Biographical – Snail Trek Blog

Concealed

By the time the revelers picked themselves up from the sidewalk, we had already taken inventory. The bar at the end of our tiny dead-end street had scored again. Each Saturday night, its patrons made it just far enough to collapse in front of our house—a weekend ritual we came to expect.

By Sunday morning, the evidence of revelry was gone. In its place, a different crowd flowed onto the sidewalk—a procession of Spazierengehen—families strolling along the Rhine River embankment while barges churned slowly upstream and others glided swiftly down. Sunday’s gentle rhythm concealed Saturday’s disorder.

But there was another concealment at work, even closer to home on our little dead-end street. Just four cement pavers off the asphalt street, a danger seemed to lurk—a black post jutted from the center of our driveway.

As we pulled our little German Taunus sedan into the driveway, horrified passersby shouted and gestured wildly, warning us of the black steel post standing squarely in our path. But when we drove over it, the post bent, and then—miraculously—sprang upright again behind our car, as if resurrected. The astounded onlookers pointed, then pressed hands to mouths; it was only made of rubber, a trick to keep lost travelers from turning around in our driveway.

The concealment worked. It was our little deception.

In truth, we are all masters of concealment. Each day we hide some fragments of ourselves. We push the speed limit to conceal our late departure for an appointment. We adjust our clothing to mask an expanding waistline. We temper political views to avoid conflict. We conceal an unwise habit or an embarrassing addiction.

Not every concealment reveals weakness. Some concealments are wise. We may withhold judgment until we have all the facts, awaiting better timing or the proper setting. We may delay sharing a medical concern until we’ve spoken with the doctor. We may gain legal or financial advice before sounding a premature alarm.

Concealment can spring from compassion and care. For many years, I taught students who were on parole. Although I often knew the nature of their crimes, I refused to disclose that private information to others. I concealed their weakness, their past misdeeds, out of care and respect. It is the same care we extend to anyone in a civilized society.

But other concealments can corrode. A hidden truth can eat away at our souls and poison the lives of others. Most of us have also complied with wrongdoing out of fear of reprisal, job loss, or disapproval. Do we sometimes hide poor choices or unwise habits simply to fit in?

When we conceal our own misbehavior, we compromise our integrity, and we risk searing our conscience.

Perhaps concealment is not the issue. The question lies in intent—why we hide, what we protect, and when we choose to reveal. Wisdom lies in knowing whether we are healing or harming, whether we are protecting or whether we are bending the truth.

Fitting In

I am not like my mother—she prayed for everything. She prayed for friends, for waiters, and for the food they brought us. For refrigerators. For roadkill.

She even prayed for parking places. When a car finally budged from its space as we circled like vultures seeking carrion, she would beam, “See? He cares!”

My prayers are more modest. I might seek divine intervention for a missing sock, a cell phone, or a shopping list gone astray in the grocery store. When I was young, I prayed for my pets—right up to the moment of death. Still, now and then, I’ve prayed for someone’s health and watched them become healthy again.

So, I was surprised to find myself—with my hand resting on the shoulder of a young man I did not know—praying aloud for him at a bus stop as passengers milled about.

I had brought my cousin to the Greyhound station so he could board a bus to take him home. We waited—pacing, standing, sitting on cold cement benches until our backsides went numb.

Two hours later, a bus finally arrived. Surely ours. But no; the driver told us my cousin’s bus had been canceled. Another one would come “in an hour or two.”

All around us, mothers changed babies’ diapers on the stone-cold benches. A grizzle-bearded gentleman used his cane to prop up his nodding head. Children overturned suitcases, which occasionally burst open in a soft explosion of clothes and toys.

As darkness approached, the replacement Greyhound bus arrived. A heavyset young man near the front of the line shuffled toward the door. The driver opened it, invited him in, and spoke with him privately. Moments later, the young man stepped back out.

After engaging him in small talk, I asked, “Why did you get on and then come right back out?”

“I was measuring,” he said plainly. “I wanted to see if I could fit in a bus seat. It’s less embarrassing to find out now than when the bus is full.”

His candor took me off guard. I searched his eyes, tucked away behind heavy cheeks.

As we talked, he began to open up. “I’ve eaten my way through my misery. My family treats me like an outcast. Eventually, I dropped out of high school. I’m barely a survivor. And that’s all I am. So, I’m leaving.”

