Hope is a journey, not a destination

Humans help humans we don’t know.

It happens all the time.

All over the world.

It’s what humans do.

It is sometimes hard to remember this amidst the noise of the news telling us that things are falling apart.

The local news leads with disaster.  The national news leads with disaster.

Nearly every single news publication; print, online, or otherwise, shares with us unending stories of conflict and despair.

Yet, the world around us is full of humans helping humans they don’t know.

It happens in my life every single day as the Executive Director of Spare Key, www.sparekey.org

People send money to help families with loved ones facing a medical crisis.

Most of those who send money don’t know the families they help.  They will never know their names. They will never meet them.

It happens with another group I am involved with that seeks to provide leadership skills for life for young men and women called the US Naval Sea Cadets, or, in the Twin Cities Area, the https://seacadetstwincities.org/

Dozens of moms and dads, retired military and a variety of volunteers and those who simply want to help young men and women give of themselves, their time, talent and resources to help other humans they do not know until they come into contact with them through this program.

According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) there are more 1.5 million nonprofit organizations are registered in the U.S.

I imagine throughout the world there are an equal, if not greater, number of nonprofits of every size, shape and mission serving people in some way somewhere in the world.

But, it’s not just nonprofits where humans are helping humans they don’t know.

The recent amazing and beautiful news that 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach have been successfully rescued from what appeared to be impossibility just a few short days ago is further evidence that humans help humans they don’t know.

In Thailand, and from around the world, there are those who put whatever they could and were capable of doing into an effort to save the children of parents who undoubtedly went through a massive mix of emotions in wondering whether they would hold their breathing child in their arms ever again.

Two women who are members of an organization called www.promisehub.com have just landed in Entebbe today as they begin their second trek to the Nakivale Settlement to partner with others to help humans they don’t know.

That there are people throughout the world focusing their time, talent and resources to help 10 million human beings become digital entrepreneurs to lift up the lives of 1 billion people through Promise Hub is another example of humans helping humans they don’t know.

So, today, perhaps even if just for today, I encourage you to remember that the world isn’t falling apart.

It isn’t caving in.  We aren’t doomed.

The world is not perfect.  Everybody’s life is not perfect.  There is despair and disillusionment and terror and tragedy all around us in every corner of this planet.

But, there is also hope.

Real, tangible, achievable, provable and possible and probable hope.

It happens all the time.

All over the world.

Humans help humans we don’t know.

It’s what humans do.

Webster’s Dictionary defines a refugee as “an individual seeking refuge or asylum; especially: an individual who has left his or her native country and is unwilling or unable to return to it because of persecution or fear of persecution (as because of race, religion, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion)”

A friend of mine who is co-leading an effort to transform the lives of 10 million people through digital entrepreneurship, https://promisehub.com/, calls them:  Humans.

In America, our President, and many in Congress, and a significant percentage of the American people, see refugees as a threat to our way of life.

We have taken to calling them so many different names:  immigrants, illegal immigrants, undocumented aliens, asylum seekers and a variety of other descriptive devices.

The grinding of teeth in American politics, as much so elsewhere in the world, has neglected to remember that each of these people began like every other one of us.

As a baby human.

For those who believe in God, they also all began as a child of God.

There are 65 million of these humans throughout the globe who are trying to find a home.  Or, to desperately find their way back home.

Yes, it is true, there are amongst this 65 million people some of the worst that humanity has to offer.

It is likewise true that among the other 7.2 billion people on the world there exists some of the worst that humanity has to offer.

Lest those of us in America believe we are the only nation in the world fighting and arguing over what to do with those who voluntarily or involuntarily flee to the safety and security of our borders, I want to assure you that we are not.

This past June leaders of the European Union gathered for an emergency “mini-Summit” to address the growing challenges of refugees in their country.

European leaders are having the same battles over border security.  Immigration laws.  What to do with those who have fled into their country, to their borders or are attempting to do so in the future.

It’s complicated and it’s not.

It’s a conflict born out of political necessity for those who seek to divide one another regardless of where one stands on these issues.

I believe in strong borders.  I believe in the sovereignty of nations.  I believe in comprehensive, enforceable immigration laws.

I also believe in mercy, grace and understanding.

I believe in humans.

I also understand that humans are imperfect creatures of a perfect God.

In many ways in which I am not biblically familiar, but I sense there is truth I believe God has created many tests for us on Earth.

