Those words are the words I would have said to Jeff Zaslow had I seen him yesterday. I won’t get that chance, because Jeff died in a car accident up north on Friday morning.

The reports and my friends indicate Jeff hit a rough patch on a snowy highway and he lost control of his car. For me, the circumstances punctuate the tragedy of this friend’s untimely death. Because, if ever there was a steady hand to hold when riding over a rough patch, that hand belonged to Zazz.

A local news outlet called me last night, and I answered the phone while I was navigating my own stretch of snowy road. The reporter, a one-time student in our journalism department at Oakland University, asked me my thoughts. An hour or so later, they appeared online:

John Stoll worked in a cubicle next to Zaslow’s from 2005 to 2010 as a staff reporter for the Journal. Stoll  said he listened as Randy Pausch would call Zaslow for his thoughts to be transcribed in The Last Lecture. The 2008 release, based on a lecture Pausch gave in September 2007, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, remained a New York Times bestseller for 112 weeks.

Stoll described Zaslow as the living embodiment of clarity and wisdom for himself and “generations” of other Journal reporters.

“Jeff was a mentor for me at a very important time of my career,” said Stoll, currently an editor at Reuters. “Generations, probably, of Journal reporters, relied on him for a lot of guidance. He’d come up to you and give you wisdom and clarity when you needed it. About three years ago, I had a rough patch in career and life and he was one of the steadiest people for me.”

It’s actually been three and a half years since hitting that patch. And I only sat next to Jeff for three of my five years at Dow Jones.

But the truth is my life needed to be restructured (much like the auto industry I covered), some childish habits needed to be given up. The first person who was there for me was my wife. Zazz was next in line.

I came into the bureau burdened on my 31st birthday. There was a personal crisis going on  – unable to really father my young family, unsure of my place and reason. As the big book says, my life had become unmanageable. That crisis had boiled over, and I had nowhere to hide.

Of probably a dozen people in the bureau, Jeff was the one who sensed that I was at an inflection point. He was a writer with not only a storyteller’s mind, but a writer with a shepherd’s heart. His books, columns and articles had so often worked to explain the texture and contours of the emotional trenches of life. But  unlike many of us in this profession, Jeff’s ability to reach into that emotional trench went beyond putting the pen to paper.

I don’t remember the words he used, but I do remember the invitation. He looked at me, said it was obvious that life had punched me in the nuts, and said that he would walk through the forest with me until I found my way. That journey took several months.

Here’s the key moral underpinning to this ditty: I was surrounded by pastoral types thanks the relationships we had at a megachurch near our house. I didn’t walk into their offices, didn’t ring them on the phone. Instead, I spent this stretch in dozens of AA meetings and in I don’t know how many conversations with Jeff. Cubicle-to-cubicle. Jeff working on his books, me working on a restructuring.

Zazz was an incredible journalist and writer. But, for me, he was a man I could trust.

Our last conversation was in the bureau. He wished me luck as I ventured on a new chapter in my life, and told me he thought I was making a mistake. He told me the truth. “You’re a good journalist and that’s what you should do.” It took me about six months out in the real world to figure that out. It took him hitting a rough patch on an otherwise sleepy Friday morning for me to figure out that the best gift I can give is telling you the truth when I have the rare and unique opportunity to do that.

The first man, the one who I will write about today, is named Albert. I met him a long time ago shortly after his father died. He was from central Pennsylvania, land of the coal miner. We waited tables together at a little restaurant in Rochester, Michigan. We’d mostly talk about philosophy and our differences on religion, but he sometimes helped me finish my crossword puzzles.

Something had turned Al, at the time, into a teetotaler. And a very aggressive agnostic.

One day, we were standing making coffee and filling stainless steel water jugs for the afternoon shift and he spit out words that have lived with me for the following decade and a half. “The mass of men, Johnny, lead lives of quiet desperation.” Then he told me “it is a mark of wisdom not to do desperate things.” Al was lifting from Henry David Thoreau that summer morning.