His eyes divulged emptiness—a soul leached of hope. What remained was a broken spirit, searching for a place of healing.

When I reached for his arm, he didn’t resist, didn’t even question my intent. A tremor passed through him—and into me. What was I doing? His burden wasn’t mine. His shame, his fear—they weren’t mine to carry. And yet I couldn’t let go.

There was only one thing to do—pray.

Yet, at that moment, I shared a twinge of his fear. The bus crowd might stare. I might not fit in.

Still, I prayed.

When I opened my eyes, his face was wet with tears. He rubbed his knuckles in his eyes to clear them. Storm clouds had broken; a comforting rain had begun to fall.

And then he suddenly announced he was turning a page—away from bitterness, from anger, from self-loathing. Toward healing. Toward beginning again. After all those years, he believed that finally he, too, could be loved.

And in that moment, I learned something, too. My overweight friend and I were both out of our depth—he, for his weight, and me, for my very public prayer. Like him, I needed to risk not fitting in.

Expressing love is a splurge—an extravagant act that risks embarrassment. It’s a leap off the high dive before you’re sure you can swim.

And sometimes, by taking that one courageous step, we budge both heaven and earth.

Curtain Call

In sleep, Dad might wander a path, inhaling the fragrance of pine trees, or he might revisit familiar, cozy places he held dear. But now he was aging, and naps brought confusion instead of release. His body faltered, and he grew irritable. A uniformed nurse at the assisted-living facility stepped in to give him medication, easing his agitation. As his mind relaxed, so did his muscles. Soon, his lungs would forget to expand; finally, his heart would forget to beat.

We were still on our way to see him when the message arrived—Dad was gone. Only the night before, we had returned from visiting our daughter and her family halfway across the country. I kicked myself for poor timing: I had missed Dad’s departure from Earth by forty-five minutes.

At 106, Dad would often ask, “Why am I still here?” He had lingered on, outliving friends and family. Each time we parted, we knew it could be our last. Still, we shared a secure peace; if it were our final goodbye, neither of us would have regrets.

We cared for him during the nine years after Mom died. Many weekends meant a two-hour drive to see him, tending to his needs, followed by a weary drive home—and then preparing for another long workweek. The rhythm repeated, week after week.

During those nine years, Dad cared for us, too. His humor cleared our career-compressed fog. His devotion to beauty, art, and faith pressed us to look inward, outward, and upward. He remained delightfully quirky: every dog he greeted received a firm rumple of its nose pressed lovingly together. While he never received a nip at this greeting, the canine communion mystified both the unsuspecting dog and its surprised owner.

But eventually, like his own father’s gold pocket watch, the spring broke. No amount of winding its crown would have any effect. Its time, like Dad’s final nap in his small bedroom, had run out.

But this was not Dad’s first dance with death; it was his curtain call. Fifteen years earlier, while shopping at Costco, he left us the first time.

He had stood in the long prescription line among other shoppers, heads bowed over lists and membership cards. Suddenly, Dad simply tipped over—a toppled mannequin. Like a felled tree, without flexing to break his fall—he was dead on his feet. His heart had simply stopped, as if to say, “I’ve had enough.” Flat on his back, the fluorescent ceiling light cast a blue tint on him, contrasting the red blood draining onto the concrete floor from beneath his head.

On his way down, he had nearly struck the woman standing behind him—a providentially placed nurse who immediately began resuscitation. Then, paramedics—shopping a few aisles over—rushed over to help, trundling him into their ambulance, lights ablaze and sirens wailing.

When Dad’s head had hit the cement floor, ever the artist, he might have enjoyed a foretaste of the beauty offered by his beloved artists—Monet, Klee, and Van Gogh, ushering him into God’s ultimate glory, appearing just ahead. Earth’s painted canvas retreated behind him, while before him stretched a new, unending one.

Then came the command: “Clear!” as the ambulance team attempted resuscitation. Somewhere between Costco and Sharp Memorial Hospital, the EMT’s defibrillator jolted Dad’s heart alive.

The glorious images on the divine canvas faded from Dad’s vision. It dissolved into cold stainless steel, a vinyl gurney, and IV drips as Dad shuttled back to Earth, bouncing along in the ambulance.

Revived, he arrived back from his first death.

Dad’s later years were bookended by his two deaths—the first in Costco, into the waiting arms of a nurse and ambulance crew, the second, the curtain call, in his cozy assisted-living bedroom.

