Yes, I'm an unabashed Panther fan.  Yes, I know eyes are rolling on the other side of computer screens.

I'm cool with that.  These are exciting times in the Carolinas, folks.  We have a team playing in the Super Bowl.  And while the winning certainly facilitates our enthusiasm, it's the intangibles that really have us hooked.  This team has personality.  This team has drive.  This team has fun!

So pardon me a few minutes of fandom, but when I look at the Carolina Panthers in their current incarnation, I see some qualities that all leaders - including those in the church - could learn something from.

LEADERS USE THEIR INNATE SKILLS WHILE LEARNING NEW ONES
Cam Newton came into the league as a bit of a freak of nature - a QB built more like a running back.  This was supposedly the "new NFL quarterback" prototype that would move the position away from a traditional "pocket passer."  Cam fit this new model to a "t."  Problem was, running QBs who don't learn to run judiciously get beat up and see their careers end prematurely (see: RG III, Michael Vick).  

So Cam worked with his QB coach to learn to be a better pocket passer.  It wasn't always pretty - balls soaring well above wide open receivers were a common occurrence the past few Panther seasons.  But this year, things seemed to click. He became a legit pocket passer, while at the same time still able to burn you with a strong run to get a first down - or more.  Which is certainly keeping the Denver defense up at nights over the next two weeks.

I've written before for NEXT Church about the need for pastors to be able to stand with one foot in "tradition" and the other in change.  This is not easy, but very necessary.  If we come in and try to immediately change everything, chances are we're going to get pretty beat up.  But to simply lead the church where it's always comfortably been isn't good, either.  We have to be skilled at doing both, or at the very least intentionally learn how to be.

EVERYONE ON THE TEAM IS A VALUED MEMBER OF THE TEAM
In case you haven't heard, Panthers owner Jerry Richardson is paying for all support staff and interns in the Panthers organization to attend Super Bowl 50 - travel, accommodations, tickets, the whole thing.  For the record, he also did this the last time they made the Super Bowl, in 2004.  

Call it a PR stunt if you want, and Richardson certainly has deep pockets, but it should be noted that this is not something NFL owners typically do.  He chose to do this.  Which, as a friend of mine commented, makes us wish we had applied for that stadium sweeper job.  

In all seriousness, it sends a very powerful and important message - the team is more than just the 50+ players on the field.  It makes me happy to think that Jason (the guy who contacted me about doing the invocation at their first playoff game a few weeks ago) and Allyson (the lovely staffer who served as my family's escort during our on-field time) are heading to Santa Clara with Cam, Luke and the others.

Churches are notorious for making both successes and setbacks about one person or a small group of people - the pastor, the session, etc.  A true culture of leadership recognizes that every person involved needs to be held accountable and get credit when things go well.

GOING THE EXTRA MILE WHEN YOU REALLY DON'T HAVE TO
Panthers star linebacker Luke Kuechly is an amazing player, but seemingly an even better person, as this story lays testimony to.  I showed this video at a church staff meeting last week and paused it in that moment right after Luke accepted the car with thanks.   I asked the staff, what are some possible scenarios of how this might play out going forward?  Responses were as expected: he could simply move on to the next kid, he could toss the car in the trash when he got out of the kid's view, etc. etc.  Then I started the video again.  And we watched Luke, in a brief moment of pause, seem to make a conscious choice to take things a step further with the kid - going off script, as it were, and kind of let things play out themselves.  And that changed the whole scene from simply being a neat gesture on the kid's part to a transformative experience for both.  I love thinking about that kid at the school lunch table the next day: Yeah, I got Luke's gloves, but my signed Pinewood Derby car is on display in his locker right now.

In church we have a lot of practices/policies/procedures that give us direction and tell us what we need to do in most any situation.  And that's certainly ministry.  But a deeper ministry can happen when we go off-script - take the common practice a step further and see where it leads us.  More and more I'm convinced these opportunities are around us all the time - that casual conversation in the hallway, a moment in worship, a session meeting.  Our job is to remain alert so we see them when they materialize and let the Spirit do its thing through us.

