Hope

Every now and then, I find out that people actually read my blog, and I am always surprised. I seem to break all of the rules of good blogging, such as, blog frequently, or blog regularly, or have a clear point. Honestly, I think that the main reason I blog as infrequently and irregularly as I do is because I generally blog for my own sake. That doesn't mean that I don't want people to read my blog, but rather that I write what I need to read and hear--I write what I am processing. 

In my last blog post I wrote about how I had lost a friend, and how I had recently experienced his presence again. One reader contacted me and from that conversation, I have heard a story that I want to tell to more people. 

Cameron Von St. James and his wife Heather were just celebrating the birth of their newborn daughter, Lily Rose, when Heather was diagnosed with malignant pleural mesothelioma. She was given 15 months to live. in fact, 95% of those diagnosed with this illness die within two years. Thanks to tireless effort, countless hospital visits, many doctors, and one amazing and radical surgery later, Heather is still alive and sharing her testimony now seven years later! You can watch her video to get the full story...

Cameron and Heather work hard to raise awareness for this illness that is a result of prolonged contact with asbestos. Among other things, Cameron writes a really helpful blog about providing cancer care for loved ones. 

I wanted to share this story to help raise awareness about mesothelioma. I also wanted to share this story because I want to raise awareness about hope. 

Hope is a funny thing... a powerful thing... an absolutely essential thing for each of us. Yet hope is such a rare and precious thing. 

Quite simply, I think that the world convinces us to give up on hope. Some people of faith have a high regard for the world. In Christian theology, these folks would have a strong belief in what's called "common grace"--the belief that God's grace is at work generally in the world making it possible for good things to happen and for order to be maintained. I admire these people, but I am not one of these people. I do not have much belief in common grace. To me, the world is a broken, sick, and sinful place where darkness and death seem to speak loudest. 

I realize how gloomy that sounds to say that the world is sick and broken and dark. But I pray that you will hear me out long enough to see the glorious light that I believe fills my calling...

I got into ministry not because I thought the world was great and God was happy in heaven just waiting for us to get to him; rather, I got into ministry because I think that all hell has broken loose on this world and God has come here in Jesus to fight for every last inch of reality, and I want to give my life in hope that he will redeem it all. 

And it is this funny, powerful, and absolutely necessary hope that drives me. Hope that the whole world is full of God's presence and in his presence there is light. Hope that we are not alone in our weakness and sin. Hope that the whole world is enchanted and filled full of God's Spirit and being brought into his reign. Hope that in the end life wins. 

Whatever it is that you are facing, may you find the hope to rise above, and may you know that we are never alone. You are loved, and you are chosen. 

turning 35, hunting, & being found

I turned 35 this week. 

It felt like this...

Maybe it was the sugar high from the icing on the cake or maybe the haunting feeling that the end is likely now just as close as the beginning, but I figured that now would be as good a time as any to try something new. Seeing as how habit and routine are sacred things for me, trying something new usually means ordering a different item at Starbucks in the morning. However, this time, I wanted to reach far out of my comfort zone--really stretch myself. I surprised myself when all of a sudden in the middle of a seemingly safe conversation I agreed to go deer hunting with a buddy of mine named Mark. Over the next few days I got my very first hunting license and deer tag. I felt so official and accomplished--and I hadn't even hunted yet. I got a note the night before from another woodsy friend, John, saying that he was joining us. So, flanked by two experienced hunters who were good enough friends to show me the ropes, this morning for the first time in my life I went hunting.

Now, for those of you who don't know, hunting involves long periods of silence and stillness in the woods while waiting to kill some meandering animal. Those of you who know me  realize immediately the lack of congruence here. 

For starters, there is the whole long periods of silence thing, to which I am likely not best-suited. I have been described as "chatty," and have on occasion heard someone ask my wife, "Does he always talk this much?" And apparently talking scares the deer away, so you have to just sit there mute. I expected this to be very hard, yet in reality it was easy. It was peaceful. But I don't mean that in the whole "it-was-just-me-and-nature's-glory" sort of way. What I mean is that I did not expect to find the silence so relieving. As someone who talks for a living, it was healing to my spirit to not have to fill space with words. I wonder now if this is what monks feel like who take a vow of silence. I am so noisy, and most of it is surprisingly by choice.