The Psalmist reminds us, “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.” Certainly, Dad’s lines had fallen in pleasant places. His life’s boundaries had quietly expanded, stretching out like hidden markers beneath the snow.

My father leaves us his story, this dog-loving artist marked by a star-shaped scar on the back of his head. And he would ever encourage us—no, he would insist— that we keep asking ourselves his favorite query, “Why am I still here?”

Coming Aboard

The swift and turbulent grey-green waters of Germany’s lower Rhine River were hungry for anything that floated. Its rough riverbed of granite boulders stirred threatening waves, sculpted into whitecaps by brooding winds.

Every day, barges steamed past our living-room picture window, perched high above the riverbank. Some ships rode low in the water, hulls pressed deep into the current by their cargo of coal, ores, chemicals, or grain. Others—empty and ready for the next load—sat high, their draft marks well above the surface. Traveling upriver toward Switzerland against the powerful current was a crawl, a maritime traffic jam. But for those swept downstream toward Holland, the river became a fairground ride.

Our tiny, sixteen-foot, fifty-horsepower runabout was anchored just below our home. To reach it, my brother and I scrambled down a steep embankment through nettles, foolishly believing that holding our breath would spare us their sting. Once we loosened the boat from its red buoy, we would fight our way upstream against the current, then reward ourselves with a safer, faster ride home.

When my brother departed for boarding school in Switzerland, I was left to my own adventures. For a young teenager, navigating the Rhine alone in a fragile, underpowered boat was daring, even dangerous. Yet I had become emboldened— surviving great river swells without capsizing, bouncing across barge wakes, and coaxing the undersized, sometimes-unwilling outboard motor.

The river barges carried not only cargo; each also carried a clutch of travelers, the crew, and often their families, housed in small quarters at the stern.

I was determined to know more about the crews inhabiting these barges. So, one afternoon, I fired up the intrepid Mercury motor and set out alone.

I soon found myself near a fully loaded barge straining upstream, its flat black hull as long as a soccer field. The engine groaned against the current, grey smoke puffing from its short stack. The crew’s cabin sat at the stern, a little retreat for the people who cared for the ship’s cargo.

On the deck, a lone figure waved to me. Curious, but mostly surprised, I waved back, edging closer.

“Hey!” he shouted in German, “Do you want to come aboard? Throw me a line!”

I don’t know who was more surprised—me, at his audacious invitation, or him, seeing a boy daring the Rhine’s treacherous current in a toy-sized boat.

Once aboard, he welcomed me into the family’s cabin: pine paneling, white lace curtains, pictures of German landscapes on the walls. He introduced me to his wife and two young children, smiling shyly. Soon there were five place settings on the small table. Sausage and sauerkraut simmered on the stove. Would I stay for dinner?

Yes, of course.

I was an interloper, a stranger invited into their world. Their welcome gave me the courage to step across the swift water and into their family, melting any unfamiliarity. Together, we were fellow travelers sharing an upstream resolve.

Decades later, I still think about that river, those people, that barge, and that dinner. How much I would have missed had I focused on what separated us—the dark waters, the swift current—instead of the wave of a generous and trusting man.

What I saw that day has served me well for decades: No matter the speed of our journey, the burden we each may carry, or the course our lives have followed, we are all better served when we dare to lean across the currents of life as we call out to others:

Do you want to come aboard? Throw me a line.

Sculpting Granite

Terry was a slab of granite—six-foot-six and broad enough to swallow the hallway light as he approached my office door.

The Texas Rehabilitation Commission had assigned me to be his employment counselor. His diagnosis unsettled me: intermittent explosive disorder. His psychiatric and criminal records confirmed what his presence suggested—volcanic outbursts, sudden and violent.

He carried fear like a scent, the byproduct of deep, unhealed wounds. His boiling point was impossible to predict.

Counseling sessions became balancing acts. When he demanded benefits the state didn’t allow, his anger surged. I rearranged my office furniture. If his temper erupted, I needed a Terry-free escape.

As a young man, Terry had been convicted of murder; he served years in prison. Not long before becoming my client, he was released after committing another murder.

Yet here he was, looking for help.

“I was in a pawnshop when this guy pulls a gun and holds up the place. There I was—a felon—with a gun in my face. What was I gonna do? I’m not even supposed to have a gun! But instinct took over. I pulled out my hidden revolver and shot him.”

“And then?”

