So thank you very much. If you would like to make a donation, you can see me afterwards, and i can introduce you to the right people who would love to talk with you. So a little bit of housekeeping. Im going to introduce our author, Erick Erickson, and then hes going to speak a little bit, and then well open the floor up to questions. If you do have a question, please coup up at the mic queue end an the mic over here. We want the audience at home to be able to here as well. Erick erickson is the popular host of atlantas evening news, 95. 5 fm. Hes the former editor of red state. He launched his web site, the resurgent, in 2016. Hes also a Fox News Contributor who the atlantic has called the most powerful conservative in America Today. He studied Political Science and history at Mercer University and earned a law degree at walter f. George school of law. He lives in macon, georgia, with his family. In late 2016 he and his wife were both diagnosed with grave medical conditions. In the midst of his wifes battle with cancer, he was rushed to the hospital, his lungs filled with a potentially fatal influx of blood clots. Facing this and contemplating his mortality, erickson published an unusual piece to his web site, the resurgent, which gets more than 2. 8 Million Viewers per month. Ericksons text was unlike anything hed ever published before. It wasnt a story about washington intrigue or days news. Instead, he wrote about values, the enduring lessons that he would want his children to live by even if he were no longer with them. The piece went viral with an overwhelming response that stretched far beyond ericksons fan base. David brooks contrasting the essay with the values demonstrated by donald trump wrote that erickson and his wife are, quote, both living lives of love, faith, devotion and service. Both have an ultimate confidence in the goodness of creation and their gracefilled place in it. You may share that faith or not, but erickson is living an attractive life excuse me, an attached life emotionally, spiritually, morally and communeally. Id like to welcome. Eric son. [applause] [inaudible conversations] probably so. If im going to read, i probably need a copy. [laughter] i forgot to bring one. Thanks. I got it. Thank you all for having me. Thanks to those of you watching live. My name is Erick Erickson, i am from a rural part of louisiana, and when i was 5 years old, my dads company was an oil company and gave him a choice, move to dubai or find a new job. So when i was little, we moved to the middle east and lived there for about ten years. The cool thing about growing up there is that every three months we had to leave the country to get ours visas renewed, and our dads company would pay for it. Ive till been to more countries than states. I have been to montana to perform a wedding, the downside of being in seminary is all your friends want you to do their wedding for you. So far no divorces. And so ive seen montana, but ive never seen wyoming or dye, ive never really or idaho, never really been into the Rocky Mountains before, never been to the west coast, although im going to los angeles this coming week. And it really was an eyeopening experiment traveling abroad. And i know my kids are never going to have that experience. It definitely really shaped who i was to particularly be in the middle east in the 1980s during the iran iraq war, multiple times having people try to blow our school up, having bomb threats called in from various organizations, having to have our sandwiches opened by guards to look for explosives as we walked to school had the morning. We walked to school. We lived many an open neighborhood. And then to move home where overseas we had a lot of camel racing and cricket and soccer, and politics became kind of a connection to me to be connected as an american. And i became a political junkie. I went to college. Actually, being from louisiana suffer vied the ed win Edwards David duke race where my parents had the sticker that said vote for the crook, its important. And left shortly thereafter to go to college in georgia where i met my wife and stayed and made a home and went to law school, practiced law miserably for five years. And one day one of the partners at my law firm came in and asked me, he said do you know what the definition of a dumb ass is . I said, no. He said, you, go do politic, thats what you like. So i did. Things kind of exploded. In 2009cnn called and asked if i wanted a job and had a friend here who had to to put up with me for three years at cnn. And after the 2012 election, moved over to fox where ive been since. And my life has revolved around politics day in and day out. Its somewhat funny, because my wife is not a political creature9 at all. I got to drive in jack kemps motorcade in 1986, and my wife said, thats great, but whos jack kemp . I said, hes running for Vice President. And she was silent for a minute and said, you have to campaign to be the Vice President of the university . [laughter] she not a political creature at all. We dont discuss politics at home. I have in the past several yearing, though, become more and more committed to my faith. I started going to seminary largely because i talk about faith and culture on my Radio Program in atlanta and started getting a lot of smaller churches, they would call and say could you fill in on sunday for the pastor. Hes going to be gone. And i would say, no, because i had never been to seminary, and i kept getting so many of these requests, i figured it was probably time to go to seminary. Then they found out i was going to reformed seminary, and one of them have called since. I love it. I take a class a semester. When i first went, the president took me out to lunch and said you have to make me a promise before you go to seminary. I said, okay, what. Make the promise, and ill tell you what youre promising. So i made the promise and he said, good, dont go to seminary. And i said, well, how is this going to work . Id already paid the tuition. He said, well, you can come take classes, but if yo go to seminary