If you happened to be in the town of Lubec, Maine in July of 2016, you may have seen something a little curious on the horizon when you looked out across the bay. In the distance, on an otherwise uninhabited island, loomed large black letters that spelled the word "FOREVER."
The sign was 15 feet tall and 50 feet wide, large enough so that on a clear day, you really could see "FOREVER," the word perfectly visible and legible in the distance.
But on some days, a thick white fog would roll in off the ocean, erasing the word and the view altogether.
And sometimes, like in this video, you could barely see "FOREVER" peeking out of the shifting fog, accompanied only by the rhythmic warning sounds of fog horns. It started out as a fairly simple idea, albeit a little strange, to put the word "FOREVER" in the landscape so it could appear and disappear in the fog.
But it took over a year to plan and execute, and it required the help of so many people, like the lobster boat captain, who helped transport all of the materials to the island. And the volunteers, who helped carry thousands of pounds of wood and steel to the top of the hill through waist-high shrubs.
And in the end, "FOREVER" only lasted for three weeks. So if you're wondering why I did it at all,
as I often did during that process, it might help for you to know a little bit more about me and my upbringing. I grew up in an evangelical Christian family.
And although I'm an atheist today, I've realized that my religious upbringing has played a really important role in shaping the person that I've become. In 1986, when I was five years old, my parents became missionaries to South Africa.
And that was during the last few years of the apartheid, so we lived in an all-white neighborhood, and I attended an all-white public school, while my parents helped found a multiracial church in downtown Cape Town. Because I was so young, it was impossible for me to understand the magnitude of what was happening in South Africa at that time.
I witnessed the racism and oppression of people of color I knew and loved on a daily basis, but because of my own skin color, there was no way I could fully comprehend it. But I had the privilege to experience, firsthand, one of the most influential social movements of the 20th century.