“I got down on the bloody floor with him. I held him in my arms … and prayed for him until he died.”

Prayed for him? I wondered if beneath that rage there might be a gentler man.

My next meeting with him ran into the evening. My co-workers had gone home. The sky had blackened. Soon his demands also turned dark and unreasonable. I pushed back as gently as I could. His brow knotted as his voice grew heavy and guttural.

Then he exploded—leaping to his feet, towering, trembling, fists clenched. I measured the distance to the door. I slid my chair back, inching toward escape.

Next came the threat.

“Yeah, you need to be afraid!” he bellowed. “Run! As fast as you can! But I’ll get you before you reach your car! You won’t make it home alive!”

He stormed out, footsteps pounding down the stairwell—the same stairs I would need to take.

I called my wife. “If I’m not home in an hour, call the police.”

I waited, then ran—three steps at a time—across the parking lot, scanning shadows. No Terry. I dove into my car, engine roaring as I tore out of the lot.

Somehow, I made it home alive.

Terry was soon ejected from the program. Eventually, a new job took me from Texas to Southern California, half a continent away. I tried to forget him, assuming he’d never find work—or that he’d killed again and was serving life, if he was alive at all.

Nearly twenty years passed.

One day, a Facebook notification popped up. I almost ignored it, but the profile photo caught me—gray hair, face like a ravine, and … was that a clerical collar? I clicked. A white square at the neck, indeed, a clerical collar.

The message read: “Hello. I am trying to locate Craig Dahlberg. He was a great blessing in helping me. Pastor Terry.”

In the photo, he held up a certificate of ordination, smiling.

Pastor Terry? Could it be?

When we connected, he told me he’d turned his life around. That he was sorry for the man he’d been, sorry for how he’d treated me. Patience, kindness, and care, he said, had eventually won him over. He’d discovered that God could love a felon, even a two-time murderer.

“I’ve changed. I went to Bible school. Now I’m a pastor, helping others change their lives. I wanted to thank you. It’s all worked out so well.”

At our very worst—when fear and fury cling to us—can even our most consequential, terrible choices be redeemed? Can the raging river of life finally deposit even the worst offenders, the most troubled souls, on the peaceful shore?

Terry’s eyes told me they can. However life had sculpted him, he eventually found the Sculptor’s sure and gentle hands.

Audacious

I stood before a small door, hinged within a massive one—both built from gnarled timber. For centuries, the large door had opened to horse-drawn wagons, heavy with farm tools, fresh vegetables, and weary laborers.

The smaller door groaned as I leaned into it, inching it open.

Inside the cavernous, windowless entry to the farmhouse, I blinked against the darkness. A single, bare bulb hung overhead, its dim light barely breaking the gloom.

I’d spent the night in my one-man tent, pitched just outside the East German border.

As dawn broke the horizon, I packed my tent into my rented Volkswagen. My Bible, wrapped in my underwear, was hidden from view—concealed from the East German guards whose concrete watchtowers loomed ahead.

A truly incoherent situation: A country in collapse, being invaded by the theater of the absurd. Like East Germany, my life’s main road had just washed out; I was searching for a new road, a new career, a new horizon.

Two guards—machine guns slung casually within reach—demanded my documentation. They studied my American passport as if I had just floated down from space. One peered at me and murmured in awe,

“Ein echter Amerikaner!”

A real American!

Then the steel gate clanked open, and they waved me through. I was in East Germany—my bag unchecked for either drugs or Bibles.

East Germany swallowed me whole—its colors drained. I had walked out of Kodachrome into black-and-white. Weeds pushed through cracked concrete on the crumbling Autobahn. East German Trabant cars coughed and sputtered; mopeds with bronchitis.

I was here on a covert operation, my own “Your-mission-Craig, should-you-decide-to-accept-it …” assignment. A map on my lap, I searched for a town called Rötha. There, I hoped to find Manfred, a man I’d never met. I was not sure he even existed.

Blacklisted by the regime for being a pastor, his mail was cut off and all contact with the West was forbidden. His friends didn’t know if he was dead or alive.

Having grown up in West Germany, I spoke fluent German. So, as an American searching for Manfred, I drew less suspicion. But alone on those pitted roads, my confidence wavered.

Rötha seemed frozen in time. Bombed-out buildings leaned wearily against one another, survivors of World War II. Bullet holes still marred their bricks, untouched since the war.

Without a person or single street sign to help me, the town felt abandoned. I saw no one.