WHEN SOMEONE GOES DOWN, SOMEONE ELSE STEPS UP
Football is a tough sport and guys get injured all the time.  Star players, too.  Often this affect's a team's success.  At the beginning of the year before even the first game, star wide receiver Kelvin Benjamin was lost for the season, leaving a cadre of no-names and castoffs to fend for themselves.  Those guys, as it turned out, banded together and proved to be a more than adequate receiving corps.  There was no single breakout star in the bunch, but together they helped take the team to a 17-1 record.

Churches stay, but ministers and staff come and go.  The sign of a strong church is one where a church's well-being and future don't hinge on who comes and goes.  A strong sense of team and vision provides the continuity a church needs.  And if there's a strong sense of team and vision, good people will always be drawn to the mix.  

THIS TEAM HAS FUN, AND IT'S CONTAGIOUS
I feel for Cam.  All he wants is to enjoy the ride, and yet people are raking him over the coals.  How dare he dance in the end zone, do the dab, give footballs to kids!  

Admittedly more than a little biased on this and fully acknowledging that #1 is a bit of a showboat, I still have a hard time understanding the Tennessee Moms and Seattle petition guy.  This quarterback isn't accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs or beating his girlfriend.  And while his wardrobe choices are slightly suspect, and naming your kid "Chosen" certainly takes some chutzpah, I'm convinced that he really is just enjoying the moment, eagerly sharing it with teammates and an entire city.  

In fact, the very act of giving footballs to kids is worth note.  Cam started it himself - run for a TD, give the ball to a kid in the stands.  If a wide receiver or running back scored, they'd give the ball to Cam so he could do his thing.  Then one game, wide receiver Devin Funchess (gotta love the name) caught a TD and handed it to Cam.  But Cam declined it, pointed to him and then the end zone crowd.  The message was clear through my TV set: No, you give it away! It's a blast!  Now, it's rare that Cam does the actual football-sharing himself.  Setting a standard and then letting everyone else in on the fun is shared leadership at its best.

The church deals with a lot of heavy things - life and death, sin and salvation, kingdom-building, heavy social hot-button issues, all on a tight budget.  That's serious stuff.  But sometimes I wonder if we wind up taking ourselves too seriously, and not the God we claim to serve.  Ministry should be fun, and we should find enjoyment in each other and the ministry we are called to carry out, always seeking to share that joy with whomever.  After all, joy is biblical.

And as an example of said joy, I dare you to tell me this doesn't brighten your day:

Go church.  Go Panthers.  Keep Pounding.

Today is All Saints Day.  It's had different extrapolations over the past two thousand years, but in modern Protestant form it's a day when we remember those in the family of faith who've died in the past year.  At my church, we read their names out loud in worship. This is my first All Saints Day at Trinity, and I'll admit that I'm looking forward to it.

For some, this may seem a heavily somber occasion. But I don't think that's its intention.  In reality, there's a much thinner line between death and life than we typically feel - meaning, the distance between our deceased loved ones and us is not as great as we sometimes think.  Americana folk/pop group Delta Rae hit the nail on the head with this, if you ask me, with their song "Dance In The Graveyards." Watch the video below (or HERE). I dare you not to smile. Maybe even tear up a bit.

For all the saints, y'all.

New routines that really aren't all that new.  We just haven't engaged them in a while, so it's like trying to get your running legs back in shape after a while off.   It feels familiar, but it still takes some effort.

Lunch sandwiches made - at 7am.  Breakfast to eat - on the go.  Coffee brewed - at a time of the morning no brewing had taken place for a while.

Showers.  School clothes.  Cramming notebooks and papers in bookbags.  Lunchboxes on the kitchen counter, ready to go, but so easy to leave behind.  It's already happened, and this is just the first week.  We're out of practice.

Some new routines that really are new.  The two boys going two different places.  One to elementary school and the other to middle school.  And here in Charlotte, different schools start at different times, to maximize bus usage.

So the new routine I call "divide and conquer:" my wife takes our younger son to elementary school, leaving no later than 8 in the morning, coffee in hand.  She drops him off and then heads on to her new job working at the church preschool three days a week.  Half an hour later, Elder and I depart, and on my way to work I drop him off at middle school.