One of the most important tests I suspect has to do with how we treat the least fortunate amongst us in the world we all live in on Earth.

Truth be told, Donald Trump isn’t the first world leader to cast aspersions on an entire category of human beings.  Nor, to be honest, is he the only world leader doing it today.

I understand it is fashionable to lump him in with the worst despots in human history.

To do so lessens their viciousness and level of inhumanity to millions of lost souls.

It also distracts us from focusing on what ought to at least provide us with common ground as we reflect on the difficulty of finding solutions to immigration and migration and immigrants and refugees.

Or, humans.

Sometimes we spend too much time focusing on trying to find words to describe things, events or, people.

Maybe that’s the first place we need to start when we try to find common ground in tackling the issues that confront us on this planet.

I admit, it could be Pollyannaish.

On the other hand, what do we have to lose?

All of the other approaches start from the proposition that we have a problem and a crisis to solve.

Maybe, instead, we should start from the proposition that we have humans to help.

The have names like Anderson, Gorshe, Kuo, Mallari, Caddo, Howe, Riley, Howell, Weiss and Edwards.

They are young men and young women.

They have skin of every color.

They come from every imaginable background.

Some from comfortable middle-class lives and others from tough-scrabble ones where each day demands a courage many of us will never know.

They arrive on a late Friday afternoon to a place they have chosen to come.  Unsure about what they will face.

They are surrounded by others from across the land.

Twenty-six different states.

Some with the same names.

Some who look, act and talk like nobody they have ever met before.

Row up on row of them.  Their belongings in a bag thrown over their shoulder, or sitting at their feet, eyeing one another.

A furtive smile.  A knowing nod of the head.

Then, they find themselves put in a line.  Shuffled slowly forward.  A handful of papers in their hand to show to someone who appears before them and acts as they know what they are doing.

Yet, they do not yet know what they are doing.

They find the pit in their stomach sooner than they expected and it is deeper than they imagined.

Afraid.  Anxious.  Fearful.  Uncertain.  Excited.

Hopeful.

Perhaps most of all, hopeful.

In what seems like a matter of seconds these 10 children of the United States Naval Sea Cadets Twin Cities Squadron are transformed to young women and men.

For the next 10 days they will be Recruit Trainees subjected to the rigorous training of the United States Navy, modified to accommodate the reality of young men and women of the United States Naval Sea Cadets.

They will learn to make their bed.  Get up early.  Shower fast.  Eat quickly.

Salute.  Wear a uniform correctly.  Stand fast with military bearing.  Execute as a team.

Grow as a person.

For many of them this will be the first time they are away from home without a parent.

Without a smartphone.  Or, any other way to connect with an adult who they have come to depend on for their day-to-day life.

Some of them arrived wishing they stayed home.  Some came wondering if this will be their future home.  Others are not sure of why they are here except they now are and what they do for the next day 10 days may well define for them the rest of their lives.

The adults who are entrusted with their care back home look anxiously each day for news of their progress on the social media page that mercifully provides tidbits of information but excruciatingly not enough to assuage anxiety.

The adults who are entrusted with their care at the United States Naval Training Center seize upon their anxious Recruits with the ardor of a drill sergeant.

But, they know what each of us know who have an Anderson, Gorshe, Kuo, Mallari, Caddo, Howe, Riley, Howell, Weiss and Edwards or any other name of any other young man and woman we have seen grow through the years of our lives.

These are not just our children.

They are the best of America.

They are America.

They are America then.

They are American now.

They are America in the future.

Today, watching from the rows of bleachers at the United States Naval Training Center, as a volunteer Instructor for the NSCC Twin Cities Squadron – as a Dad of a Sea Cadet – I saw America’s future as our 10 recruits graduated to become Cadets.

I saw around them 30 times that number who will join them in the legion of other young men and women who have built, sustained, defended, secured and renewed America.

What they have accomplished in their time here is shown in their faces.  Their bearing.

The beaming pride they have standing next to their fellow Cadet.

What they have done they did.

Nobody else did this work for them.

It was their bravery and tenacity that brought them to the doors of this place.

It was honor, courage and commitment that brought them to the floor of this drill to accept the accolades earned from the gathering of their admirers.

This graduation isn’t about a future in the military.  For some, it may be. For most, it will not be.

