the man lived. Not nearly enough, but not insufficiently. He found his life’s work thrice: as an activist; as a chef; and as a painter. He understood himself as something larger than himself: His mighty, extended family of origin; his beloved native land and its people. He found love and became part of a new extended family, and a new people. He ha

He had told me in those final days that when accepting his cancers, he’d lost his faith, but he also told me that I should never lose mine. That it was the most interesting thing about me. Emboldened, I read to him from a psalm of King David, Psalm 32.

After the war in Liberia you rented a house in the capital and lived there for years. Years. Who does that? No one I know except you, my dear friend. That’s part of Misrata, too. That’s also part of what you died for: the decision to live a life that was thrown open to all the beauty and misery and ugliness and joy in the world.