I adored him as he busted his behind, working two jobs in order to scratch out enough credits at Oakland Community College to earn a scholarship at the University of Michigan and eventually teach. He succeeded at all of that, and last I had heard he was planning to go home to write about the gutted pocket of Rust Belt that he once called home. I had assumed his venture to Michigan provided some degree of restoration and now, being at peace, could digest and chronicle the land of his youth with the appropriate combination of detachment and compassion.

Turns out, I may have been wrong.

I’ve often thought of Albert, even as we’ve packed years of distance between us. I Googled him a couple of years ago and realized he was back in Pennsylvania, but had a brush or two with the law. So what? He must have gotten past it, I thought.

But recently, his name has crept into my brain on regular occasion. I’ll be driving to work and I’ll say his name; writing a story and I’ll think of him. And those words of Hank Thoreau are more present now than they were back then. The. Mass. Of. Men….The. Mark. Of. Wisdom…

I decided to look him up today and found an old cell phone for him. Disconnected. Found a news clipping that his uncle Bernard – his father’s brother — had died last year or so. The uncle had left behind his mom, Stasia, and a few other relatives.

“Is Stasia there?”

“Hold on”

“Hello, who’s this?”

“This is John Stoll, I’m an old friend of the man who I believe to be your grandson.”

Silence.

“Albert. Albert who was born in 1972 to your son Albert.”

“He’s dead.”

“I know, I know your son is dead, I’m sorry about that. But I’m looking for his son, Albert.”

“Yes, he’s dead. He died a couple of years ago.”

Silence.

“Did you hear what I said? He’s dead.”

“I’m sorry ma’am. Sorry about your loss. Actually, your losses. Goodbye.”

I Googled Albert again to find the obituary and it didn’t exist. Instead, I found a story published February 5, 2012 that said my friend had been sentenced to six to twelve months in prison. Turns out he’d allegedly hit a car with his car while drunk and then ran and hid in a barn. He was injured in the incident. This was in 2009. After another offense and after missing a probation appointment, the judge decided to lock him up for at about a baseball season’s worth of time.

I called the reporters on the story. No answer. Called the prison. Confirmed. “Your buddy’s sitting in our cell here. Send him a letter, he won’t be shipping out of here to Harrisburg until at least a couple weeks.”

So here’s what I wrote:

Albert,

 “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

 Those words, my friend, have lived with me for the past 15 or so years since I first heard them while filling the coffee pots at Kruse and Muir on Main. And, so has the advice that it is a mark of wisdom to not do desperate things.

 I know this letter doesn’t find you as well off as you hope to be. But I’m not writing about your legal troubles. They don’t really matter to me. You are the same Albert who I came to admire years ago, and will continue to be the same Albert no matter where you rest your head in years to come.

I write this letter so that you know you are in my thoughts during dark hours. I’ve been there and I am not in a position of judgment.

So I think of you and believe in your potential, and know that you will emerge – the sun will rise again.

I also know that we probably aren’t of like persuasion on this, but you are in my prayers, and in the prayers of my son. At 5, he is just now discovering the brilliance of our friend Hank Thoreau. And others. We are keeping you in our evening routine –liturgy, confession, Lord’s Prayer, doxology, prayer for others – believing for reconciliation. “Lord, hear our prayer.”

Albert, you will always have a friend in me and a resource as you get back on your feet. We share like spirits and a similar passion in life. Importantly, I’ve never told you this, but of the many men who have influenced my life, you are right there at the top. Contagious joy, an active mind, unvarnished pain.

I’ve had my own recovery from hitting the bottom and spent more than three years sober. Writing, teaching, being a dad. My world didn’t change when I woke up and finally realized I was living in a prison, it changed the night I realized that the war was over, and that I had lost. The journey has been miraculous ever since. In a word: resurrection.