I pulled my Volkswagen into a small cobblestone square surrounded by centuries-old, thatched farmhouses.

Leaning my forehead against the steering wheel, I groaned a desperate plea: “Have I come all this way for nothing? You’ve got to help me here.” My plea sounded like the only voice in a dark and cold universe.

I stepped out of the car.

Then I saw her—a woman opening a third-floor window in one of the ancient farmhouses.

She was the first person I had seen in Rötha.

Simultaneously panicked and seizing the opportunity, I called up to her, grasping for any thread of hope.

“Kennen Sie Manfred Hoffmann?”

Do you know Manfred Hoffmann?

It was a long shot.

She froze, silent, unmoving, staring down at me, trying to make sense of what I had just asked.

Then, her face lit with shock.

“Das ist mein Mann!”

That’s my husband!

“I’ll send him right down!”

I had arrived in a ghost town, without signage or directions, searching for a man I had never met—a nearly impossible task. And the first person I encountered—was his wife.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness behind the weathered farmhouse door, a man’s face slowly emerged—wet with tears.

Then he stood still; Manfred was rooted to the stone floor, unable to move. He spoke halting German, barely able to speak through his sobs.

“I’m Manfred Hoffmann,” he said, voice catching. “I’ve prayed for someone to find me for a very long time… but I never imagined they’d come all the way from America.”

I stayed with Manfred’s family for many days. Eventually, the crumbling Autobahn led me away from Rötha. But I would never be the same.

Soon, the East German regime collapsed. After the wall fell, many letters passed between Manfred and me.

But the most enduring connection was forged that evening under the glow of a single bare bulb in a shadowed entryway.

“You’ve got to help me here,” I prayed. Or was that too visceral to be prayer? Perhaps God answers raw and audacious prayers ahead of polite and saintly ones.

Precious Years

A brother and sister, our children’s playmates, were a matched set—like miniature chess pieces—completely out of scale with other children their age. They were aging at a furious pace.

Their paper-thin skin stretched over their fragile frames. Tripping over a garden hose could be dangerous. A misdirected softball might shatter their brittle bones.

They both suffered from progeria, a rare genetic disorder that occurs in just one out of every four million births. Progeria brings stunted growth, abnormal facial features, and rapid aging. The average life expectancy is just 14.5 years.

Yet while these neighborhood children were trapped in old bodies, their spirits hadn’t gotten that message. They launched their miniature frames like carefree foals, sunlight dancing off their bald heads, their oversized eyes magnified behind thick lenses. Though their hyper-aged bodies may have been nearing the end of life, the children gleefully rode tiny bicycles down our street with the joy and abandon of most nine-year-olds.

They were the happy children. They seemed to savor every moment, free from anxiety, fully engaged in each passing day. Their joy seemed a deliberate rebellion against passing time. Though their coming years might be few, their spirits pushed progeria to the very edge of their lives.

Another image comes to mind: Judah’s King Hezekiah, sitting in the shadowed corners of his throne room. At 39, he had already lived twice as long as the expected lifespan of my young neighbors. He, too, suffered from a terminal illness—a painful, ulcerous disease. But unlike the joyful siblings, Hezekiah was consumed by despair. Despite his wealth and power, he felt abandoned and afraid.

In his desperation, Hezekiah cried out to God. And God answered, granting the king 15 more years of life. During that bonus time, he even fathered an heir to the throne.

Today, many of us enjoy an even greater bonus. With medical advances and improved living conditions, the average lifespan has climbed into the seventies—thirty years longer than that of a person in 19th-century England, and twice the years Hezekiah had been given.

Longevity is a luxury. But it’s also a test.

Will I spend this gift of time clearing e-mails, binge-watching forgettable shows, or fixating on ulcer-inducing headlines? Will I obsess over spreadsheets, hoping to avoid starvation and failing to keep up?

In contrast, I often recall the wholehearted outlook of my children’s progeria friends. Could their example teach me to invest my own years more wisely? Could I cultivate a heart that is more hopeful and grateful for the joys each day brings?

Whether we face a shortened life, a fifteen-year bonus, or a thirty-year longevity bump, one question rises above the rest:

Not “How long will I live?”

Rather, “How will I fill the time I have been given?”