On the other hand, stillness was not as serious a challenge for me. I enjoy what is referred to as a sedentary lifestyle--I am possibly in danger of being overrun by a glacier. And hunting is pretty much the most sedentary outdoors "activity" I could find except for ice-fishing--which I plan to take up this winter. Still, I made my friends promise that I would not have to climb into a tree-stand. A man my size has no business climbing 15-20 feet up to sit on something smaller than a toilet seat--God did not make hippos fit for tree-climbing. So we sent John up the tree, as he is definitely not a hippo. I ended up in a pop-up tent called a "ground blind." 

God bless the great indoors

Inside the blind, I sat on a 5 gallon bucket turned upside down, which was as comfortable as it sounds. While I did not remain motionless, I stayed as still as I could. Now, I was admittedly helped by the fact that there were two of us in the tiny blind--myself and Mark, who is not as big as I am, but is also not a small man by any measure. We were a little snug in there, so there wasn't really anywhere to move to that wasn't already pretty intimate. 

It is also true that I harbor an irrational fear of guns and ammunition, and this alone has been most effective at keeping me out of the woods for 35 years now. But, this aversion to the woods has been helpful, as I also have very severe contact allergies to most any living green plant. Seeing as how gun season does not start for another few weeks, my friends had armed me with a crossbow. I had never held a bow of any kind before, but something tells me that a crossbow is to bow-hunting what gutter-guards are to bowling. So, equipped with my training-wheels I was out in the woods but inside a blind protecting me from all that leafy nature. Could life get any better? 

Now, it had dawned on me in the days leading up to my first hunting experience that I have little desire to kill anything really. But I was able to sate my mind with the observation that given my ineptitude at the whole silence and patience thing, I was not likely to see any deer; and further, that even if I had an opportunity to fire at a deer, I was almost certain to miss it due to inexperience and lack of general aiming prowess. 

Nevertheless, there I was hunting. Steam rose softly from my quiet breathing as I watched the tree-line at the other side of the clearing which itself was just being roused from the smoky jade shadows into the early dawn of a crisp autumn morning that God only makes in Michigan, when I was met by something unexpected: a friend. 

Up until that moment it had all been about me. Added to the usual self-centered myopia I live in, things were extra self-centered as I talked about my birthday and my first hunt. As a result, I honestly had not really thought all that much about Jeremy. Almost three years ago, a good friend of mine, Jeremy King, died while hunting in northern Michigan. He was only 31 years old, but had a massive heart attack and was found dead at the base of his tree-stand. In fact, it was John and Mark who had found him. And here I was in the birth of a new day with its new mercies surrounding me in the company of my friends--Mark, John, and Jeremy.

Jeremy, John, a different John, and Mark after a successful pheasant hunt

The immensity of everything met me in that clearing this morning. It was heavy at first and sacred. Then it lifted and I found breath--Spirit. It was what another friend of mine calls a thin space--where eternity and this world seem to be just a breath apart. I started to try and tell Mark, "I think I see why y'all love it out here." But that was as far as I got. I didn't say anything else--it wasn't fair to say anything else. Besides, you can't talk while you're hunting. 

I don't know that I feel all that connected to hunting... we came away empty and only saw two doe so far away that you could barely call it "seeing" them. Jeremy used to say that he felt closer to God when he was in nature. I think John and Mark feel that same way. Maybe I will too one day. But this morning, I was blessed to feel close to my friend Jeremy again. I don't know if John or Mark experienced that when they went back out their first time after Jeremy died. I don't know if they still feel it. I don't know if it will happen again next time I go out hunting, and truthfully, I am not sure I even want that. But I am so very thankful for today. 

It is interesting to me that once I get out of my routines--out of the expected and well-worn paths of my normal and routine life--I find myself encountered by mysteries more wonderful than I care to notice most of the time. I am reminded that God knows what I need more than I do. 

loved and chosen

In her book Grace (Eventually), Anne Lamott relays a story about teaching a Bible class to a group of young children. She recounts the experience moving from her initial decision to separate two trouble-making brothers (four and five years old) placing them on either side of two six-year-old boys, as well as welcoming a 3 year old (and his weary mother). As class began, she helped them get out their wiggles with a game in which they scrunch up their bodies and faces and hold it for a few seconds and then let loose and go completely limp. Once they are seated and calm...

I sat on the couch and glanced slowly around in a goofy, menacing way, and then said, "Is anyone here wearing a blue sweatshirt with Pokemon on it?" The four-year-old looked down at his chest, astonished to discover that he matched this description--like, what are the odds? He raised his hand. "Come over here to the couch," I said. "You are so loved, and so chosen." He clutched at himself like a beauty pageant finalist. Then I asked if anyone that day was wearing green socks with brown shoes, a Giants cap, an argyle vest? Each of them turned out to be loved and chosen..."