Middle school.  I have a hard time believing he's in middle school.  And yes, I know I'll have a hard time believing when he's in high school, and when he graduates, and when we drop him off at college, and when he graduates from college, and when he gets married. I get that.   Life is a succession of benchmarks anticipated and then experienced, but I'm not ready to think about those still to come.  I'm thinking about this one this week, because that's where I am. And the thought of having a son in middle school feels weird, just weird.

I drop him off and there's a crowd of students huddled outside - they haven't yet opened the doors.  These kids look huge to me; the few seconds I see them as the car door swings open and my son quickly exits (Don't say goodbye to me here, say it earlier, he has told me. I oblige).  They're huge, but the truth is that my son is no pushover, either.  Summer has seen him crack five feet, which means it's now down to months before he's looking me eye-to-eye.  True, with me this is no great accomplishment. I know and accept this.  Which is why I encourage my son to always set his sights higher, on this and on other matters.

Middle school.  Man.  I still get hung up on that one.

But I'm mostly grateful.  Grateful that a new year is upon us, because as much as I love the easy flow of summer, there's a reason God made watches and alarm clocks and calendars.  We are creatures of routine; and new or old it's nice to get back into them.  

And as we continue in this journey of our first year since the move, I'm very grateful that my boys are getting to start school along with everyone else this time around.  Not like last year, when the week before Thanksgiving they were unceremoniously dropped into a random class like a paratrooper dropped from a flyover into a strange and foreign land.  This time, thank God, they were able to experience walking through those school doors, knowing that moment was just as new for everyone else as it was for them.  

It's new, and yet it's still the same.  And it's only the first week.  And I'm so very grateful.

It's a strange new world we live in where "breaking news" unveils itself through the ding! of a cell phone notification, the slow-trickle-evolving-into-full-on-deluge of our Facebook and Twitter feeds, and the talking head on the news channel is telling us what we already know.  Such it was yesterday, right before dinnertime, when word began to get out that Robin Williams had taken his life at age 63. 

The immediate sentiment in the social media world was one of collective sadness and loss, followed by expressions of thanks and gratitude for that funny moment in that funny movie (of which there were, frankly, too many to count), followed by this question for which there is no good answer:

How could someone who made us laugh so much be full of so much pain?

That right there, my friends, is the question.

I've heard it said that the best comedians are often the ones battling depression and deep-seeded angst the most; their quick wit and humor a defense mechanism to mask the pain inside.  Maybe there's some truth in that, but of course it's a rash over-generalization that runs the risk of sidetracking us from seeing the full complexity of things....

That being said, people are complicated.  And you don’t need the suicide of one of the greatest actors and comedians of our generation to tell you this.  People are complicated, and part of the rub of human interaction in any context is how much of what we see on the outside truly reflects what lies on the inside.

No one needs to know everything about a person.  Being authentic as a human being does not mean we have to share every thought that runs through our head; every feeling that finds a place in our hearts.  Still, we have become incredibly and frighteningly skilled at masking who we are inside, particularly when it involves deep pain. We've convinced ourselves that to share that kind of pain would not be acceptable, or would be too much of a burden for others to bear, or would run contrary to the totally unrealistic expectation we have of ourselves and others that we are supposed to have it all together, have it all figured out.  We're afraid, so we keep it inside. 

This is how people like Robin Williams, a comedic genius, can take his life - and no one sees it coming.  This is how Seung-Hui Cho or Adam Lanza can take the lives of Virginia Tech college students or Sandy Hook Elementary kids - and no one sees it coming.  Deep, deep pain that goes unrevealed.  We only see what people let us see and what we enable them to share.

People are complicated, because being made in the image of God is complicated.  God's very image encased in frail human bodies - when you have that figured out, let me know.   The rock band Switchfoot has a great lyric in the chorus of one of their songs that gets at this as best as anything: We were meant to live for so much more // Have we lost ourselves?  // Somewhere we live inside.  I imagine there will always be that tension we have to wrestle with, figure out.  The trick is knowing when it grows too great for us to handle by ourselves.  There's no thermometer we can use to measure a fever in our soul - which is why that same God created us not to live in isolation but in community.  We need each other to help us figure out the journey that each day brings.

