered by my ancestors and that they never heard someone that looks like me say, I’m sorry. And I am sorry that saying I’m sorry feels like the very least I can do.

I hope to return to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and I will continue to hope that somehow and someday the missing history from Dunklin County, Missouri, and Greene County, Arkansas, will be represented there. Those who were victimized deserve to be recognized, and the actions of those who terrorized others deserve to be called out, too.

We live in interesting times. In addition to both ignoring history and missing history, you probably know that there is also an active move to erase history. I do not find this surprising, but it does call for resistance. Let us not forget. Let us acknowledge the truth of what happened in our collective history. As Bryan Stevenson shared, “an honest engagement with our past is essential if we are to create a healthy and just future.”

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Let Me Live Bravely

Posted on February 23, 2026 | 1 comment

I could not have told you that the song was titled, Tubthumping, nor did I know that the band was Chumbawamba, but as all good earworm songs do, if you simply say the phrase, “I get knocked down,” then by pure instinct I will start singing, “But I get up again / You’re never gonna keep me down.” And I will sing those three phrases over and over and over for days on end.

I watched America’s Funniest Home Videos last night, a show that has made good use of that particular tune on several occasions, and a child said the sentence “I get knocked down, but I get up again” into the microphone at an elementary school performance and then promptly walked back to the risers and tripped on the first step and face planted. (Yes, she got up again.)

Timing is everything.

Timing is everything with me as well. Early yesterday morning, I had a moment. I had decided that I would do my weekend run at the Green Lake Conference Center, a spectacular property featuring 900 acres of unspoiled beauty, and with a recent snow and ice storm I surmised that it might be particularly beautiful right now. And it was. It was also really cold, a wind chill of negative one to be exact, but that hasn’t stopped me from running just yet.

The main roads were mostly clear when I began my run, and the main roads were the path that I chose for the first mile. But I really wanted to get to a particular place in the woods where you can climb a small tower for breathtaking views of the lake, and I determined that the path to said tower was up a snow-covered road. So I left the mostly clear paved road, and on my very first step I went down hard. I don’t mind if you laugh picturing the scene, but it was a scary moment that could have ended so badly for me. For starters, “snow-covered” is a poor word choice: it was ice-covered, so the landing was hard. Further, I have proven to be quite breakable in my life, and my right leg went in a different direction than the rest of my body as I went down, and I tossed my phone and used my right wrist to brace for the fall.

There on the ice, alone, I first determined that I had not died, which was a good start, and I was fairly certain that nothing was broken, which was even better. I was, however, down on the ice in the middle of the woods in sub-zero temps, which is not the best of circumstances. And my right knee hurt, as did my right wrist, particularly my ring finger. I slowly got up, thankful that I could walk, and decided to walk the mile back to my car and call it a day.

However, although my right ring finger continued to hurt quite a bit (and turned out simply to be jammed), as I walked I realized that my knee wasn’t hurting that much. So I started to run again. And before I made it back to my car, I decided that I could run quite a bit more and started to explore the woods, more carefully this time. I saw a trail for a Woodland Cathedral and thought that sounded interesting, and in so doing discovered a snow-covered outdoor chapel in the middle of nowhere — nobody but me will ever know what that looked like on that beautiful morning. I was then excited to get my bearings enough to locate a road leading to the tower that I originally wanted to see, and before long I was up in the tower admiring breathtaking views.

By the time I finished, I got in a four-mile run after all that included vistas that are too incredible to describe. Later that night my body regretted it when my knee began throbbing in pain and my wrist decided to join the party. But to tell the truth, although my body objected, my mind and spirit cast the majority votes and decided not to regret it at all.

But there is more. Let me explain how a hard and scary fall on ice all alone in the woods can be an instance of “good timing.”

Rob Shaver was my star high school point guard in 1994. I was twenty-four, and he was eighteen, so even though I was technically his “coach,” we are basically the same age. Rob was an incredible athlete on the basketball floor as well as on the track, but he was also a great student, great on the stage, great fun, and a great conversation partner. Rob was filled with all sorts of talent and obviously headed for great things.

Unfortunately, Rob was also headed for cancer. Rob has spent the last two decades of his life battling stage four cancer. Several months ago a mutual friend shared the trailer of a documentary that REI produced on Rob’s life titled, The Life We Have, but I couldn’t figure out how to see the full film. Then late last week, several of Rob’s former classmates and teammates began sharing links to the documentary that is now available on YouTube. My wife and I watched it right away, and I quickly began spreading the word about this inspiring work of art.