For those who will seek someday to serve in our armed forces, they will have been trained by some of the best America has in our arsenal of democracy.

They will know that should they choose this path in their life, for their career, they will never want for knowing that they stand among America’s finest young men and women in history.

For those who do not, and, instead, choose to serve America in other ways throughout their lives, this too will be a galvanizing moment.

America needs them to defend her values and hold fast to her beliefs in no less passionate ways as their peers will do as members of our military here, at home, and across the world.

We need them as doctors, cashiers, teachers, nurses, engineers, dock workers, electricians, computer programmers, barbers and every other job that makes America the strongest, most prosperous and powerful nation on Earth.

I have had the privilege of serving with others who have done much to prepare these young men and women for this moment.

Those with names like Barnes, Grandell, Smith, Ricci, Seifert, Michael, Howell, Brew, Uhlig, Seck, Hallstrom, Hill, Portner, Jirik, Mische, Doyal, Church, LeClaire-Sura, Gorshe, McCormack and on and on and on.

Many have done more, much more, than I.

Today, I am honored to be their colleague.

I am also grateful for what they have done to prepare my own Cadet, Airman Mische, for his graduation today from the Petty Officer Leadership Academy.

I was once here like the parents and family of the 10 young men and women who graduated from Recruit Training.

I, too, saw in my own young adult the pride of an accomplishment without the helpful hands, encouraging words and exasperated pleas of a parent.

I aw a young man who experienced the toughest thing he had ever done and realized he was tough, too.

He stood alongside his fellow Squadron Members today.

No less proud of their accomplishments than his own.

Perhaps more so of theirs as he remembers having been in their shoes not so long ago

Today, three days from our nation’s celebration of independence, I am once again reminded of the nature of our freedom and liberty.

It was not won at the end of the barrel of a gun, or the wings of a plane or even the bow of a ship.

It was won with the heart of America’s finest young men and women.

It has been preserved with the beating hearts of generation upon generation of American youth who overcame the fear of the unknown and stepped forward into the darkness and lit the fire of democracy.

That fire burns brightly in each of our Squadron’s young men and women who graduated from their respective program this day.

I had the honor and privilege to shake the hand of many of our Squadron’s graduates today.  Looking straight in their eyes I could see pride in what they had accomplished.

Anderson, Gorshe, Kuo, Mallari, Caddo, Howe, Riley, Howell, Weiss, Edwards and Mische.

They are the names of America’s past, present and her future.

They are our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors.

They are the arsenal of America’s democracy.

They are freedom and liberty’s last, best hope for the world.

They are United States Naval Sea Cadets.

I didn’t vote for Donald Trump.  Nor did I vote for Hillary Clinton.

In both candidates America had deeply flawed choices for our President.

Today, I would still not vote for Donald Trump.

While it is true that as President he has done some important work he has undercut much of it with his penchant for simple cruelty and a lack of grace.

A significant tax cut, reducing some unnecessary government regulation, important outreach to North Korea and a handful of other policy initiatives are areas in which he does deserve recognition for what he has done as President.

All of those things, however, do not mask a hideous and ghastly style of leadership that alienates our allies, pits Americans against one another and dismisses the humanity of those he does not like and disagrees with as beneath his contempt.

I find Donald Trump repulsive in many ways and can barely stand to listen to him or look at him as our President.

However, he is our President.  And, there were millions of Americans who cast their vote for him as President of the United States.

Many of those Americans are my friends, my colleagues, my peers, Board Members, neighbors and family members.

So, too, were there millions of Americans who cast their vote for Hillary Clinton – and others who cast their votes for neither Trump or Clinton.

Many of those Americans are my friends, my colleagues, my peers, Board Members, neighbors and family members.

Last week the President’s spokesperson, Sarah Sanders, tweeted that she had been asked to leave a diner by its owner.  Presumably, although I wasn’t there, it was because the owner (and, according to the owner, the diner’s employees) did not want to serve Sanders because of her employment by President Trump.

The uproar on the left and the right and wherever everyone else is on the ideological and political scale has been ferocious.

So much so that even Congresswoman Maxine Waters got into the act by declaring:

“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up…If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Steve Schmidt, a “long-time GOP strategist” who is now an erstwhile Republican according to his self-professed declaration also decided to weigh in with a tweet that stated:

“She wasn’t refused service because of a difference over fiscal policy. She was refused because she is a serial liar and a handmaiden to despicably cruel and immoral policies. The public spaces are going to keep shrinking for Trumps henchmen and women. They’ve earned it.”