Captivated by the grace of this game, I could not even finish the chapter.

I spent the next hour devising ways to try and recreate this with several hundred adults one Sunday (not my most productive hour in the office, I will admit, but I'm getting at something so just let it go for now...).

You see, here is what's crazy... I spend so much of my time caught up in a really dumb trap. As I prepare sermons, I get lost... not lost, I get misled... actually, I get tempted. I get tempted to try and be incredible. I want to dazzle and impress. I want to remove all doubts that anyone in my church might have that I am really talented as a preacher. I work hard to come up with fascinating and spectacular content that is served by powerful and grandiose visual aids. I want to finish a sermon to a round of applause, or at least a lobby full of parishioners telling me that I just said something that they had never heard before or never considered. Really... I love the way those statements make me feel. (And all this for God's greater glory... yes, of course.)

Maybe that's a little exaggerated (maybe!), but you get my point. I have a friend who is also a preacher, and he has told me several times that I am the hardest working preacher in the pulpit he knows--I have no clue if this is a compliment. But, if I am honest with myself, the reason that I work so hard often has more to do with producing something original and impressive than it does with the simple, necessary, good news.

Sometimes I finish preaching and I wonder why I went into everything else when the one thing I really wish I had communicated was...

you are loved and you are chosen.  

The reason I couldn't read anymore of the chapter was that God was telling me what I really needed to hear most. I think most of us need to hear that. It's not amazingly smart or impressive. Nor is it all that original. But even better than those things... it's true. And it's a truth we need deep in our bones.

What if I just said that every week until we all believed it? Especially me. 

The bottom line is that no one in my church, no teacher, no mentor, no blogger can get me out of this trap. The only way out is to trust in God's grace to get me out--to trust that God's grace is enough not only for my soul, but also for my sermon.

The brilliant poet W. H. Auden once wrote:

"Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about."


What makes the trap so dumb is that I am the one creating it. I know some churches are preacher-eaters--but mine is not. No one at my church tells me I have to be amazing. No one even tells me that I have to be smart. What they really want most is for me to be myself--to be my creative, passionate, odd self completely  captivated by the mystery of the grace and love of Christ.

That voice telling me I have to be amazing is lying. I know that. People don't need amazing; they need real.

The voice of truth invites me onto the couch in my blue jeans and blue striped shirt and tells me, "You are loved and and you are chosen... you will win some and lose some, you will hit some out of the park and you will strike out, but never be afraid to trust that no matter what you do you are loved and you are chosen... and you are not alone either. Go tell everyone that there is more room on the couch, because they are loved and chosen as well."

nine eleven

Like any other Tuesday, I was scared awake at 4:00am Central Time by the sound of my alarm clock--which I purchased precisely because it seemed to have been rigged somehow with a tractor-trailer's horn as the alarm. I began my usual routine, which admittedly was not my favorite nor the most conducive to my natural sleeping patterns. Nevertheless, my wife and I were still in school and needed the money that my early morning job provided. So, there I was shuffling out of the house at 4:40 in the morning and driving to open up the Maryland Farms YMCA located in a business park in beautiful and wealthy Brentwood, TN. Alongside our friendly maintenance man, Al--who basically kept the place running and was undoubtedly a morning person--I was the front desk staff-person who cheerfully greeted early-rising gym-rats who were there to burn some calories before their workdays started. Al had been there for an hour already when I showed up to turn the lobby lights on and unlock the front doors at 5:00am.

Outside the doors stood the over-achievers--those grossly over-motivated souls who pace and check their watches outside the gym before it opens. After checking them in, I busied myself with the normal stuff: brewing a fresh pot of coffee, folding the warm towels, getting the computers and printers warmed up and working properly, and making sure that all of the televisions that lined the walls in front of the treadmills were turned on. Each television was tuned to a different news network each displaying various scrolling strips of headlines and market results. The first few hours rolled by normally. There were the usual few complaints about the temperature of the pool, or the quality of the coffee, or a jammed locker.

At 7:00am I was joined up front by Mary Catherine who although still in high school had agreed to take an absence that day to cover a shift for her co-worker and aunt, Penny, who usually worked mornings with me. I'm not positive that was legal, but I was okay with it. I was tired of being alone, and Mary Catherine was always fun to work with--talkative, upbeat, and hard-working, but none of these traits annoyingly so. With a constant smile, Mary Catherine checked in new guests and held a conversation with me about her plans for that coming weekend.