I wish you the best, my brother. My contact info is below.

John

The letter is in the mail traveling the 498 miles it takes to get from my cube to his cell.

But make no mistake, letters like these are not the common product of my hands. I’ve been slow to reach the prisoner, orphan, downtrodden. Especially those who I haven’t talked to in more than ten years. Deaf ears and blind eyes have often served as my feeble stand ins for the open heart.

I said at the beginning of this post that two men have been struggling – that second story is better shared on another day. But know that I’ve decided to struggle with that other man, offering very little except an ear, occasional words of advice, the knowledge that I’m standing there waiting with him for whatever truth hides behind the mountain of doubt.

After years of only wishing well those who suffer around me, I’ve somehow come to a place in the road where I find capacity to carry another man’s bag, along with my own. Even if just for the amount of steps it takes to get him back on his feet properly.

I’m not capable of putting this kind of ethic into plain words. Father Kenneth Tanner, a shepherd and a friend, was talking about this in simple English at the little white building over the weekend.

In a nutshell, he talked about the art of longsuffering. How we are strangers to this practice, apt to give up when we don’t immediately get results.

“Our glory is — despite circumstances, despite failure, despite when it doesn’t happen — to get up every day and never fail in believing in the steadfast love of God; who wants to reveal, pardon, set free. And, this test that we face every day is to say “God, I believe.” A marriage that doesn’t look like it’s going to work out – I’m never going to give up on that marriage. I’m never going to give up on that person I’m ministering to even though he keeps running from you, (because) you keep running after him and I’ve got to help you run after him.”

You see, I’ve got a guy in jail, another on the unemployment line. I’ve got others who suffer to lesser degrees. And, in the words of Tanner, I’ve got “a couple of easy paths” in front of me when it comes to these companions.

“One is giving up on God’s kingdom – I’m going to stop praying because I don’t see this happening.” That’s classic John D. Stoll. Not even a mere amateur in the arena of longsuffering.

“That other state – denial.” This is to blindly assume “God always heals in the moment.” I ignore the reality that life can be shit, even with God watching out for me. I become a friend of Job.  “Instead of holding someone’s hand who loses a brother or a sister early – to war or death or an accident or who knows what – and gripping and saying, ‘I believe.’”

Tanner’s had to deal with this. His sister Gina died, along with her oldest boy and youngest daughter about ten years ago. About the last time I saw Albert in person. She was traveling a gravel highway outside St. George, Utah, and the SUV flipped over. The Padre had to stand and preach in front of the caskets, and the five children and a husband who survived.

Rattling around in the back of his mind, as he spoke to those who were mourning about the promise of reconciliation, was “Do you believe this Kenneth?”

Did he believe what? Did he believe that it was God’s plan that God wanted to take his sister’s life? That it was part of his grand plan? No. That’s not the question. That’s simple pin-the-tail-on-the-God crap that doesn’t account for existence of will, evil and freedom.

Ken’s belief, standing in front of those caskets, was there would be resurrection, reconciliation, restoration. And, in this little white building, a decade later, he’s tasted enough of it to distribute morsels of hope like elements of communion.

And today, as I look at my buddies hightailing it under the shadow of death, I finally understand that my job is not to fix it, or to call the game on account of rain, or to claim things as they are not. My job is to stand there, take the bullets alongside them, point to hope, pursue their soul. To believe.

Ironic, I would say, that Albert’s grandmother insisted the man was dead. Maybe in her delusional or dishonest way she is somewhat right. But I would also say — dead or not — Albert is inching ever closer to resurrection.

I knew there was at least a buck snuggled in my wallet, but I said nothing as I walked to my car. I got in, sat down and turned the beast on. The wipers started marching across the windshield, squeaking against the cold glass. It reminded me how miserable Detroit can be in the winter. Streets bleached white by salt, buildings wrecked by neglect and theft, streets largely vacant. Might as well be hell on a cold streak.

