Editor's note: This essay from Christian musician Jason Gray is abridged from a blog post at The Rabbit Room.

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"L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." Translation: "What is essential is invisible to the eyes." From Antoine De Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince.

These are the words on a plaque hanging in the office of my new hero. Who might that be? Kierkegard? Billy Graham? Bono?

Would you be surprised if I told you it was … Mister Rogers?

Let me explain: On a recent set of tour dates, I was talking books with Neil Tankersly, keyboardist for Echoing Angels, when he recommended a book about children's television icon Mister Rogers. At first I was skeptical and feigned enough interest to be polite, but not enough to encourage him to tell me more about it. Not taking my cue, he continued to rave about the book and then even started looking up YouTube videos of Mister Rogers for me to watch. This was not cool, and it made me seriously question not only my new friend's taste in books, but his masculinity as well.

A smiling face, loved by children round the world

A smiling face, loved by children round the world

I remember groaning inwardly at the prospect of having to sit there and watch what I imagined would be lame video clips of a man I had pre-judged as a bland, out of step, simple, cardigan-wearing milquetoast with little to interest or offer a cultured and savvy sophisticate like me.

The lesser of my confessions today is my regret over my self-righteousness and the countless ways it blinds me. But my more pertinent confession is that I couldn't have been more wrong about Mister Rogers! It wasn't 30 seconds into the first clip before I found tears in my eyes and was doing everything I could to suppress embarrassing sobs as I watched Fred Rogers's acceptance speech at the 1997 Emmy Awards, a speech that was such a selfless and honoring expression of love that as the camera scanned the audience, even the posturing Hollywood crowd in attendance was transformed—beautiful actors and actresses losing their composure, their makeup running as they fought back their own tears. What was visited upon them—and me—through Mister Rogers was a moment of humanity and grace.

An accident? I don't think so. Another YouTube clip shows Rogers's guiding philosophy for his show as he talks about what a powerful medium television is, and wondered "why wouldn't we use this medium to broadcast grace?" It was then that the scales fell from my eyes and I felt as if I saw this dear man correctly for the first time. Far from the bland, weak, pushover I had earlier dismissed, I now saw an intentional and innovative champion of the gospel whose brilliance was outmatched only by his capacity for kindness.

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'I'm Proud of You'

After returning home, I ordered the book, I'm Proud of You by Tim Madigan, the story of a surprising friendship that was born out of a visit when Madigan—a journalist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram—flew to Pittsburgh to interview Rogers.

Expecting little, Madigan was immediately disarmed by the intense sincerity and humble kindness of this giant of children's television. As Rogers spoke about his philosophy of imagining he was looking through the camera into the eyes of each child watching, trying to be fully present to their feelings and needs, Madigan writes of how Rogers demonstrated this the first time they spoke:

"Do you know what the most important thing in the world is to me right now?"
"No," I said.
"Talking to Mr. Tim Madigan on the telephone."

At the time of their initial meeting, Madigan was in the throes of a desperate depression and on the verge of divorce. His personal and professional life caving in around him, he found an unlikely offer of friendship from Rogers—a relationship that would help shape his reformation in the years to come.

I don't want to give too much of the story away here, but the book chronicles how Rogers's wisdom, kindness, and unconditional love guided Madigan through the darkest days of his life, giving him the grace and the courage to find a way out of the darkness, and giving him a glimpse of the Jesus Rogers testified about.

The book is named after a key moment in their relationship when Madigan realizes that much of his pain and inability to love stemmed from never feeling like he could be good enough for his dad. In a moment of truth, Madigan wrote a courageously honest letter to Rogers saying:

"… the last several years have been a very profound time of intense personal pain and great healing, a time of great self discovery as I've tried to come to terms with the realities of my life, past and present. At the forefront of my mind and soul right now is how hard I tried to get my dad to be proud of me, through sports, through school, through the ways I tried to be obedient and good. But no matter what I did, it never seemed enough. I could never wrest from him the sense of acceptance I so desperately craved as a child and have been craving ever since …
"I realize now that God is the ultimate source for that kind of love and acceptance. But I have also realized that I have gravitated toward older men in my life without really knowing why. Now I think I know …
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"I read Henri Nouwen this morning, and several chapters in the book of Matthew, and meditated for a long time on my pain, and realized what I need to do… . In your letters and during our brief time together, you have done so much to teach me how to be a person and a man. And now I have this favor to ask of you. Will you be proud of me?"

Rogers's reply was immediate and transformative:

"YES! A resounding YES! I will be proud of you. I am proud of you! … Nothing you could tell me could change my YES for you. Please remember that … I feel blessed to be one of your friends. Only God can arrange such mutually trusting relationships … YES Tim, YES."