The sound came first.

I'll never forget that sound--it was the sound of shock and fear. Even through the plate glass windows separating the welcome counter from the fitness floor, I heard a collective groaning. It was a noise so powerful that it stopped all conversation. I turned to see what was the cause and across every television screen was the same image... American Airlines Flight 11 had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Smoke was pouring out of it like it had a volcano on it's side. Mary Catherine left me at the desk to go and listen to the television broadcasts.

I remember how odd it was in that precise moment and place. Behind me was a stunned crowd standing still in the middle of the gym--workout gear on and tennis shoes laced up, ready to go, sweat already falling, but no one moving at all. In front of me was a steady stream of people coming in the doors fresh from their cars--some laughing and cutting up, some singing, some smiling and greeting me jovially--all completely unaware of what was taking place. But before they even reached the counter, I watched the confusion and concern wash over them. Some wandered to the lockers trying to make sense of things but stay on schedule. Most simply stood dumbfounded watching a screen through the windows unable to even hear the broadcast.

The initial news reports coming from the scene were more panic than news. Mary Catherine returned with an update, but with details we later would learn were not accurate. Apparently, people on the news broadcasts had speculated (hoped?) that this was not a passenger plane--she reported to me that it was a cargo jet. I remember checking in a few guests whom I comforted with this misinformation.

As we spent a couple of minutes discussing how this sort of accident happens, we watched as United Airlines Flight 175 was flown into the South Tower.

This time, I went to listen. It was just moments later that the grim realization of what we were watching was becoming clear. These were not accidents. These were not cargo planes. These were commercial flights, and the planes had been hijacked. The targets were intentional. These were acts of terrorism.

It was 8:03am Central Time when the second tower was hit. The towers were collapsing and people were beginning to jump from the buildings. I watched it in real time. Many of those standing near me were already late for work, but could not pull themselves away from the television screens.

I went back to my post at the front desk, and I reported the awful truth to Mary Catherine who started crying. Most everyone either wept and grieved aloud or stood solemn and stunned. We were in slow motion.

And I don't know why, but I remember two young and attractive late-twenty-something men in grey suits walking past the desk on their way out to their jobs. I heard one of them say to the other, "Whoa! I just hope this doesn't affect the market too badly." The other nodded and with a brief laugh. The walked out the door and were gone.

I remember hating them.

I hated that their first thought was about money, not people. As I watched them through the doors, I hated their nice suits and fancy cars. I hated their nice hair-cuts. I hated their greed-soaked priorities. Truthfully and inexplicably, in that moment, my anger at these two was greater than my anger towards the terrorists who had hijacked the planes and flown them into the towers.

I look back now and sometimes surmise that although we were nothing alike in so many ways, in this one small but significant way there might not have been too much difference between me and the hijackers. I've never confessed that until now. Even now, I wonder if I should admit that.

One thing that the news got more right than they could know was this:  none of us was innocent anymore.

Every year this date reminds me that every human heart needs healed. Especially mine.

The Parable of the Sea

The Parable Of The Sea from Adam Haas on Vimeo.

God is calling us to do less.

Recently, a good friend and spiritual guide, Mark Love, has used his blog to explore a new metrics for determining the health of churches that are leaving the attractional model and the promise of megachurch for a more missional approach. Numbers of conversions, baptisms, and contribution can be helpful to some degree but are not the most reliable or revealing barometers of whether a church is healthy and thriving in God's will and Spirit, especially in a post-christian culture. 

His first three metrics were great: 1. Diversity, 2. Openly Seeking Partners in God's mission, 3. Open Dialogue on Tough Issues. To be honest, these three even made me feel good. I think most of that had to do with me seeing that the church that I help lead has been making wonderful strides on these three points in the last two years. Even if I didn't feel we had accomplished these fully, I did feel affirmed that we were on the right path toward being the church that God has called and gifted us to be. 

But then, on Tuesday, he posted his fourth metric: Simplicity.

Is your congregation--and its members--intentionally pursuing simplicity? My hunch is you're not. My hunch is that church, for a lot of your members, is just another place in our cultural landscape where people are being asked to do more.   

I think the absolute spiritual challenge of our age is related to simplicity. Taking intentional steps to slow down and pare down are crucial for paying attention to God. And there's no other place where people are going to be asked to do that. Not at their work, not in their kids' lives, not in the media they consume. Church has to be the place where that happens. 