It's hard for me to speak about suicide because, while I've certainly had my low points, I've never found myself at "that point."  I know people in my life who have, and moreover, I know there are other people around me that I don't know have.  So I try my best to adhere to that wonderful wisdom that found its way to my Facebook feed a few months ago: Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.  Be kind, always.  And taking it a step further, too.  I've tried to be more aware, more intuitive, more cognizant of cues.  If my instinct has been to think that it's none of my business, I've tried to tell myself that perhaps it is.  Reaching out to those around me who can’t seem to do anything more than reach in.  In a world marked by partisanship, divisiveness, conflict and chaos, doing my best to live out unity, peace and compassion.

And I've tried as best I can to communicate, in word and in action, what a fellow pastor friend of mine put into words so well last night in a simple tweet: 

Everyone's fighting a battle we know nothing about.  Perhaps we can learn how to fight them together.

So the family and two of our four dogs piled into the minivan earlier this week and headed a few hours up north and to the left, to a mountain cabin my parents built in 1980.  When folks ask me where it is I tell them, somewhat accurately, that's it's in between Boone and North Wilkesboro.  But honestly, it's like telling someone that Kansas City is in between Los Angeles and New York.  Truly, this place is in the middle of nowhere, NC.  Winding mountain roads off a dirt road off a dirt road off a dirt road. No wifi or cell signal, and the nearest grocery store is 20 minutes away. It's glorious.

Day 2 found us taking a trip down memory lane.  My memory, that is.  As a tweener my younger brother and I would take these long hikes straight down from our mountain house, a pretty steep drop through leaves and trees and mountain laurel, eventually reaching a bubbling creek below.  We'd hang a left and follow the creek around a bend to these huge rocks.  I mean, automobile-sized huge.  Tens of thousands of years of never-ending water flow had eaten through the sod and carved winding flumes in the rock, and now we were the beneficiaries. We'd hop from one to the other, trying to be prudent but taking risks we probably should have avoided.  We'd hunt down cascading waterfalls and throw small sticks above them to watch them work their way down.  And if we found an open pool, chances were pretty good there were round flat rocks nearby - "pancakes," we called 'em.  Perfect for skipping rocks, a skill our father had taught us long before.

And now, some thirty years later, it's my memory being re-experienced through my two boys, my wife, and the two dogs, who had also made the trek.  True, I was now the parent, so it was a slightly different stance I had to take: don't make that jump, look out for snakes, try to avoid throwing rocks when someone is right in front of you. Silly parent stuff like that.  Still, it was pretty awesome when my own flesh and blood managed to skip a rock 15 times after a textbook toss, or make that hop from one rock to the other with not only ease but the same eager anticipation I had years before.  Coming alive in this little nirvana that so few people on this planet had ever seen, because it's a mile hike off a winding mountain road off a dirt road off a dirt road off a dirt road.

We had been then for a while and I mention to my wife that perhaps it was time for us to head back to the cabin. Why, she asks incredulously, they're actually getting along and not beating each other up.  A wise observation from my betrothed.  We stick around.

This is why we have vacations, people.  So we can go to places out in the middle of nowhere, which is actually somewhere, always with the people we love doing the kinds of things we should always make time to do.

If parenting has taught me anything, it is this: it is as much "feel" as it is science; more art form than calculus.  With all apologies to Dr. Spock and every supposed parenting expert out there, sometimes you just go with your gut and figure it out as you go along - no matter how uncomfortable it makes you.

Discomfort is exactly what I felt when my wife and I sat our boys around the kitchen table last September and shared  the news: we were moving to Charlotte. And it wasn't about whether we felt it was the right decision for our family - it was how they would feel about it.  They who had very little say in the decision; they who would leave the only home, school, church, and town they'd ever known.  Would they be good with this?  I learned something very quickly in that moment around the kitchen table, something I've been reminded of countless times since: 99% of my own adjustment to this change would be how well they would adjust.

