This is it

I have held on to an old issue of Time Magazine, from June 22, 1998, with a soft-focused picture of Michael Jordan on the cover. The story has the tagline, We may never see his likes again.

This is one of several press clippings I have saved about Jordan over the years. I remember being struck by an account of him that described him playing a game when he was sick with the flu. With fever and sweat pouring off of him, he was still an absolute team player and still led his team, inch by grueling inch, to victory.

I was, and am, impressed by this story, as much for what it says about Jordan's commitment to the team as for what it says about Jordan himself and his abilities. The ability to motivate an organization around you when you are not at your best is a feat worthy of noting. That Jordan had some of the greatest basketball skills - and all-around athletic skills - of any human who ever lived just adds to the sweetness of the moment.

I thought about this story the other night when Kira and I took a walk to the local theater to watch the new, and final, Michael Jackson concert film, This Is It.

The film documents the rehearsals leading up to the point of Jackson's death last Spring, as Jackson was rallying his own organization around him for a final set of fifty shows to end his career. This Is It collects footage shot during the rehearsals, and they reflect the roughness of the early days of the vision for the shows. We see dancers auditioning and sets being built. We see Michael, frustrated with himself and with his band at times, and at other moments elated and lost in the music and his own movements. He often sings half-voiced ("I'm saving myself for the performances," he says a couple of times), but even so, I was amazed at what I saw on screen.

Jackson was half a century old as this footage was shot, and he easily bests the energetic dancers half his age. His control, focus, and energy during rehearsals seemed to me to be greater than that mustered by many performers I have seen when they are on stage for real, when it counts. Despite the roughness of the staging and the sets, despite the occasional halts and false starts, it was hard for me not to get lost in the performances. Say what you will about Jackson's personality and life (and there is much that could be said), the man had singular talent.

In reflecting on these two Michaels these last few days, I have come back again and again to just how amazed and blessed I feel to be living exactly now, at this point in history.

I can remember a time when there were no personal computers. Hell, even pocket calculators were behemoths when I was a kid, often requiring a pretty large "pocket" for the name to work. I can remember when there was no internet, no email, no cell phones. With these memories, I look around at the Copernican leap we have taken in information and communication these past thirty years and I marvel. I feel like I have the best of both worlds - the before and the after.

I am amazed to have been alive at a time when Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson, both, were at their prime, as I mentioned above, but not only these two giants. There are many more. During this brief window I call my life, I have shared the Earth with Orson Welles, Fred Rogers, Claude Levi-Strauss and Jim Henson. I have been alive and breathed the same air as Phillipe Petit, William S. Burroughs, Nam June Paik and Steve Jobs (not to mention Steve Wozniak!).

I once bumped into Jacques Derrida in a Philadelphia train station, and shook his hand. He had a graciousness to him that inspires me to this day. I am happy that we shared the same ground beneath us at the same moments. I am happy to be able to say, "I was there, then."

Another time, on a whim, I called up Douglas Englebart, just to say hello, and to thank him. What I learned from that exchange is that genius does not always reap a just reward. On the phone Englebart was also gracious, but he sounded a little broken, too. It was not until a few years after we spoke that he truly began to receive the public recognition for his many visionary accomplishments. You may never have heard his name, of course, but if you are reading this, then odds are you have interacted just now with at least three of the many visions with which Englebart gifted the world.

Last weekend I learned of the passing of an old friend, David Knauert. I knew David from our time at seminary together. While our professional lives had taken us in different directions these past few years, it was always a joy for me in the moments we got to spend together, whether at a conference or is a chance meeting during our travels. The heroes of my life are not just these remote figures that make the news or shape the contours of history; they are also the simple kindnesses of folks like David Knauert, seeing that I'm feeling down and suggesting we go see a James Bond movie (as he did a few years back when we were both far from home at a conference). I don't think I ever properly thanked David for those many gracious moments he gave me during our friendship. Faced now with the finality of his passing, I am saddened by this fact almost to desperation. The moment we have to be amazed, to be thankful, to be touched, and to express our gratitude for all this abundance and this monumental coincidence of being together on this Earth, at this moment, in the midst of all these amazing changes and kindnesses, is only ever this one. This is the moment. Right exactly now.

This is it.

We are sharing this world with so many such visionaries. We are sharing the world with those whose minds are re-forming the world before our eyes. I am amazed at how many heroes I have today; genuine heroes, great and small.

You and I, we are living at an amazing moment. Think of all we have seen, and all there is yet to see. Think of the changes you have witnessed, and the amazing performances, great and small, with which we are blessed each day.

I am so thankful for these huge and remote heroes, yes. I am thankful for being alive to share the world with a Jordan or a Jackson. I am even more thankful for the friends with whom I have been blessed to share this world, and this time, in this little window of our lives on Earth. I am thankful for the kind words, and encouragement, and the love of these friends. I am thankful for the many ways in which they inspire and amaze me. I am thankful for the talents and the visions and the dreams and the ways - great and small - in which this amazing family of friends is changing and re-forming this little corner of this big world, the world we are sharing together in this little window of a lifetime.

This is it. This is the life I have been given, and I am amazed and grateful for it. I am thankful for my heroes. I am thankful for you, my friends. I am thankful for inspiration, and for graciousness. I am thankful for those who enter my life and shape it and shift it, no matter how fleetingly. I am thankful. Thank you. Thank you all. Amen.