Happy feelings = gone. #RealTalk: Mark Love is a buzzkill. (I love you, Mark!)

Not only was I challenged by his call to simplicity, I actually commented on his blog some feelings of just how challenging this has been to put into practice. I mentioned how I had been trying to create just this influence among our church leadership, and had met ideological agreement followed by practical opposition. We all thought it sounded like a great idea, but we couldn't do it--wouldn't do it. I was perplexed at the time, but had several other things keeping me busy so I let it go for a while. Then the blog post convicted me. And then, I received this honest email from one of my close friends on the leadership team at our church who had also read the blog on Simplicity:

Do you know what he's talking about?  I mean, I understand what he's saying but I don't have a clue how to do what he's suggesting.  If I don't understand it, I can't do it and if I can't do it, I can't model it for anyone else - FAILURE!!!!    HELP!!!!!

I must admit that I need to simplify - I'm tired out, burned out and ready to try something else - I just don't know what that looks like b/c I've been on this treadmill so long - its the only thing I know.  But I also know that its not the right thing or the only thing - I just don't know what the other thing is.  I do know that what we are doing now doesn't look a whole lot like anything Jesus ever did.

Bingo. Did I mention already that Mark Love is a buzzkill? I might make shirts that say this.  

I know they'd sell.

Seriously, though. I feel exactly like my friend. I struggle with how busy we make ourselves and how we seem to be just another voice complicit in our culture's frenetic race to actually run ourselves to death. Sabbath is such a foreign concept that instead of embracing it's (non)practice as a part of the rhythm of life, we generally study those parts of scripture and satisfy our selves by discussing the technical timing of it in the Jewish way of counting days--apparently, by making this point, we can say we have not out-rightly ignored it.  

But simplicity is hard--especially on the communal level. Maybe your church is different from mine, but our church calendar is super-full. We have so many events and offerings on our calendar that we can't even get out of our own way. 

Often, we have so many events in the same weekend (or even on the same day!) that we struggle to fill all the necessary volunteer spots needed to pull them off. And that is what we do most often--pull them off. We rarely do something so well that we celebrate it as a complete victory; rather, we usually get to the end of an event breathing a sigh of relief, slouching exhausted against the office hallway walls, giving tired high fives for surviving and pulling it off. 

Deep down, I think we feel the weight to justify our existence to the world (but more likely to our members and ourselves), so we keep ministry efforts happening around the clock. We feel guilty for the days when the building sits empty or unused. Oh, we know that less is more (which is also  true about presentation slides, fellow preachers... but that is another blog post). And we know that by doing less we can do it more faithfully and with greater impact and effect. And we know that by doing less we can relieve our volunteer corps from feeling so over-worked and burnt out. 

We know we need to simplify, but none of us want to be responsible for it. As a leader who is "responsible" for how "my" church is doing, one of the hardest things to believe and embrace is this: 

Our church needs to do LESS.

The truth is that a lot of people in our pews and in our leaderships at many of our churches equate simplicity with laziness and complacency. Let me give you an example: 

I am responsible for the adult ministries at our church. I was recently questioned by several shepherds as to why the empty-nesters group does not have events and projects like the other lifestages (families with children, families with teens, college/young married, etc.). It was not aggressive or overly critical, but I did take a small amount of heat for not having stuff on the calendar. My response was that there is already too much on the calendar, and my group was busy being every other event's volunteer staff. I explained that any event on the calendar requires planning, resources, and volunteers to make it happen. We don't have any extra time, resources, or volunteers for any more stuff on the calendar. They seemed to get it somewhat, but they still wondered why my ministry was the only one not actively "doing something." 

Now imagine being the youth minister or children's minister at a church like ours. What would be the backlash if they trim back their calendar of events? Can't you hear it: "Why don't you care about our teens? Now they only have one night with God and six out with their friends each week." Or, "I remember when we tried to get our kids to love being at church... now it seems like you hardly want anything to do with them." "Shouldn't someone be doing something to reach our community?" Is it fair to open our ministry leaders up to this kind of unfair criticism? 

Being the ministry leader that opts for simplicity is often the same thing as being the ministry leader who is labeled lazy or a quitter or not passionate enough. Who wants that reputation? So we keep the treadmill going. We keep packing our calendar. We keep tripping over ourselves. And we keep bemoaning that our disciples do not embrace volunteering as eagerly as the more faithful disciples of back when things were better. 