It's a bit of a hopeless feeling you have as a parent because, while there are many aspects of the transition you can manage, there's a whole host of things outside your realm of control.  Oh sure, you can make good on promises for Facebook accounts and Carowinds family passes (which, for the record, we have).  But you can't control how well some say goodbye to your kids and how well others say hello.  Add to that the total lack of any shared experience.  I never moved as a kid; my parents still live the same house where I grew up.  So many things in life I can speak from the perspective of the wise old sage  whose been there before (whether that wisdom is received is a different story entirely).  But in this instance, my boys would have to face something I never had to, and there was precious little I could offer from my own experience to prepare them for it.  We would learn together.  We would create art rather than study science.

While the adjustment hasn't always been smooth and certainly had its bumps in the road, the good news is that the journey has moved in a consistently forward direction; a constant and steady clip at or slightly below the speed limit.  This, I was told, was the way it had to be. It takes a year, those who led families through similar transitions said.  You'll go through the full cycle, all the holidays, all the experiences in twelve months.  Then it's familiar, and you've been there before, and then it'll start feeling like home.

Time, I learned, would be our greatest ally in this art endeavor. Giving thanks for each step forward, big and small.

Which leads me to yesterday - my oldest son's 5th Grade Graduation,  or "Promotion" as the above program calls it.  Back in late May,  he informed his mother and me that his essay, "My Time at Olde Providence," had been selected as one of five to be shared during graduation/promotion.  He'd read it to us the week before when it was nothing more than a school assignment.  It was a well-written snapshot of the past six months  But more than that, the opening paragraph was an honest recounting of that September kitchen table conversation (turns out it was just as uncomfortable for him as it was for us), and the hopeful anxiety of walking into his new class for the very first time, and the mosaic of people here who, in his own words, have been "great teachers and the best friends one could possibly imagine."

Listening and watching my 11-year old stand before his peers and hundreds of family, reading this incredibly poignant, astute, and heart-felt journey of the past half-year, was one of those bursting-with-pride parent moments that I never understood as a kid no matter how many times my parents tried to explain it to me.  More than parental pride, though, it assured me that another brick had been cemented in the wall separating our present reality from my greatest fear: that the adjustment would be a long time coming.  And the reason, I am convinced, is because he has claimed the journey.  He has made it his own.  It's no longer him reacting to a decision his parents made nearly a year ago.  Now, it is him claiming this change as his new norm - feeling his way as he goes, creating his own new art form.

Which brings me back to this whole parenting thing.  What is often more important than worrying about whether a parental decision is "right" or "wrong" is simply covenanting to stick together and love each other no matter what life brings your way, whether you're initiating change or responding to it.  The Myers-Briggs "J" in me wishes there was a way to graph this out as some mathematical certainty that could be extrapolated and applied to the rest of life.  The person of faith and mystery in me, though, is more than happy to simply feel the way forward, knowing that anything good in life is almost always the result of some combination of time, patience, and tons of grace for the journey.  A blank canvas, ready for the latest artistic rendering to grace its surface.

The first thing I remember was the sound of the helicopters.

We had just departed from an acrobatic show in Beijing, China (think Cirque de sole ) and were heading to our tour bus which would take us back to our hotel.  It was a Wake Forest University school group, a summer education course.  One week in Japan, two in China.  Today was our last day . Earlier that day we toured the Great Wall of China, meant to be the highlight of our trip.

And that's when I heard those helicopters.  Military helicopters, roaring over our heads, closer to the ground than one might expect helicopters to be. Heading in the direction of Tiananmen Square..

We looked at the Chinese people around us to gauge their reaction. Their faces bore the unmistakeable look of shock and concern at the helicopters. Perhaps we should be shocked and concerned too.  Even before we entered the country two weeks prior, we knew what was going on.  Student protest in Tiananmen Square, the ideological center of Communist China, had been raging for weeks. Up until our last night in Japan, we weren't sure if Wake was going to let us continue with our itinerary. An alternate trip to Korea was in the works.  And then on that last night, the decision was made: we could go.  Things appeared to be "stable."