Offramp

Both sides had presented compelling arguments. Then, we were bussed to the accident site to examine the gasoline tanker truck’s black tire marks — long, abstract streaks of rubber distorted across the concrete, and a chaotic map of the truck’s doomed path. The twisted metal had shrieked against the concrete guardrail, and the explosion that followed had incinerated the truck.

The judge had commissioned the jury to untangle another mess: what caused the horrific accident, and who was at fault? The driver, for driving recklessly? Or the state, for an ill-conceived offramp?

The twelve of us jurors traded uneasy glances, unsure how to arrive at a verdict or how to even select a presiding juror. We fidgeted, we meditated, we evaluated, we fumbled. We were all new to this.

At last, I found myself seated in the presiding juror’s chair. I had been selected to bring twelve diverse perspectives together, and to guide us toward a unanimous verdict.

The youngest juror squirmed uncomfortably in her chair. During the courtroom proceedings, she had listened carefully as the truck driver’s family poured out their grief, speaking of the driver’s character and the void left by his absence. They wanted justice for his death.

So even before our deliberations began, she had already reached her own verdict.

But the case was not so straightforward.

The truck driver had overturned his truck while exiting a curiously designed freeway offramp. Instead of a gradual, predictable curve, its radius tightened like the ridges of a human ear. For an inattentive or a speeding driver, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

We had to decide—was the driver at fault for mishandling his truck? Or did the state bear responsibility for designing a dangerous offramp?

There was a complicating dilemma: Could both be partially at fault? If so, in what proportion?

We deliberated, drifting like a boat on an invisible tide. Blame shifted back and forth. But gradually, confusion collided with the evidence. The ramp may have been poorly conceived, but a clearly posted speed limit sign stood at the entrance to the offramp. If the truck had traveled at the posted speed, it could have safely navigated the offramp. But the truck was traveling at least fifteen miles per hour over the limit.

The driver was speeding.

We, the jurors, were nearly unanimous. All agreed that the ill-fated driver was at fault—all of us except the young juror, who eyed me with suspicion.

“I don’t agree,” she said, her voice firm. “This should have had a different outcome. The offramp design was fatally flawed. The state is to blame.”

I struggled. Yes, I felt compassion for the truck driver’s family. But I also wanted true justice, not simply an act of pity.

What is justice? I wondered. Where is the place of mercy?

We tried to reach a compromise for our split decision. A bidding war began—me against the young juror. I held the driver’s fault at 51%. She settled on 49% fault for the state. I won the bidding war.

But it felt like a hollow victory.

Yes, I believed that justice had prevailed. But I also desired comfort for the bereaved family, who had lost their loved one.

So I was left with questions that were difficult to answer.

When does compassion collide with justice? When does justice override compassion?

And perhaps most importantly:

Does prevailing by doing the “right thing” lead us to pride? Or can compassion and justice lead to a straightforward, ethical offramp that is both truthful and rich in mercy?

Friendship Afloat

The fight was on. Rick’s fists grazed my head as a giant, feather-engorged pillow collided with my face. Feathers exploded into the air, drifting throughout the cabin. When our pillows finally ran out of feathers, we called a time-out. It was 1958; we had just met aboard the SS United States.

Steam billowed from the four turbine engines as we cruised east across the Atlantic. Ford Motor Company was transferring our fathers and moving our families to Germany. We had five days of open seas before docking in Southampton, England.

Smoke trailed behind the massive twin red, white, and blue stacks as we prowled every deck and explored the ship’s innards like giant viruses. We strained to peer into the bridge, mesmerized by its massive brass gauges and outsized levered controls.

That day in 1958, I found a new friend in a pillow fight—a friendship that, 67 years later, remains my longest-enduring bond.

The distinguished service of the SS United States expired long ago. Now a 72-year-old relic, the ship that convened my school of friendship, is being scuttled to serve as an artificial reef. Schools of fish will soon inhabit our old pillow fight venues. Stingrays might glide through the luxury ballroom, where we once stole glimpses of Steve Allen, Rita Hayworth, and the Aga Khan. Sea slugs may ooze across our dining tables. Aquatic life might gather, to be protected by the submerged swimming pool.

Friendships were simple then. Proximity was the great unifier, and shared experience outweighed any cultural or political differences. Living down the block or down a passenger ship’s shared corridor meant you were “in.” Even today, the memory of those shared moments brings the joy of genuine friendship.

But what becomes of older friendships? Do they have a shelf life, expiring like an aged maritime vessel scuttled to the ocean floor? Geographic distance, circumstance, or life-altering challenges can erode bonds. Or we may simply drift apart like melting icebergs.