God forgive us. God save us... from ourselves. 

The King Is Coming

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

The promises are over a thousand years old, and all of the prophecies have led to this moment. But the words have been misunderstood at best, and forgotten at worst. The world hustles busily and noisily along, and the hardly anyone notices as it happens. A child is born in a stable in a nowhere backward town that only Micah could have noted and no one could have remembered. Behold the King.

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

He heals the sick, he gives sight to the blind, he makes the lame walk… and they ask: could it be him? He proclaims the good news of a new kingdom that is already here, but not yet fully arrived, but he speaks in parables and stories… and they ask: isn’t there something different about the way this rabbi speaks? He preaches with authority, but lives in humility; he fights sin, but lives in radical peace; he casts out demons, but welcomes sinners; he comforts the afflicted, and he afflicts the comfortable… and they ask: by what authority does he do these things? Behold the King.

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

A handful of disciples spread their coats on the ground before him, wave palm branches at him, and sing a song or two of deliverance. But as he approaches the temple, it is empty. No welcoming party, no glorious fulfillment, no pregnant expectation… just empty. He takes a short look around, and then he leaves. Behold the King.

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

But this time people are watching. They watch as my Jesus is beaten and whipped. They watch as my Jesus carries his cross through the streets. They watch as he is insulted, spit upon, and reviled. They watch as he collapses under the weight of the cross. They watch as he is led up the hill of Golgotha. They watch as he is nailed to the cross and lifted up in shame and agony. They watch and they curse him as he blesses and forgives them. They watch as the world chokes the life from the only one who can save them from death. They watch as he is called a king, and they spit at the name. They watch as he dies. They watch as his side is pierced. They fear when the earth shakes, the sun hides its face, and the curtain of the temple is torn in two. Behold the King.

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

They had run—scared for their lives they scattered like sheep without a shepherd. They had hid—fearing that they would meet the same fate as their master. They had given up—the one they had followed was dead, the hope they had shared was nailed to a tree and thrown in a tomb. They had watched God die. What else was there but despair? As Sabbath ended, the women went to provide a proper burial for their master. But he was not there. The stone was rolled away. Behold the King.

The King is coming… but the world doesn’t even realize it.

The disciples watched as he returned to his heavenly throne, and they spent their lives—every remaining year, month, day, hour, second, breath—proclaiming his glory and salvation only to be executed and exiled every one. They preached it in every town, they wrote it down for all to read, and they passed down the stories as faithfully as they could. And yet, the world is once again hustling busily and noisily along. And it will be a day just like this one when it happens—because my Jesus is coming soon. Will you be ready to behold the King?

Because the King is coming.

                                                                                                                                      

This meditation was given on Palm Sunday 2013 at the Rochester Church of Christ. 

A Story Worth Telling

Every night, my son and I have a ritual. We brush our teeth and get in our pajamas. We sing a song, then we say a prayer. And then I tell him a story. 

For a while he wanted the stories to be fancy and sprawling in scope including everything from dragons and knights to talking animals and of course potty humor (he is a five year old boy, after all). but lately he has wanted the stories to be "real." He asks for stories of relatives and friends, or historical people like presidents and national heroes. Being a history major, I am glad to oblige--after all, these are easier to recall than the adventures of Walter the Brave and Heroic but Occasionally Flatulent Hippopotamus. As a matter of fact, the real stories allow me the best opportunities to talk about things that actually matter most. The real stories are stories worth telling. 

This has never been more true than last evening. 

Last night at bedtime, Cooper and I went through our routine and settled into bed for a story. Seeing as how we had the day off from school because of it, I decided that I wanted him to know about who Martin Luther King, Jr. was and why he was important. 

We wrestled for the first few minutes just getting Cooper to say his name correctly--it does have quite a few syllables to it, not to mention a suffix. After finally getting it right a couple of times, I actually started the story.

Inexplicably, Cooper listened more closely than usual as I explained that he stood for what was right even when people around him got mad, and that he said that we should treat everyone fairly and rightly regardless of what they look like, and that he chose to love the people who hated him and even hurt him, and that his voice was not silenced even when he was killed. 

I will never forget when Cooper said, "He was a lot like Jesus." 

I was so proud, "Yes he was. He was very important. You know that you are important too. And I hope you are always a lot like Jesus. Good night, baby boy. I love you."  

I left the room as he recited the name over and over to remember it: Martin Luther King, Jr. I am glad he knows that name.