In the film, Rob is willing to be so vulnerable with the world. So vulnerable. And it takes anyone about two seconds to see that Rob is an extraordinary human. The focus of the documentary is on Rob’s decision to pursue what he called a “modest” goal of running a mile every single day until he died. There is something about that statement that captures hearts: It is an act of resilience. Running a mile every day is a pretty good goal for anyone, but for someone with stage four cancer? Just to think it is inspiring, but to lace up the shoes, open the door, and hit the road? It is a refusal to surrender. It is getting knocked down, getting up again, and declaring that you won’t stay down.

I thought of Rob three days later when I was alone and facedown on the ice and wondering if I was going to be able to get up and walk. No, absolutely nothing like stage four cancer, but Rob and his extraordinary story made me consider how to respond when life knocks you down hard. And thanks to my inspirational old friend, I chose to get up and start running again, too.

In the snowy woods on Sunday morning, as I mentioned earlier, inspiration overcame reason and I decided to head down the path to something called the Woodland Cathedral. I didn’t know that to expect, but along the way I encountered signs featuring poetry written by someone named Jennie Adams during the Second World War. I read each entry, and I was particularly struck by an excerpt from one that she titled, Let Me Live Bravely. In that excerpt, the poet recognizes that life involves “Many darkened corners / Where pain and fear are known” and that “Life calls for sacrifice” before ending with the prayer: “As others lived and gave / Let me be brave.”

There is a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and don’t worry, I have been contemplating that distinction when it comes to running alone on icy trails in deep woods. But I can tell you that people are inspired by Rob’s story because there is no question that his life reflects bravery. I’m simply hoping to follow his lead when I, too, encounter darkened corners, pain and fear.

Let me be brave, too.

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Unexpected Smiles in Unfriendly Weather

Posted on January 24, 2026 | Leave a comment

One of my sisters moved from Arkansas to Canada in the 1980s, and I recall being astounded by tales of winter weather in the North, particularly that schools never canceled and that children still went outside for recess. We in Arkansas, on the other hand, built snow days into the annual calendar!

That was forty years ago, and I have lived in Wisconsin long enough now to hear from all sides that winters were far worse then. But I have not lived in Wisconsin long enough to know very much, so I watched with interest when the forecast for yesterday featured wind chill lows in the negative thirties, numbers that had not been experienced here in several years. Our workplace chose not to cancel classes in spite of the forecast; however, in response to an idea proposed by the student government, we did assemble several faculty and staff members to drive students between upper and lower campus throughout the day. So I spent the first few hours of my Friday driving my SUV and offering rides. I loved it.

Many students turned me down, I assume by some because they weren’t intimidated by the bitter cold, others possibly because they found it as creepy as it felt for me for an old dude to lower his window and offer a ride! But many said yes and were grateful and fun, and it was great spending unanticipated time with such wonderful students.

My favorite story may have been Rocco, a fantastic young man who is student teaching this semester. I saw him bundled up and walking alone on the far side of a set of residence halls, and he jumped at the offer of a ride even though he was only headed to the other side of the set of residence halls. It didn’t take long to drive to his front door, and I joked that I could keep driving in circles if he wanted to warm up more. He instantly took me up on the offer, so I drove slowly in circles and got caught up on his student teaching this semester and shared stories of mine from forever ago.

What an unexpected gift.

This brought back a specific set of Mississippi memories.

The Mississippi Gulf Coast sees a lot of rain. Not steady, Seattle rain. Occasional, torrential downpours. I was asked to lead a church on the Mississippi Gulf Coast at the turn of the century and had the honor of doing so for a decade. Our church’s building had an awning on its back side, but at the time that area was used for storage and inaccessible by car. So on stormy Sunday mornings, churchgoers were simply going to get wet. I don’t remember who suggested it, probably my hero, Gene, but someone suggested that we purchase a nice set of golf umbrellas for those bad weather days. I have such lovely memories of gloomy, yucky days out in the driving rain with good people like Gene, Herman, and Joel, standing at the car door of elderly widows or families with children, joking and laughing as we escorted them into the safety of the building.

