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In a sermon at Bethany UMC in Ellicott City, Bill Isberg recently pointed out that there are 168 hours in a week. The new movie Rent sings about 525,600 minutes in a year. How do we use them? As disciples, how many do we spend in sleep? In traffic? In love? In over our heads? In prayer?

How do we measure our lives?

For Leonard Blackshear of Asbury UMC in Annapolis that answer is easy. Life, and faith, can be measured in acts of reconciliation and healing.

Blackshear, the director of the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation, has cast his love of history and hope for the future into a statute that sits on the Annapolis waterfront.

The sculpture features life-size bronze figures of three children of different ethnic backgrounds, listening to author Alex Haley as he reads the story of Kunta Kinte from his book 'Roots.'

Kunta Kinte, Blackshear relates, was an African from Gambia. He was sold into slavery in a town called 'Naplis.'

Haley family research indicates a slave ship, Lord Ligonier, sailed from the Gambia River July 5, 1767, with 140 captured Gambians. It arrived in Annapolis Sept. 29, 1767, with 98 survivors. Haley believed one of those survivors was 17-year-old Kunta Kinte.

An ad in the Maryland Gazette reports the Africans were sold into slavery Oct. 7 of that year. It is believed Kinte was among them and that he was taken to a farm in Virginia.

The memorial, Blackshear points out, is the only one in the United States that commemorates the actual name and place of arrival of an enslaved African. It is his hope that the memorial will encourage Annapolis to become 'like Ellis Island,' serving as a symbolic point of entry for African-Americans.

'People need a place of beginning,' Blackshear said. 'People need a history.'

In addition to the sculpture, the memorial also includes a 14-foot granite and bronze compass rose, web cameras, an informational kiosk and a story wall.

It is the wall, with quotes from Haley?s works, that speaks most profoundly to Blackshear.

The story wall tells about how African-Americans were able to survive slavery and speaks about values like love, forgiveness, rising to challenges, faith, family and heritage.

'It is a message for every person and it is spread right across the heart of downtown Annapolis for all to see and feel,' said Blackshear.

The story wall casts time in a broad spectrum, tying the pain and evil of slavery with the promise of reconciliation. It spans generations. But the wall also condenses time, and draws years of history into the present moment.

When Blackshear looks at the wall, his own sense of mortality comes into focus.

In 2000, Blackshear was diagnosed with cancer. In 2002, he worked through the pain and fogginess of chemotherapy to finish the plans for the wall.

'I was ready to let go,' he said. 'But my treatment was faith-based.' He believes his oncologist and God had different plans for him.

Today, one treatment moves into the next and Blackshear prays that each continues to work.

'I measure time by, will I be around next Christmas,' he said. 'But you don?t let it define your life. You move on. Let the affirmatives define you. Keep moving. Let your feet keep moving down that path you?re being called to be on.'

Blackshear knows working for reconciliation is an act of faith and discipleship. 'I?ve been called by God to do this,' he said.

It?s important to him that no child be left 'rootless.' It?s also important for him to live out the words of Tom Murray, in 'Roots,' that are inscribed in the story wall: 'Things don?t ever get better, unless you make them better.'

'Reconciliation and healing are easy to say and hard to get to,' Blackshear concluded. 'We must commit ourselves to the path. We must take that next step and make a way.'

Within the Baltimore-Washington Conference, there are thousands of stories like Blackshear?s of people taking that next step as they spend their days responding to God with acts of discipleship.

In the conference?s communication department, with this issue, we bid farewell to one of these faithful disciples ? John Coleman, our director of electronic media and marketing.

Unlike Blackshear, whose monument is visited in person by more than a million visitors a year, Coleman leaves a monument of faithful words and images. Over the past three years, he has worked within our conference crafting award-winning videos, redesigning the Web site, and helping local churches tell their stories in meaningful ways.

John?s voice around our table and in our pages will be missed. His presence has enriched all our lives and the life of The United Methodist Church. We wish him godspeed.

For more information on the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial and other activities sponsored by the foundation, see www.kintehaley.org.