So, I took the buck, the change and buried in this guy’s hand. Not the most benevolent action I’ve taken in my life, but more than I usually for gents in this condition.

I know how much a coffee costs at Avalon bakery and I just gave you more than enough to buy one, I thought. Suit yourself, enjoy the buck, go to hell.

Day one I said “I got you yesterday, broseph.” I was angry at him that day. Day two – today – I gave him my last buck. I’m still disappointed in him, but really, should I expect this bum on the street to understand the economics of grace? Should I withhold charity because this guy doesn’t play by the rules of the transaction? Strike some deal with him an agreement that I’ll pay him a buck if he says the magic words?

It doesn’t work that way. But I sure seem to think it does.

We all know that grace is unmerited – this has been augured into our brains since our days in short pants going to super church (Sunday school for charismatics). But we do typically think that a response to grace is merited. So while I do nothing to get the buck, I damn well at least say thank you when I get it. If we apply this to the story above: I liked the bum when I gave him the buck but hated him when he didn’t reciprocate.

It took me about a week to come to grips with this. Last Tuesday night, about 12 hours after I handed over that first buck, I was shoving my clothes in a locker at the gym and thinking about this man. The sun had set on my anger and I wasn’t going to let go of it. Ungratefulness bothers me, much like a pocket of loose change. It’s a clumsy, fractured way to live life. Maybe if the guy would show gratitude, he wouldn’t be stuck out in the rain, I thought.

Like that shiny, varnished, bludgeoned hardwood sitting on a bench outside the bakery – upon further investigation, I’m ungrateful as well. Not on the scale of a lousy buck, but on the scale of a house and children and cars and vacations. I receive this stuff beyond my own merit, for if these prizes were handed out based on value to the kingdom or on human potential, I’d have a smaller house, a ten-speed instead of a Buick, kids who were unpleasant and a staycation at the Woodward Gardens roadside motel with an all-you-can-eat pass at the Mountain King Cafe. The blue house on a gilded street, the cushy minivan with automatic sliding doors, the trips to New York and the ocean and to golf courses and ski lodges, Jack, Evelyne, Kimberly — it would all be in a book about someone else’s life. If merit were involved, I would far better resemble Cousin Eddie, or the bum on the bench.

I grew up in a faith where meritocracy was everything. Deep faith scored you deep riches, and the louder the response the more likely the hits would keep coming. I dislike that bum because he turns that philosophy on its head. He just sits there with a hand out and people sometimes put stuff in it. And he doesn’t say thank you enough. And he asks for more more more too much much much.

In the great sins of my life, a cunning and sneaky covetousness sits near the top of the pyramid. Ungratefulness fuels its prominence in my heart.

“Look down the row of this pew, broseph…right there,  the one with the shaggy blonde mop and the one with the curly blond yarn…that’s all the preaching you need to do. Guard them with the gratefulness of a shepherd whose been given the city’s top flock and don’t let covetousness render you impotent in this task. Take the energy you’re pouring into wishing I gave you another quarter and pour it into the gift you already have in your hands.”

No doubt, the last 365 clicks have been memorable. Reconciliation, transition, disappointment, growth. In the birds-eye view, it was a sort of garden. Brilliant tomato plants in one corner, so-so squash in another, and rotten pumpkins in another. Typical year.

But at some point during the contest that was 2011, Kimberly and I walked up to a modest white building on Grant Road. I’ve passed it hundreds of times without really passing it at all. It’s a bit hidden, tucked amid smaller ranch houses, a senior living center, an equipment rental place.

Beyond any reasonable prediction, we found a home in that little white building. And, as I tick back over the 365 clicks, I find some of the more meaningful moments came inside, around and through that little white building.