you go take seminary, youre going to sound like that on the radio. Your ratings will tank. So i go to class. I just take classes. Ive taken the systematic classes, the theological classes, knockout making my way eventually, ill have a degree, but ive enjoyed it. In the process ive realized more and more my politics and my faith were butting heads, and i needed to do a better job of reconciling my politics to my faith instead of my faith to politics. And this past year i think i saw many of my friends choose the opposite way of trying to conform their faith to their politics instead of the other way around. As a committed christian and conservative i cant support donald trump for president even though i am a republican and a conservative i wasnt going to vote for him. We had people on our doorstep, armed guards in our house. My children met people who wanted them to know their father was destroying the country and they needed to do something, they would come him in tears because kids would ask had i been shot or was i going to be shot or their parents hated me and they needed to know it. It was hard on the whole family. I was having a harder time breathing. I decided to get back in shape and joined the crossfit which i actually enjoyed but couldnt keep up. I would hit 40 and i am getting old, that i thought it was allergies and didnt know what it was and finally in mid april 2016, the stress of this and deciding it is the stress, i was out of breath, literally laying my head on the pillow, it left me out of breath rolling over in bed would leave me gasping and my wife made me go to the doctor. I didnt have a choice. She hid my laptop, took away my radio microphone and made me go to the doctor and i went and next thing i knew i was wheeled into a hospital. As they were pushing me into the ct machine to scan my lungs my wife got a call on her cell phone and the waiting room from doctors in the mayo clinic who thought she needed to have her lungs checked. As i get out of the ct scan, the technicians arent supposed to tell you anything and this young man comes in and doesnt want to make eye contact with me and says should i strap him down . I just laughed, it is that bad . He put his hand on my chest and said please dont move, you should be dead. They start strapping me down and moved me to a stretcher, as i am going, they have my scan on the board and putting ivs in me, the doctor on call i could tell was looking at my scan and says have you taken his body to the morgue yet. My blood oxygen level was below 90 and i had more blood clots in my lungs than they could count. I have yet to see a doctor since then who has looked at me, they all look at me and said do you know you are supposed to be dead . I have blood clots in my lungs right now. They their old ones, not new. It made traveling on airplanes interesting but i do that. My wife flies to arizona because im not allowed to travel on a plane and they diagnosed her with an incurable form of lung cancer. It is genetic, she takes a tiny pill every day. As long as the pool works, she is fine, we go for scans between humans and our life revolve around normalcy. As long as the medicine works, she is fine. The medicine will stop working and we hope they will have created another medicine. News did come out the last couple weeks, the last 24 months, it is an amazing thing of his cancer every 24 months, on a cycle the same mutation for everybody and they keep up with developers of the medicines. While all of this is going on and protesters at the house, i realized my life revolves around politics, we dont talk about it at the house and try to find other things to talk about and it was important for me to write down for my kids, was i wanted them to know about god, what i wanted them to know about me, bad news and good things and my kids school which is connected to the church a running joke, never allowed to use an example of googleing as you never know what will come up. Them is true and a lot of it not but i learned to write to my kids about the bad i have done in the good things i have done and the regrets i have and the bad things i have done and why they should listen to me because i have done those things, learned my lesson and their favorite recipes, if i die before they wake how would they make the cinnamon rules, how would they make gumbos with leftovers from thanksgiving every year. Not that they have eaten those things right now, my kids are in the Chicken Nuggets cheese pizza phase other than Cinnamon Rolls but how would they do these things if we were both gone . What lessons what i want them to know . How would i want to know about the way i raised them the way i was raised so i started writing these things down. A piece on my website took on a life on its own after david brooks mentioned it in contrast to the president s values, around the time of the access Hollywood Tape coming out and contrasted what he thought were the president s values with mine in the way the president surrounded him with people and the way i have and it was the easiest book i have ever written. I have written three. The other two, one is worth getting the first one not. This one, the most personal book i have written and the lessons i want my kids to know, as a practicing christian i want them to understand increasingly the values in the world are going to be there values and how do they navigate a world that seems upside down from their perspective in faith, how do they reconcile being in the world with being of the world . I want them to know they need to do what is right even when it is not liked. I want them to find self worth not by the retweets they get or facebook likes or on instagram because judging their selfworth based on what other people think of them. I want them to give their selfworth from being ethical people who i want them to know their actual neighbor which is the other reason for recipes. In our world, among my political friends on both sides of the aisle we now create for ourselves, our own communities online. Everyone in our Community Looks exactly like