Every letter Madigan would receive from Rogers after this closed with the initials, IPOY—I'm proud of you—a simple and constant affirmation that would seep like water into the deepest, darkest corners of his life.

'In touch with the eternal'

Throughout the book, Madigan invites us to eavesdrop on their conversations and correspondence, which reveal Rogers as a faithful Christian who lived out the gospel with the kind of grace, kindness, and unconditional love that every soul longs and hungers for. "He was a man in touch with the eternal," his friends would say of him after his death.

The book also mentions an Esquire piece in which the cynical writer, whose predisposition to Rogers was much like mine, was surprised to find himself victim to the irresistible kindness, selflessness, and humility of this man who saw his ministry as not only broadcasting grace to children, but helping to put us in touch with the child in all of us. The Esquire journalist, Tom Junod, writes of Rogers' tender sensitivity when visiting a boy with severe cerebral palsy:

"At first the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous, in fact, that he … got mad and began hating and biting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room to talk to him. Mister Rogers didn't leave though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, 'I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?' On his computer the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said: 'I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?' And now the boy didn't know how to respond. He was thunderstruck … Because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know if he could do it, he said he would … and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures Mister Rogers is close to God, and if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean that God likes him too.
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"As for Mister Rogers himself … he doesn't look at the story the same way the boy did or I did. In fact When Mister Rogers first told me the story, I complimented him for being smart—for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself—and Mister Rogers responded by looking at me first with puzzlement and then with surprise. 'Oh heavens no, Tom! I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.'"
The book chronicles how Rogers's friendship helped walk Madigan through the process of reconciling with his wife, forgiving and loving his father, surviving depression, and grieving his brother's death from cancer. Throughout are excerpts from their conversation that make us witness to an unabashed commitment to intimacy that, for me as the reader, had the effect of gently shining a light on my own sad attempts to keep people and love at arm's length, my own fear of risking love and intimacy.

Throughout the book, I was delighted to learn that Rogers and I shared an admiration for many of the same spiritual writers like Frederick Buechner, Anne Lamott, and Rogers's friend and favorite: Henri Nouwen, an author whose work the Holy Spirit has used to shape and guide my own ministry.

"What is essential is invisible to the eye," reads the plaque on the wall in his office, and it was the essential that Rogers was always trying to impart to us. In the book we learn how intentional he was in his television show, understanding it as a ministry and lovingly using it to impart the values of the gospel that was so dear to him: grace, forgiveness, kindness, and trust in an Unconditional Love.

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A very cleansing book

I'm Proud of You is an understated and modest book, competently written. But within its pages you find the best kind of story—the kind of story that not only inspires you to be more human, live an ennobled kind of life, and to love better than you thought you could, but that also reveals the grace that makes these things possible. I told my wife that it was a very cleansing book, one that blew through me like a light and fragrant spring breeze, warming places where the frost had set in.

But looking back over what I've written here, I can't help but feel I'm failing this book because I keep talking about what it's about, sharing little passages and tidbits that are interesting as matters of fact. But what the book is about is less important than what the book is and what it did to me. Because what it is, of course, is a big heart of a book that opens a window in the world to offer a glimpse of another kind of life that could be lived—the kind of life the gospel reveals. In Mister Rogers we discover a man shaped by the tender heart of Jesus, and as I read I found myself looking for ways to bless others, to be more present to them, to be less afraid to speak tender words of intimacy to those around me, to be kinder and more forgiving.

As for what the book did to me, it caused me to ask myself, "What might my life look like if I better incarnated the grace of God? How would my wife's life be different if this were true of me? My kids? My friends and those around me whom my life touches?"

Though I was always less than enthusiastic about the whole What Would Jesus Do thing a number of years ago, nonetheless I find myself asking a similar question: what would Mister Rogers do? I mean no disrespect to Jesus, of course. It's just that Jesus sets such an impossibly high bar, you know? But in Mister Rogers I find a man, a broken sinner like me, set free to love and live the kind of life that Jesus points to. If Mister Rogers can find that kind of grace, maybe it's available to me, too.

In other words, I found I'm Proud of You to be a sweet invitation to spend a beautiful day in the neighborhood of Mister Rogers, a neighborhood made beautiful by the grace of God. It has stirred a hope in me to live a life that invites that kind of grace and beauty to my own neighborhood—the one I take with me wherever I go.

Jason Gray is a Christian musician from Minnesota's Twin Cities area. He is a regular contributor to The Rabbit Room, a blog for Christian artists founded by musician Andrew Peterson. A longer version of this essay appeared there recently.


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