He heads up the division of Compassion International I work with most.  He’s in charge of guys like Brian who are in charge of guys like me who travel around making music and speaking on behalf of Compassion.  (In the last twelve months, I just found out, we’ve rescued 1008 kids from poverty by finding them sponsors at my shows.)

Steve came to the show to see what I do and just hang out and then he had Brody and I over to his house afterward for some food and good story-telling.  As soon as we got to his house, just as the cheese and bread was plopped down on the kitchen counter and drinks were poured, Steve asks, “So, Shaun, tell me how you decided what enough was?”

My answer?  “I haven’t.” Well, of course it took me a lot longer to say that but that’s the summary.

Steve has seen the worst poverty in the world.  He explains to his kids’ classes on career day that his job is to take money from the people who have most of it and get that money to the people who don’t have enough of it.  And it made me feel so much less weird to know that he too asks the same questions I’ve asked about “enough” and hasn’t found more concrete answers than I have.  It validates my asking. (And my not knowing.) And validates my hunch that the asking may be more important than finding an answer that can be reduced to a paragraph or a book or a program.

Because he works with folks in the music business he’s also, I’m guessing, seen quite a bit of excess.  And he lives in the suburbs, has kids who wants stuff, has an appetite for wine and cheese and wood working and guitars.  So he’s also felt the contradiction of speaking on behalf of the poor while living and working in wealth relative to those he represents.

We mostly just laughed, told stories, learned about each other – while we ate cheese and drank wine.  But I walked away a little lighter.