So we had enjoyed our prior ten days: Shanghai. Xian. Guangzhou. A few other towns I can't remember. We'd seen some amazing sights, met amazing people.  We were struck by the stark divide between rich and poor in a country where there were two forms of currency for two classes of people.  I practically got a buzz cut at the hotel barber shop when I told the barber, "Take this much off," making a small space between my thumb and forefinger. He didn't understand a lick of English. He thought I meant, "Leave this much on." We laughed about that.

But we didn't laugh about those helicopters.

We made our way back to the hotel and turned on the televisions in our rooms - because even in 1989, long before 24-hour news cables, we expected live coverage of "breaking news." Alas, in a country where the government controlled all modes of communication, on the night when hundreds would kill thousands, all we found on the TV were reports on that year's crop harvest.

As dusk settled over this warm June day, the street outside our hotel became packed with Chinese university students, making their way to the Square on bicycle and foot, a mere ten minutes away. They wore black bands around their heads and arms, a blatant symbol of solidarity and defiance in pursuit of basic freedoms they were willing to die for. Some stopped and talked to us, saying that tanks had descended on the Square and were killing the protestors in droves.  They knew they were very likely heading to their death.  And they wanted us to go back to America and tell the world, because they were so afraid the world would never hear of this.

Try to get some sleep, our professors told us. We did - sort of.  At 6am my phone rang. We had a group meeting at 7.  Good news: our normal-scheduled flight out of China to Hong Kong was still on schedule.  Bad news: the tour bus that had accompanied us throughout our trip, the tour bus that was supposed to complete her duty by taking us to the airport that morning, was currently burning in the Square, hijacked by students and used as a barricade in a futile attempt to keep the tanks out.  In a stroke of luck, our professors managed to round up four van taxi drivers to take us to the airport. But we'd have to go in two groups. So the ladies went first and the guys waited in the hotel lobby. Women and children first, y'all.

Time dragged on.  And on. Long periods of silence. No cell phones to call or text the other half of the group to see if they made it to the airport, if they made it at all.  Time dragged on.  An occasional attempt at a joke to lighten the mood. A few chuckles.  Then more silence.  Time dragged on.

Eventually the vans came back and had us on our way. Somehow I wound up riding shotgun in one of them.  We were heading away from the Square, but the chaos was happening sporadically all over the city.  Large groups of Chinese citizens gathering at every street corner, trying to find out what was happening, because the crop reports on television weren't cutting it.  At one point we were stopped at an intersection, and I looked out my passenger window to see a large pool of blood on the sidewalk.  Another time, a young Chinese man ran to our van and actually opened the door (long before the days of doors-automatically-locking-when-car-is-in-drive ingenuity). Speaking perfect English, he yelled, "Go tell the world what you've seen here!  Tell them everything!  Please!"  And then he shut the door and ran away.  I will never forget the hysterical urgency of his voice, nor the look on the face of my fellow student seated right by the door.

I was never as excited to see a group of women as when we finally arrived at the airport.  I'm pretty sure they were equally excited to see us.  We were rushed through customs, as the last thing the Chinese government wanted was a large group of American college students trapped in their country.  We got on our plane, taxied down the runway, and soon were airbound.  A loud shout of joy and relief erupted when the captain told us we were out of Chinese airspace.  Later we would learn that, an hour after our departure, the Beijing airport completely shut down for over a week. We got out in the nick of time.

The first thing on our agenda in Hong Kong (at the time still a British colony and not part of China) was to call home and assure frantic parents we were okay.  Mine were in tears - while we had been watching crop reports the night before, Tom Brokaw was breaking into Saturday morning cartoons on the other side of the world with the grim news.  For nearly 24 hours, all they knew was that the city their son was in was in total mayhem.  Now they knew I was safe. As the parent of two sons myself, I simply can't fathom being in their shoes all that time.

