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Hi, everyone. I'm Brian McLaren. Welcome to this episode of Learning How to See.

I spent much of my life in the Washington, D.C. area. I grew up there. I raised my children there.

I taught at area colleges and universities there. I served as a pastor in a D.C. area church.

When you live in Washington, D.C., you get a lot of visitors who want to see the city.

And so I got used to leading visitors on tours.

We'd have many stops on the tours that I would lead,

but I'll just mention three of them.

Often we would stop at the Holocaust Museum.

Obviously, that's not the kind of place you want to go to often,

but I actually went there many, many times

because I was bringing visitors.

And walking through the Holocaust Museum,

you can't help but ponder war

and the brutality that human beings are capable of

and the social disease of authoritarianism, against which we must always

be vigilant. Often we would go to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, that V-shaped wall of stark, shiny,

black marble with names that you read, and you read the name you see your own reflection.

I'll never forget taking one friend there, a Vietnam veteran himself.

I remember when he found the name of his close buddy and how he knelt there and wept.

I would often bring people to the FDR Memorial.

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