I do not like driving rain, and I know that spending those precious minutes before conducting a worship service in the driving rain with an umbrella is not recommended. But I know that somehow, miraculously, those turned out to be my favorite Sundays.

All this has me thinking today as an actual winter storm sweeps across the nation and all sorts of metaphorical storms terrorize our world: When rough weather arrives in your neighborhood, whether literally or otherwise, I suggest that you lean into it and look around for how to give someone a hand. It might not affect the weather, but in my experience it has produced unexpected smiles along with a special and unforgettable feeling that is beyond my capacity to describe

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Peace and Love (more than a tie-dyed t-shirt)

Posted on January 18, 2026 | Leave a comment

“Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace . . . If this is to be achieved, [humanity] must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” – Martin Luther King (Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1964)

On the eve of the 2024 presidential election, I referred to a comment stating that the outcome of the election would say more about the American people than the campaigns themselves, and I believe that turned out to be accurate. The year since the subsequent inauguration has exposed disturbing collective values. I do not in any way believe that this administration invented revenge, aggression, and retaliation, but it has unapologetically modeled those human inclinations (e.g., Comey; Greenland; flipping off an autoworker; respectively).

The strange recent peace prize headlines serve as a poignant case study on this eve of the holiday that honors Dr. King.

In late 1964, King traveled to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. He opened his speech by making it clear that he accepted the award on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement, not himself, and then wondered why the award was given “to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.”1 His conclusion was that the award was, in fact, “a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.”

Later in King’s acceptance speech, in a passage that I feature at the beginning of this essay, he predicts that the world will eventually be forced to discover a way to live in peace, and that this elusive state will require a method of conflict resolution that “rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation” — three popular methods that you spot easily simply by watching the daily news. Creative nonviolence is King’s answer, of course, and if you find that intriguing, don’t miss his next line: “The foundation of such a method is love.”

I know that peace and love is a tie-dyed t-shirt, but here is what I also know: Revenge has not proven to be a reliable pathway to true peace. Neither has aggression. Nor has retaliation. And I know it is a Beatles song, but I truly believe that not only is love our deepest need, but it is also the foundation for any desire we have for a world where peace and justice exist.

I always try and regularly fail to look at politics objectively. I began my professional life over thirty years ago teaching courses like history and civics, which then morphed into full-time ministry where I wrestled with theological approaches to complicated issues. My meandering life later wandered through law school, which added new layers to my way of thinking. Eventually I assembled my own framework for interpreting the world, and although that framework remains malleable, once assembled it has more or less hovered in the same general neighborhood.

All that to say, the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday means more to me than a day off work (for some!) and a day to trot out one of his famous quotes. Instead, I identify with his fateful decision to adopt and promote creative nonviolence as the path to justice, and I arrived there through my admiration of Jesus, too.

It is incredibly difficult to love enemies. It is an outright radical concept, and it is practically impossible even to catch a glimpse of it on the national stage right now. And it does not surprise me that most find the concept ridiculous, if not repulsive. I just happen to believe, like Reverend King, that it is the secret sauce. More than a tie-dyed t-shirt, it is messy, painful, and can get a person killed. But, I believe, the secret sauce nonetheless.

So beyond the bizarre peace prize stories in recent headlines, for tomorrow’s holiday I look back to 1964 and say establish your own deeply-held interpretive framework for navigating this old world, but here’s a word for the framework espoused in Oslo by Reverend King that believes in the foundation of love for all people, even enemies. I have discovered that any love-inspired action that I achieve feels like a step in the right direction, and noticing even hints of that in our nation’s political discourse right now is a long shot.

  1. This posture, of course, is antithetical to an American president that said earlier this month, “I can’t think of anybody in history that should get the Nobel Prize more than me.” ↩︎

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2025: In the Books

Posted on December 30, 2025 | 1 comment

I read twenty-six books in 2025, half nonfiction and half fiction, which is my preferred proportions. It is redundant to say that I read incredibly life-changing books this year, redundant in the best of ways. Here is my list from 2025:

NONFICTION:

  1. Continental Reckoning by Elliott West (an incredible sweeping history of the American West written by my favorite college professor)
  2. Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson (a history of the short time between Lincoln’s election and the beginning of the American Civil War; a timely gift from our friend, Flo, given the current political unrest in our nation)
  3. Hope for Secondhand Suffering by Camille Block (a sweet gift from my friend, Jere, the proud father of the author; I learned more about my friend and his special love for his special son)
  4. Troublemakers by Gary Yerkey (a personal and important account of the shift in the civil rights movement following the march from Selma to Montgomery, written by a Ripon College alum that lived American history)
  5. How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith (a history of slavery in America; a powerful recommendation by my colleague, Jackie)
  6. Hacking College by Ned Scott Laff & Scott Carlson (a really important book that I didn’t know I needed as I began advising first-year college students)
  7. The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter (recommended years ago by my friend, Sandi, and wow, such an important book for me personally, and if I can be so bold, for the world today)
  8. Hail Mary: The Rise & Fall of the National Women’s Football League by Frankie de la Cretaz & Lyndsey D’Arcangelo (embarrassed not to have known of the NWFL but excited to add its story to my Sports Law course now!)
  9. Relationship-Rich Education by Peter Felten & Leo Lambert (loved the premise then gifted it to my buddy, Autumn, in honor of her master’s degree in higher education)
  10. Future Tense by Tracy Dennis-Tiwary (received this book at an NYC conference where the author was a featured speaker; on how anxiety can be good for you)
  11. Moncrief: My Journey to the NBA by Sidney Moncrief with Myra McLarey (because Sid made moving from Arkansas to Wisconsin cool)
  12. You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson (oh my goodness, incredible poetry that captured my whole heart)
  13. Run the Song by Ben Ratliff (combines running and music, but mostly music, and the music part was far above my understanding)

NOVELS:

  1. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (inspired to read this classic after visiting Monterey last Christmas)
  2. Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas (a powerful story and a good recommendation from my friend, Ji’Mya)
  3. Bloodchild by Octavia Butler (stumbled across this set of short stories; glad to discover Octavia Butler)
  4. The Hornet’s Nest by Jimmy Carter (didn’t love the book, but love (and miss) the author)
  5. 1984 by George Orwell (should have been titled 2025)
  6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (inspired to read even before the White House ballroom project and the government shutdown)
  7. Vineland by Thomas Pynchon (can you “not” love a book and still find it interesting? because I did with this bizarre novel, which also inspired the newly-released movie, One Battle After Another)
  8. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (so timely as we live in our own dystopian times)
  9. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (how many timely dystopian novels are there?!?)
  10. The Exchange by John Grisham (a sequel to The Firm; Grisham can always capture your attention)
  11. The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy (picked this up at a library used book sale because I always wanted to read the Ilyich short story; so glad that I did)
  12. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (had always heard of Robinson’s work but had never read her; Gilead turned out to be my favorite novel this year)
  13. The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry (this book had not been checked out of our college library since 1988; Berry never disappoints)

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Arkansas Dirt

Posted on December 27, 2025 | 3 comments

It’s just dirt.

Just regular old Arkansas

Dirt.

But on rare visits home

I am drawn to this particular

Patch like a fish to

Water.

Their names are there,

My Mom and my Dad.

Though they are not,

I go anyway

And against all logic

I speak to them there.

Sometimes I feel like a

Little boy,

Frightened

By a nightmare, seeking comfort

At their bedside in the dark.

Other times, I am a teenager

Checking in after cruising

West Kingshighway, an evening

Spent looking for love despite

Already being loved

Deeply.

Today, I am fifty-five years old

But am channeling the teenager

Checking in.

I say,

“I’m doing good.

We are good.

And happy.”

I even employ facial expressions

To be more convincing

And don’t even feel silly.

I tell them where we live now.

I tell them about their

Granddaughters.

It is a one-sided conversation but

I sense their smiles,

And then mine.

I don’t stay long.

I never do.

I know they aren’t there,

And that it’s just Arkansas

Dirt.

But to me it is the most fertile

Soil,

And my heart grows stronger

And fuller

Every time that I go.

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Can I Be Broccoli?

Posted on November 29, 2025 | 5 comments

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?

Am I Cigarettes? – YouTube

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.”

You’re Not Addicted to Content, You’re Starving for Information – YouTube

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.

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Embrace the Coming Winter

Posted on November 9, 2025 | 1 comment

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.

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Big Love

Posted on October 5, 2025 | 2 comments

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.

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Cultivate the Bright Passions

Posted on September 21, 2025 | Leave a comment

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.

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