New friendships are even harder to predict. They may bloom unexpectedly—sometimes forged through crisis or compressed by circumstance. Even among people with opposing perspectives, bonds can form in surprising ways.

Yet can we intentionally recreate that magic? After the uncomplicated friendships of youth, is it still possible to build deep, lasting connections?

In their duet, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers remind us, “You can’t make old friends.” Old friends accompany us on long, challenging roads. We finish each other’s thoughts, anticipate a punchline before it’s delivered, and share comfortable silences. In winter’s chill, old friends bring warm bisque to our souls.

The central question remains: What qualities are essential for lasting friendships?

In his book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, David Brooks offers essential insights:

“The real act of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete social actions well: disagreeing without poisoning the relationship; revealing vulnerability at the appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to end a conversation gracefully; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to let someone down without breaking their heart; knowing how to sit with someone who is suffering; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another’s point of view.”

Brooks suggests friendships are not born randomly. Instead, creating high-quality relationships requires intentionality. Friendships are crafted when we model selflessness and genuine care for others. We shift our focus from “me” to “you,” providing the nutrients for new and enduring connections to flourish.

Ultimately, we become the kind of friend that others—and we ourselves—value. Just the kind of friend who is always up for a friendly pillow fight.

Through the Firestorm

My neurosurgeon declared my back a disaster zone. “You’ve got major problems in every part of your back, all the way down.” My MRI agreed; weird twists, turns and dead ends. Doc said it best, “Your back looks like a pack mule’s path down into the mine.”

As the Los Angeles firestorm raged a few miles from my hospital room, needles had invaded veins in both my hands in preparation for my back surgery. Pain clawed my brain. The world around me—my body, other hospital patients, caregivers, and all those fighting flames—seemed to struggle against a rapidly darkening place.

A newly arrived nursing assistant had just started her shift. She was a woman with a big presence and even bigger false eyelashes. Needing relief, I asked her to tell me something interesting about herself.

“Honey,” she bellowed, “I just love people! I love helping people! I can’t help it! I just love people!”

My “dark place” violently imploded. She was just the cure I needed. God had worked overtime to intersect our lives at this moment.

But when the hospital shift changed, a different, more subdued and thoughtful nurse took charge of me. I soon discovered the reason for her demeanor. Because I asked, she showed me her family portrait—a handsome couple with their 3-year-old son. Last month, her husband’s father passed away from an inherited disorder causing glandular tumors.

Then, just last week, she discovered her son had inherited the same incurable condition. He faces lifelong vigilance and surgeries. As she told me her story, her face was resolute, unblinking, stoic.

As we talked, I began to think. How many people hold the cures for what ails others, if they would only reach out to them? And how many needy people have I passed by, never offering the help they needed and I could give?

I turned to look at my roommate. Helpless and diapered, nurses had to occasionally assist him in his bedridden state. But that triggered fierce coughing, which induced long bouts of vomiting.

Of course, I could hear through the privacy curtain when his daughter came to visit. He was confused, unable to connect the dots in their conversation. “What are your wishes?” she asked repeatedly and emphatically, like he was a child.

That was easy. He wanted to go back home.

“But that’s not a choice, Dad. I meant, which hospice facility do you prefer?”

He did not answer.

The next day, his wife visited him. She gushed with emotion. “Honey, I just love you so much!”

After a long silence, he sighed and muttered, “Oh, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?” she replied, confused.

“I don’t know. This might be the end.” Although he was speaking of his own life, his voice contained no hint of desperation, no anxiety, not a touch of fear. His pain seemed to push his heart into a new orbit. Perhaps he saw more clearly than anyone else around him.

Because of his suffering and commotion, the nurses offered to move me to a quieter room. I declined. Though we could no longer converse very much, we understood one another.

But, as I was wheeled out of the hospital to go home, I paused at the foot of his bed. I stared into his face and gave both his big toes a squeeze; he nodded and smiled back at me.

I know, and you know, that when our physical bodies reach the boundaries of their human capacity, hope can become stretched thin. But in that weakened place, those squeezes, nods, and smiles reach our deepest place. They carry the expressions of love, the best gift that God offers us. And they are the best we can offer to others.

Big Eyelashes, Brave Nurse, Distressed Roommate, the Firefighters — you all carried the same message: You Are Loved.