Hong Kong is also where we learned that one of our fellow group members had somehow made connections with NBC reporters those last few days in Beijing, agreeing to smuggle video footage of the Square massacre through airport customs to NBC affiliates waiting for him in Hong Kong - all in a selfish attempt to further his own post-college career aspirations.  Had he been caught in customs in Beijing, we all would've been detained and questioned - and perhaps worse.  He kind of kept to himself for the rest of the journey home. 

That night we enjoyed pizza - an American delicacy we'd been deprived of for weeks.  It was all very surreal - mere hours before, we had been observers and sideline participants in one of the greatest human rights tragedies of the century. It was all very scary and sad.

It changed me.

Every year on June 4, I remember.  I remember those students, I remember the gentleman who yanked open our van door; all begging us to "tell the world."  I haven't stopped telling anyone who will listen, including the mother of a new church member at a Youth Sunday lunch back in May.  She and her son, a high school senior, had moved to the States a few years ago.  I've been in the habit over the years of bringing up my Tiananmen Square experience with anyone I meet from China, just to gauge their reaction.  Most of the time it's an indifferent stare.  A few times it's denial that it ever happened.

This time, she smiled a knowing smile and told me she had been in the Square just the day before.  She had been part of the peaceful protests, a college student herself, and had gone back to her dorm room for a good night's sleep before planning to return.  She lost many friends that night.  She, too, remembers.  We talked long after the lunch buffet had been taken down; our two stories converging over decades and nationalities.

Even now I think of what happened when I hear the sound of helicopters flying above me.  For that reason, and for many others, I won't forget.

Watch this:

(Click HERE if you don't see it above )

Forget for a moment that whoever videod this held their phone portrait-style, and that there should be a law declaring landscape as the only acceptable method.

Forget that and focus on the fact that this is awesome.  Obviously this woman - Marty, I think is her name - had gone to the trouble to not only write a highly humorous adaptation, but memorize it.  Then she had the gumption to actually deliver it on this flight (and, one presumes, many others) with the deadpan precision of a seasoned comedian.

This is awesome, friends.  And not because it's what a flight attendant typically does, but precisely because it's not.   There is an FAA-approved script that all flight attendants are required to give before the plane takes off, and that would've been sufficient.  It's pretty much the same no matter what airline you're flying on.  She could've simply done that and communicated the needed information required of her employer, one of a dozen or so things to mark off the pre-takeoff checklist.

She also would've bored the passengers to no end and caused them to tune out completely, choosing to focus on their book or magazine or simply gaze out the tiny airplane window.  I know this because it's what I experienced on my flights to and from Minneapolis for the NEXT Church Conference a few weeks ago (as pretty much any flight I've been on since I was about ten).  I barely remember it even taking place.

But look at these people!  They're going to remember this.  Their faces are not buried in their books but looking up.  They are laughing and smiling.  They are paying attention.  They even applaud at the end - and who knows, maybe a standing O if they weren't already buckled in.  Most of all, they were caught off-guard because this is not something they were expecting.  They were expecting the ho-hum safety litany they'd promptly block out.  This was a pleasant surprise, and they took notice.  They'll get to their destinations and tell their work colleagues about it; tell their spouses and kids around the dinner table that evening.

I am drawn to people who make life memorable.  And not for any great accomplishment other than taking the mundane and injecting some life; taking the gray and painting it pastels.  They do this, not because they get paid more or because their video will go viral.  They do it just because they want to.  I'm drawn to people like that; who see every simple act as holy ground.  I think of people in my life who have been that for me - teachers, coaches, ministers, friends, even my wife and kids - and therefore have enriched my life far greater than it'd be otherwise.  And I want to be more like them myself.

Every moment, sacred space.  Every person we meet, there for a reason. Who are some of the people you've happened upon who've brought a little color to the gray of life?  Next time you see them, thank them - just as I imagine more than one passenger on this flight thanked Marty as they disembarked.  And if you happen to see someone painting life with bold colors and can snag a video of it, feel free to do so.  Just remember: landscape, not portrait.

"So I'm rooting for Michigan State now."

