It started innocently enough. I was curled up in bed, flipping through the pages of The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida, one of those books that dares men to examine their edge and authenticity.
Somewhere in the middle of a passage about presence and purpose, I paused. Not because of what was written on the page but because a name floated into my mind.
John.
My old friend. Someone I considered to be my best friend at one point. We hadn’t spoken in years.
Yes there was a reason for our lack of contact which I’m not going to get into. I knew he had been living in the Chicago area where we first met in the late nineties. It was one of those rare friendships rooted in philosophical wonder, masculine honesty, and mutual respect.
And so when he flashed in my memory, I did what many of us would do in this modern age of instant answers.
I Googled him.
And there it was.
His obituary.
John had passed away several months ago.
I froze. I read and reread the words, as if repetition might rewrite the truth. But there it was, printed in plain, unfeeling type: he was gone.
A Table, A Book, A Beginning
What struck me almost instantly in that moment of grief was an image burned into my memory—John’s kitchen table back in the 90s. On it lay a copy of The Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell.
It was the first time I had seen those words in print. I had already been nudged toward Eastern philosophy through Phil Jackson’s Sacred Hoops, but this was different.
This wasn’t basketball or coaching metaphors. This was the pure, poetic pulse of the Tao.
And it was John—evangelical Christian, rugged conversationalist, sharp-witted, deeply reflective John—who unknowingly made me aware of the book that would later become a cornerstone of my spiritual life.
There’s a paradox in that, and perhaps that’s why it stayed with me.
John: A Man of Unconventional Strength
John was, by most people’s shallow standards, physically unusual. He stood about 5’1”, with a pronounced hunchback and an extra set of phalanges on one hand.
But to those who truly saw him, he was larger than life—imposing not in size, but in presence. His intellect, humor, and charisma towered over many of us.
He had this way of talking about life, about manhood, that blended the deeply spiritual with the ruggedly practical. I remember one of his mantras:
“In the absence of a crystal-clear yes, it has to be a no.”
That sentence alone saved me from countless missteps. It’s become a kind of inner compass, echoing in moments when I’ve had to make hard decisions about love, work, even identity. John was that kind of man—one whose words found their way into your marrow.
We were introduced by a friend named Therese, back when I was traveling the country as a speaker. John and I connected instantly, as if we had known each other in a previous life. Our conversations would tumble from the Bible to sexuality, from Taoism to the Chicago Bulls. He loved deeply, debated fiercely, and believed unshakably—even when life had given him every reason to do otherwise.
Death as a Reminder, Not a Fear
Discovering his passing in the quiet hush of a book-induced reverie brought me back to something Taoism often whispers but rarely shouts:
Death is not an interruption of life, but a continuation of the Way.
Lao Tzu reminds us:
“Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.”
And Zhuangzi famously laughed when his wife died—not out of mockery, but because he saw her return to the great undifferentiated flow of the Tao. Her form had simply dissolved back into the All.
Likewise, the I Ching reminds us that life is movement, change, transformation. Hexagram 49, Ge (Revolution), speaks of the necessity of death—not just physical, but symbolic—as a means for renewal. In the ever-turning wheel, what must go must go so that the new may rise.
Even the Bhagavad Gita—a sacred text from another Eastern stream—offers profound calm in the face of mortality.
Krishna tells Arjuna on the battlefield:
“The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die… it is not slain when the body is slain.”
These ancient echoes, these spiritual refrains, remind me now that John is not lost. He is just… returned.
Digital Ghosts and Real Grief
Still, no philosophy—no matter how transcendent—erases the very human experience of discovering someone you loved has died without your knowing. There’s something haunting about finding that out through a screen, like stumbling upon a ghost in the machine.
I scrolled through condolences from people I didn’t know. Photos of him with a new congregation, a different circle. And yet, it was him. The same John who handed me the Tao without even realizing it. The same John who once told me that “real masculinity requires knowing your own wounds.”
My grief came not in a wave, but in a slow, persistent tide. It wasn’t just about John’s death. It was about time, distance, and the inevitable truth that none of us get out of this life alive. It was about the unfinished conversations, the missed phone calls, the plans postponed until “someday.”
Living the Tao, Even in Grief
I don’t write this to wrap a bow around death. There is no neat ending, no easy meaning to find when someone we love is no longer walking this earth. But I do write this as a kind of offering. A remembrance. A moment to say:
Thank you, John.
Thank you for your flawed beauty, your fierce loyalty, your spiritual contradictions, and your quiet gifting of the Tao. Thank you for reminding me that manhood isn’t a posture—it’s a practice. Thank you for that phrase, that koan I still use:
“In the absence of a crystal-clear yes, it has to be a no.”
That was your Tao. And now it’s part of mine.
An Invitation to Pause
If you’re reading this, maybe you’ve also lost someone you didn’t know was gone. Maybe you’ve wondered where they were, only to find their name in the obits, frozen in time. Or maybe you’ve simply drifted from someone whose presence once shaped you.
My invitation is this:
Pause. Remember. Reach out.
Send the text. Make the call. Say the thank-you.
Because, as the Tao teaches us, every moment is the last of its kind.
John’s passing reminds me not just that death is real—but that life is urgent. Not urgent in the frenetic, busy way. But urgent in its need to be felt, shared, and honored.
Because in the end, the Tao doesn’t ask us to avoid death. It asks us to live so fully that when it comes, we are already flowing with it.
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That is beautiful.
I'm sorry to hear about your loss, Diamond-Michael. And thank you for this powerful phrase:
“In the absence of a crystal-clear yes, it has to be a no.”