I’ve long considered Twitter a danger to democracy.  I think it is a depository of our worst selves.  We debase ourselves in our debasement of others.

And, there has been so much debasement of one another today in America that if I were the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the North Koreans or the handful of other nations that seek our demise, destruction or diminishment, I would be gleefully egging us on.

These kinds of exchanges further convince me that our civil society is thrashing about the rocks of destruction.

Where does all of this actually end?

Am I to cut off my relationship with those who voted for Trump or Clinton?  Should I abandon every person who continues to support them, or their policies, and consider them beneath my contempt?

Who shall I not invite to the next family dinner?  Is it possible that there will be nobody left to invite?

I love and adore and respect people who I vehemently disagree with politically and ideologically.

I don’t ask them to leave my home.  Get out of my car.  Or stop talking to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I wish Donald Trump wasn’t our President.  I don’t care at all for Sarah Sanders.  I would love to punch Corey Lewandowski and Stephen Miller and John Bolton right in the nose.

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders annoy me more than fingernails on a chalkboard.

But, if they came to my home for dinner I would welcome them in and feed them.

I would argue like Hell with them and I am sure I would get mad as Hell, too.

But, tell them to leave my home?

Never.

All of this is simply madness.

It didn’t start with Donald Trump.  And, I am tired of the universe giving him this much credit for all of us being mean to one another.

What has happened is that our meanness has become amplified.  It has become one large monolithic megaphone in which we violate the humanity of one another by posting comments that the vast majority of us would never utter in the presence of those we attack online.

I call this our Holy Shit moment – and Holy Shit it’s about as awful as I believe it to be.

We are not this shallow as human beings.  I refuse to believe it.

Somehow, one way or another, we need to get a grip on this terrible epidemic of rhetorical squalor that we have found ourselves mired in as Americans.

We aren’t going to do it by asking people to leave our dinner table.

The best way we to put our country back together again is to gather round a table for a meal and talk to one another.

I’m happy to be the host for the first one.

Just let me know if you’re interested in attending.

It was not as long ago as America would like to admit that it was legal to enslave a whole race of people.

So, too, was it legal to deprive that same race of people the right to vote.  The right to use public accommodations.

It was, in fact, perfectly legal to kill them.

So, too, was it legal to deprive an entire gender of Americans from being able to vote.

Legal disenfranchisement was not only the law of the land, but it was defended most vigorously by the most powerful of the land.

Today, African Americans live in a world that is much different than their predecessors prior to 1865.

However, while slavery ended, the decree that removed their physical chains did not end their oppression and repression.

Not until 1870 and the enactment of the 15^th Amendment were African Americans guaranteed the right to vote.

It took until 1954 for legal segregation to be illegal.

It took until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for all state and local laws allowing for segregation to be superseded by federal law.

Not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted did the federal government finally ensure that the rights guaranteed to African Americans in 1870 could finally be fully exercised.

It wasn’t until 1920 that American women were guaranteed the right to vote by the 19^th Amendment.

What began as a nascent movement in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott finally culminated in Congress and the President passing and signing into law 72 years later a constitutional guaranteed to stop laws from prohibiting women to vote.

Fast forward to today, 2018, and an American in which nearly 2,000 children from other nations have been forcibly removed from the care and the custody of their parents at our nation’s southern border.

They have not only been taken away from their parents, but they are being warehoused in abandoned retail stores, and their parents have little to no information about what has happened to their children.

These are children just like our children.  They laugh. They play.  They cry.  They become fearful and terrified.

They are also children who will become traumatized and remember what the most powerful nation in the world did to them and their family.

We are told this is begin done because the Trump Administration is simply enforcing the law.

Yes, it is true, their parents have violated American law and border security.

Yes, it is true, that the previous Administration arrested and detained entire families who illegally crossed our borders until the courts forbid them from doing so.

Yes, it is true that Democrats – and Republicans – and all of us as Americans – have failed to find common ground to resolve our broken immigration laws in this country.

No, it is not true that the most powerful person on the face of the Earth, President Donald J. Trump, has no ability to stop this violation of human rights from taking place in our country.

I have read, watched and listened to the comments by the President and those who serve him that they are only doing what is required if them under the law.