These are not the words I expected to hear from my wife of fifteen years - she who bleeds Carolina Blue as much as anyone who subjected themselves to seven years of indoctrination in Chapel Hill for undergraduate and law school (and yes, this Demon Deacon married her anyway.  True love).  She doesn't have any family with Spartan ties.  I'm not even sure she's been to Michigan.  True, her Tarheels lost a heartbreaker the night before, ending their run in the NCAA Tournament, so there's a vacuum to fill.  But pledging allegiance to a school she knows little about? My curiosity was piqued.

When she told me it was because of "that Adreian guy," I wasn't surprised.  This is the same woman who cheered loud and proud on SuperBowl night for the Seahawks because she saw the Derrick Coleman commercial and how he overcame his deafness to rise to the height in his profession.  My wife is always a sucker for a sweet human interest story.  And really, aren't we all?

I saw something pop up in my Facebook feed over the weekend about Adreian and Lacey, so I was well aware of the story: an adorable little girl who is battling a horrific form of nerve cancer, the odds stacked against her; and the mammoth collegiate basketball star who met her on a team hospital tour.  I go to hospitals for a living and always to see a specific person, so I have little idea what it would be like to go because it's a team activity, community service, and then to happen to meet someone you instantly connect with.  That was two years ago, and Adreian and his "little sister" have been inseparable.  She's been to MSU basketball games; he's attended her fundraising events.  She helped him cut down the nets when the Spartans won the Big Ten Tournament. And she accompanied him when he was honored on Senior Night:

High-profile sports often gets a bad rap, with "me-first" attitudes and the never-ending pursuit of the next million.  As a unabashed sports fan, this is a refreshing detour from that all-too frequent storyline.

But there's more going on here.  The story of Adreian and Lacey hasn't been retweeted/shared/liked millions of times because it's a sports story.  It's a human relationship story, and you and I were made to be in relationship with each other.  We were designed for connection on an emotional, mental, physical, spiritual level.

Not too long ago I was flipping channels and stumbled on the movie Castaway; Tom Hanks playing the stranded pilot lost on an island by himself for two years.  It was around the time Wilson entered the picture.  You remember - the wayward volleyball which made the journey through someone's luggage.  He made a face on it using his own blood - the very source of his life, the deepest connection.  He would talk to it, laugh with it, argue with it.  One of the sadder moments in the movie was when Wilson got swept away in the surf as Hanks rafts away from the island in hopes of being rescued.

Connection.  Our life literally depends on it.

I had this high school English teacher my junior year I don't remember much about, save one thing.  We were in class one day, discussing a book we were reading – typical 11th grade material; I think it was Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.  We were talking about the interplay between the characters, the dynamics of their relationships.  And that’s when Mrs. Norton offered up an absolute gem: "Every person that you come into contact with in your life," she said, "no matter how long or how short you know them, every person becomes a part of who you are."

Over twenty-five years later and I've never forgotten that.  The trick, though, is recognizing that reality in our everyday life and acting on it.  And that's the real beauty of Adreian's and Lacey's story.  When it would've been easy, even expected, to remain in their respective roles and view the other in theirs - a basketball player touring a hospital, a young child getting cancer treatment - they allowed themselves to heed the wisdom of my English teacher and allow a connection to take root and grow.  They allowed themselves to impact another life.  And just as importantly (and often the more difficult thing), they allowed their life to be impacted by another.

I can't help but wonder what it would be like if we all made a habit of doing this.  Of assuming that, at any given moment, we are right where we're supposed to be, right with who we're supposed to be with.  And when it'd be so easy for us to keep our distance and for them to keep theirs, what would happen if we reached out through a kind word or smile, just to see where it took us?  Just to see what connection might occur?  That kind of stuff requires a certain level of risk; a certain vulnerability we typically shy away from.  But life itself is risky business, no?

I'll be rooting for Lacey in the rough road she has ahead of her, keeping up with her journey on Twitter.  I don't know that I'll be able to fully side with Michigan State in their Sweet 16 game later this week against Virginia later - we ACC people tend to flock together come March Madness.  But I won't be totally bummed if Adreian's team wins. Besides, if  you ask me, the young man has won already.  In a big way.