I’m speaking up today in honor of Jim Kline, a man who has for years delivered perspectives — a man who recently died and left a big hole in the hearts of many.
Why such a BIG hole? Because Jim lived a careful life. Not careful as in tentative and fearful, but careful as in serious and compassionate.
That was Jim. He was eager to share views here on WNIJ, and elsewhere, but only after listening carefully, to others — especially to those discounted and disrespected by the world, because he knew they had the most to teach him.
He listened carefully to those who disagreed with him. Over coffee with his Genoa buddies, he was almost always the minority voice. So Jim made it his school for carefully measuring words to lift people up and not knock them down.
Whether riding his bicycle across the USA or walking a trail in Russell Woods, Jim was careful to greet everyone he encountered along the way.
But Jim was most careful of all to fit his life and his words to the compassion of Christ. He gave thanks when he found a church home where misfits and misused people of this world were as welcome as they were at Jesus’ dinner table.
It leaves a big hole when someone special like Jim Kline dies. It’s now up to us to fill that hole by living and speaking as carefully as he did.
I’m John Seraphine, and that’s my perspective.