I have read this comment from from Stephen Miller, the Senior Policy Advisor for the President:

 “No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement…It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero-tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”

Putting aside this Administration’s willingness to enforce some laws, ignore others, dispute the validity of more and simply fail to recognize the legal standing of a lot of other things in America, listening to them defend the immoral separation of children from their families violates the very American Exceptionalism I believe in as an American.

The” We’re only enforcing the law” is what those who enslaved whole races of people, and deprived an entire gender of their rights, in America used to say.

The “We are a nation of laws” excuse given by the President’s spokesperson the other day was enough to make my head spin as this Administration dangles pardons over the head of any number of people who are currently charged with any number of violations of law.

How about this Father’s Day, Mr. President, do something that any Father should do:  Stop terrorizing children by directing American authorities under your control to wrest them way from their own Fathers.

Do it today.  On Father’s Day.  Call whoever you need to call.  Simply tell them you messed up.

If you want, if it makes it easier, tell them I messed up and that you are doing the right thing by stopping this violation of human rights from continuing to take place.

Stop this childish and horrific defense of your actions by claiming your hand was forced.  That you want to use what you are doing as a negotiating tactic.  That you are only enforcing the law.

Enforcing a law that is unjust, immoral and against our values as America is not Presidential.

It’s also not something any Father would, or should, ever do to children.

This Father’s Day call up somebody responsible for making it happen, Mr. President, and tell them to go get the children and put them back in the arms of their Fathers.

Be a Father, Mr. President.

This Saturday I turn 55 years old.

For those of you paying attention that means I only have 45 years left on the planet.

This poses all sorts of problems and challenges.

If I stay relatively healthy up until I am 100 years old there are all sorts of things I hope to be able to do.

If I don’t, well, all those sorts of things I hope to do will simply become things I wanted to do.

I admit that turning 55 carries with it more reflections on the “what’s next” in my life than turning 50 did for me.

I don’t look at 55 making me contemplate my mortality.  I do that all the time.  I imagine I have been doing that since I was able to understand the word “mortality.”

On the contrary, turning 55 makes me compelled to contemplate my life – not the end of it.

I’ve lived a pretty fortunate life.  I’ve had wonderful life experiences.  I’ve had hard knocks.  I’ve been knocked down.  Hard.  I have had to get back up again.

And, again.

In the moment those hard knocks were not times when I reflected on their character building attributes.

They were horrible, not lovely, and burdensome times in my life.

Somehow, though, I managed my way through them.  Sometimes muddling.  Often times charge hard through them.

It’s been principle blessing in my life that God did not endow me with great intellect, skills or talents.

For if he had I am certain that they would have been wasted on me.

Instead, he gave me persistence, determination and temerity.

Those who know me know that I probably have too much of each.

As luck would have it, I have a dog who mirrors me in that way.

Not particularly smart or bright.  But, she is persistent, determined and full of temerity.

It’s one of the facts of my existence as an American that I believe in our nation’s exceptionalism.

How could I not?

Where else in the world could someone with so little talent, skill or brainpower make and experience the life I have had the privilege to have?

Nowhere but America.

Or, as Brooks and Dunn might sing, “Only in America.”

Today, on the verge of turning 55 I am ever mindful of the privilege and blessing I have to live in this country.  To be an American.

To embrace this nation in all of its imperfections.  Knowing, as I have for as long as I have thought about it, that what makes America great is our constant passion for making it greater.

With just days away from my 55^th birthday, and my attempted 3^rd running of Grandma’s Marathon on the same day, I have assembled my list of 55 things I plan to do during this next run around the sun.

There are personal challenges.  Goals.  Objectives.

A mixture of finding ways to give back.  And, to take back my own sense of purpose and mission.

I have also outlined challenges, physical and mental, and some emotional and spiritual, in my own way.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this list.  It represents where I am today in my life and, more importantly, it reflects where I want to be in my life a year from now.

I am not setting out to prove anything to anybody other than myself.

And, hopefully, before I turn 56, I will be able to look in the mirror – perhaps healthier, thinner, calmer and happier – and say, “You aren’t ever going to be the smartest kid on the block.  Ever. “

But, you may just be the luckiest one alive in America.