us, think exactly like us, we share the same thought, nothing is a surprise to us because surprise is not allowed in and we dont know the person in the apartment next door for the house down the street, we dont Pay Attention to the homeless man under the bridge, he is from someone elses community, not ours. It is all online. One day you get sick and think youre going to die and need your kids to know about you and life and realize it is not our facebook friends who are bringing us meals committed our Church Friends or the person across the street who heard about the situation and we need to know our nextdoor neighbor, to know about the person down the street who has problems and needs help, to bring into our home and have around our Kitchen Table people from our church so our kids see other people share our values and bring in the people we dont know but want to know who may not share our values, show our kids we can find Common Ground as people with people who disagree completely on politics. One of the lessons i learned at cnn, i grew up watching cnn in dubai, the only American News network we had. People like James Carville and Donna Brazile where the bad guys. I was a conservative and they were on the other side of the island they are some of my best friends now. We could find Common Ground over food, we could find it over sports and we were rooting for the saints when they were losing, now a win and we still root for them. We can find other things to find Common Ground other than politics. When Henry Kissinger said about academics, the fights are so nasty because they are so meaningless, so Many Political fights are so nasty because they are so meaningless, neither side changes much of anything these days but we have the power with ourselves to change our communities by getting to know the people next door, helping the person next door when they cant help themselves, hoping but not expecting they might help us one day when we need help, showing grace to people who dont show us grace, being friends with people who dont want to be our friend. I want them to be a better person than i was. The aspiration of every parent is for them to be better. Those are the reasons i wrote this. The last chapter as i was writing the first eight chapters i would make list of the recipes i needed to include and all the things i wanted them to know that i wasnt sure i could work in somewhere else. The last chapter was almost my version of proverbs, the pieces of advice my dad gave me like dont worry about the laundry tags, no one can read them. My favorite piece of advice from my dad was move a days drive from home when you are married so you cant go home to mom after the fight. We live in as drive from my house, two hours from her parents, but then we dont fight because my wife is taller than me and has a shotgun so i am scared of her. Those are the reasons why. I will read you a little bit of this. I emailed my editor and said i want to write a chapter on what i was going through at the very moment i wrote the chapter and the title of it needs to be the theology of suffering because that is what i was dwelling on. No one is going to read a chapter entitled the theology of suffering, come up with a better name. The title is chapter 2 summer in the south and this is literally what is going on as i am writing this chapter in real time. Here is what is happening as i am writing this, gunnar was in surgery having his tonsils and adenoids removed. 5 days ago kristi, my wife, had surgery to reattach her retina. The last week i have gotten up at midnight at 4 00 in the morning and 6 00 in the morning to give gunnar Pain Medicine. Christian had to have Pain Medicine too. Thankfully my inlaws stated with us for the week. They did the laundry, helps with homework and taking care of gunnar, i worked all day in addition to being up all night, and found myself staying up until midnight to give gunnar his first dose of medicine and in a quiet part of the night doing as much as i could including writing this. Every time i would wake gunnar up he screamed for close to 20 minutes he will spit out the medicine multiple times, we go through multiple shirts he will finally be still and submit. Not sure there is a better analogy than be still and know that i am dad to paraphrase scripture. Staying up after gunnar is back to sleep, it hurts to see my wife and kids in pain. Gunnar have screams were so terrible, he holds his throat and covers his ears with his elbows. When that does not work he moves his hands from covering his ears to his throat. My doctor said his ears would hurt but i had no idea how badly they would hurt. And as people tried to sterilize themselves with pain like this, to shield themselves, i shield my kids from pain, i shield my wife from pain, pain is part of the process. How do we appreciate joy if we have not known misery, and we appreciate comfort if we have not known pain. If nothing else there is a theology to pain and suffering. I have a preacher friend who tell the story about pain from an old church, there were three women all of whom had cancer, the first took oral chemotherapy like my wife, she had no nausea but had private pain come a rash and sores in her mouth. The second took traditional chemotherapy, she lost weight, had nausea and her hair fell out. The third woman did all of it and it worked, all she had to do was prepare to die. The first woman looked at the second and was glad she kept her hair in her finger, and losing her hair was a better trade being a better pain and aching all the time. They looked at the third woman and realized they were going through a rough patch but their treatment was working. The third woman looked back at the first and was glad to have been relieved of her struggle, glad it was over, all three women looked at another woman who lost her son in a bombing, a all thought they had terrible struggles, they did not have to deal with the loss of losing a son. The fourth woman confided that she was consoling herself that her son would never go through the struggle those other women went