To understand how we came to arrive at the little white building, understand that we — wife, kids, me — hit an inflection point in 2011 that crested on an innocent ride home from a different church, a church where we’d lulled ourselves into the exercise of perpetual spectating. I think each of us in this clan, even the youngest, were eager to jump out onto the spiritual playing field with the same gusto we had jumped onto other playing fields in our life…but there was a big roadblock named “us.”

See, there are people who pull a jersey over their head, strap on the knee pads, plop a helmet on their melon and run out on the field as fast as they can. They play the entire game. They sweat. They score. They fail. They hurt.

And then there are people who watch them. Televisions are made for spectators, real life requires laundry detergent. We somehow rounded the corner into our mid 30s with a spiritual big screen but very little Tide. Serious players – no. Serious spectators – yes.

On Christmas, we’d spectate. On Easter, we’d spectate. Sunday after Sunday, we’d spectate. Or we’d skip. Sometimes, we’d edge our way onto the playing field, but soon enough realize that the playing field was too large or the coach was an ass or we just didn’t find the game worth playing.

Jack, all of four years old at the time, changed that.

It began when he started pontificating in the back seat. The church that Kimberly and I were attending was boring, he said. And he said it a lot.

Boring? How could that be? We had come to this church because it was anything but boring. The music rocked, the messages were simple and applicable, the experience was modern. We had been married in this church, worked in this church, met our best of friends in this church, recruited people to this church, led in this church.

No doubt, despite the pint-sized punditry coming from my back seat, this church was a spectacular place. Thousands were finding meaning and eternity there. We were just part of this church’s welfare state, content to let the players play while we sat on the couch watching soaps and playing Wii.

We looked around and saw people promoted as giants, but when we looked in the mirror, we were seeing a stunted dwarf who looked more suited for The Wizard of Oz than for Gladiator. We were dressing for battle in a bathing suit and ballerina slippers. We had left the helmet, sword, slingshot and lion heart in a closet that we had not opened in many years. We were good people but pretty mediocre disciples.

So we listened to Jack and hit our knees. We prayed. Not to God, but to a friend who told us to try a place we probably wouldn’t like all that much and probably wouldn’t return to. But he knew the pastor and the pastor evidently knew Jesus and it seemed that we, as a family, were struggling in that category. I took his advice and my life changed. And so did Jack’s, and so did Kimberly’s. And, in some ways, even our little Bina’s life changed. At nearly a year old, she was just getting off the blocks in life. This little white building has lent her a hefty tailwind for her tiny tailend.

For seven or eight months, we’ve been attending this little white building on Grant Road. It’s not really our cup of tea. The decor could be accused of being outdated; the people aren’t as swank-a-fied as the lot at your typical spiritual watering hole. And the modern music, three-point-messages and kick-ass multimedia of our former routine has been swapped for hymns, liturgy, communion, needy people and a pastor who has spotty hearing, a passion for U2 and a healthy appreciation for The Book of Common Prayer.

Come to find out — This. Is. Thy. Kingdom. Come. An ever-present awareness of the subject of our worship. An acknowledgement that we are equal as brothers. An unpleasant reality that, really, this is not a glorified extension of our home entertainment console…not a cozy crash pad.

We are but sheep in a ghetto, seeking meaning from a wooden manger. I like that better than being somebodies in a shopping mall, seeking meaning from a telephone with a television screen.

This brings me back to this period of reflection I am currently in.

The importance of our new reality found some amplification last weekend, as we packed into this little white building on Grant Road for Christmas Eve.  Sometime after 11 pm, after the Padre’s message — after a round of hymns, after scripture readings, after confession — that little catalyst named Jack walked to the front of the church and sat down at a piano. Five years old and ten fingers. And off he went, playing a pretty solid round of Away in a Manger as a couple of hundred people sat in silence. My son — the guy who little more than a half year earlier thought our Sunday gig was boring — was leading men, women and their kids in worship of the lamb of God, born in a ghetto to save us from our sins.

A little white building, a little man named Jack. A meaningful 365 clicks.