• Run Grandma’s Marathon
• Run Twin Cities Marathon
• Run a 50-mile race
• Run a Sprint Triathlon
• Run an Olympic Triathlon
• Ski a mountain with my Daughter
• Go to New Orleans with my Son
• Lose 30 pounds
• Run the Birkie Trail Run
• Ride my bike more
• Ride my Elliptigo more
• Get to 55 pushups
• Get to 55 sit-ups
• Write a book
• Read more books
• Go to dance classes with my wife
• Run Red Bull Copper Peak
• Bike a Gravel Grinder
• Do the Chequamegon Fat Tire Race
• Volunteer once a month at a charity event/function
• Learn to Meditate
• Do Yoga
• Go to a movie twice a month
• Write about ideas more
• Care less about things I choose to do nothing about
• Complain less
• Be critical less
• Paint my mom’s house
• Paint the cabin
• Put a new roof on the cabin bunkhouse
• Fix my rowboat
• Learn to play the guitar better
• Go to Uganda
• Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro
• Climb 5 14ers
• Cook more
• Cut off all my hair
• Start a Podcast
• Learn a language
• Join a Board
• Listen more, Talk less
• Drink more water
• Take more walks
• Pay less attention to my phone
• Eat more vegetables
• Start a movement
• Start a fire
• Go on more dates with my wife
• Be there
• Lift more weights
• Whistle more
• Complain less
• Eat something I haven’t eaten before
• Go fishing more often
• Run the Ironman 70.3 in Waco, Texas

Ten days from now I will attempt my 3^rd Grandma’s Marathon.

Along with my youngest brother, Will, we will clamber aboard a bus with about 50 other people and be driven to the start line.

While I will be running Grandma’s Marathon with my brother I won’t be running Grandma’s Marathon with my brother.

Will, who is ten years my junior, will attempt to beat his best Grandma’s time of 3 hours and 45 minutes.

Erich, who is ten years much older than Will, is simply attempting to finish.

We may be doing the same race, but we most certainly will not be running together.

I turn 55 the day of Grandma’s Marathon.

It seems like a nifty birthday gift to myself.  Assuming, of course, I complete the course.

Have I trained?

Well, that’s certainly none of your business.

But, if you must ask, I would say, “Kind of.”

I did do a 16-mile run.  I am contemplating an 18-mile run this coming weekend.

Which, if I do, means I will have logged a few 3-mile runs, a couple 5 and 6-mile runs, one 8 mile run and a 10 mile run to add to my 16-mile run and the not-yet-decided-upon-or-even-attempted 18-mile run.

My best intention is to train.  In my mind’s eye I see myself training.  I get ready for it.  I prepare for it.

And, then something comes up or I am tired.

The Little Debbie Zebra Cakes grab hold of me right before I am ready to suit up to run.

A bowl of ice cream, laden with butterscotch syrup, captivates me and before you know it I am in an ice cream coma.

Legitimate reasons, to be sure, that foil my plan to actively and consistently train.

Which I believe are the only reasons that foil my daydream vision of winning Grandma’s Marathon.

There are moments when I think I can.

Fleeting moments, yes, but, still, moments.

Interspersed between every mile I run I find myself suddenly feeling fleet of foot, fueled by bursts of optimism and some electronic dance music playing in my headphones.

I feel like I am running like the wind.  I smile.  Adrenaline courses through my body and I can imagine I must be running faster and with more endurance than I have ever run before.

Then I look at my pace watch and see that my 10:30 pace has actually slowed to 10:45 and I am brought back to reality.

I really don’t like to run all that much, to be honest.

I do it because I can.

It’s kind of like my mountain.

I run because I can.

I don’t run fast.  I will never win any race.  My times are not getting faster.

There will be a day when I can’t run like I want to or choose to.  I am hoping that day is not soon.

Running does have a way, however, of humbling me to the station in life I will soon reach in 10 days.

I am a middle-age man who could stand to lose 10 to 15 pounds – something I keep telling myself I can easily do if I just close my eyes when I walk past the Cosmic Brownies I bought at Menards for my 17-year old son.

I beat myself up for my weaknesses as I consume a second bowl of ice cream.

I lament I have to compromise on the loop closer to the end of the belt instead of the one furthest away if I hope to breathe at all during the day.

Despite all of these failings, I still feel hope when I put on my running shoes and plod on down the road.

The first mile, and sometimes the entirety of the miles, my feet, ankles, knees and hips hurt.

If I pay too much attention to it, I can hear myself breathing hard.  And, if I don’t pay attention, my left leg will get lazy and tired and my foot will start dragging on the ground.

My approach to how far I run is erratic.  I may decide to run 3 miles only to feel like maybe I should run 13 only to settle on running 4 and feeling like I should have gone 13, after all.

I have been known to set out on a run of four miles only to call home after running 14 miles to ask for a ride because I didn’t plan a return route.

As I approach my 55^th birthday I have come to embrace my love/hate relationship with running.

I do so because it is my physical manifestation of hope and promise in life.

Each time I run I hope I can achieve something better than the last time I ran.

Each step I take is the promise that I might.

Running is like my life.

If I keep running I keep living.

In doing so, I find hope and promise.

So, I don’t run because I like to.

I run because I can.

I didn’t expect that moment, walking amongst the tombstones of America’s fallen in Normandy, but when it came I was grateful for it.

Grateful for the freedom I had to walk on the sunny side of the grass with my family in a place where so many young men had come to die.

No matter where I walked, or where I looked, the names of 9,385 American dead surrounded me.

Most who lost their lives in the D-Day landings and the operations that took place after it to liberate Europe from Hitler.

Prior to that moment I had spent hours with my family retracing the hours leading up to what would be the last days on Earth alive that many of those thousands would have as living Americans.

It was a cold, windy and wet day of our tour, much like the weather facing thousands of allied troops as they streamed across the English Channel on June 6^th, 1944.

Seventy-four years ago, they came across the water.

Cold.  Wet  Scared.

Not much older than my 17-year old son who stood beside me as we listened to our tour guide explain the morning of the crossing.

It’s a story I know about.  I have read about it.  Heard about it.  Seen movies and documentaries about it.

But there, on Omaha Beach, with the landing zones of Allied soldiers to my left and to my right, I could close my eyes and try to imagine the terrible sounds of war the moment of their arrival.

We talk of World War II as “The Good War”.

It was a war that was supposed to never happen but the decisions at the end of World War I guaranteed it would.

Twenty-six years after the end of World War I these children of America came to fight, to liberate and for far too many, to die.

The sealed fate of the young men who came across the water that morning was not in the plans of their mothers and fathers when they brought them into the world.

It is hard for me to imagine the sheer terror of the final moments of the lives of thousands of young men, anymore than it is for me to imagine what it must be like for a single young man.

The hopes and dreams of their childhood forgotten as they understood the brutal reality that the boy next to them, in front of them and behind them may soon, simply, be gone.

And, equally frightening, whether more so, or not, I do not know – perhaps their own eternal life minutes away.

Seventy-four years after thousands came ashore, and thousands now lay in a grave in a quiet, somber, reflective and honorable cemetery thousands of miles from where they were born, I broke down in tears.

I moved quickly from the small chapel where my emotions got caught in my chest and turned my head away from my family so they would not see my lost composure.

As I stepped out I stepped right into the names of 9,385 American boys lying in the ground.

I imagine that for far too many of those boys the harsh reality of time has washed away their individual memories.

Parents gone.  Brothers and sisters gone.  Maybe entire families that once loved and cared for them simply gone to their own eternal rest.

The wars that have come since that day has created similar sad and stark reminders of the cost of American freedom and liberty.

Whether those wars and battles were “good” or “just” will be debated and argued about long after anything I have thought about will matter to me or anybody else.

This much I know to be true:  We owe it to every single American boy and girl who gave their life in America’s name to honor their name.

To remember their sacrifice.  Their service.  Their courage.

And, their fear.

Gone though they may be.  Their names increasingly lost to the ravages of time and the passing of history.

What they did, on behalf of America, need never be lost or forgotten.

For every single picnic.

Every ballot cast.

Every protest.

Every knee taken.

Every jury of one’s peers.

Every written word.

Every angry social media post.

Every purchased gun.

Every Sunday worship.

Every liberating breath.

We are Americans because those who took their last breath on a beach or a field, on the water or in the air, made it so.

Speak their name or speak of their sacrifice today.

Look around you and know that no matter where you are your freedom came with a price.

At work, or at home, at your cabin or in your car, no matter where you are your freedom came with a price.

America’s freedom, liberty and justice for all is not perfect.

Remember the sacrifice of those who we honor this Memorial Day by working to make it so.