So I stayed up late to write this. Past midnight, mind you. I was in bed, and actually got up and lumbered into my office, in the quiet dark, to write.

About Steve Jobs.

Everyone knew this day was coming. Yet I am struck by the strangeness of the loss I feel. First, you need to know something. I’m a huge Apple fan, but not a fanboy. More to the point, I am typically unimpressed by the deaths of great, noteworthy public figures. I’ve never mourned a CEO. Yet Steve Jobs was an anomaly. Apparently, not just for me. On Twitter, one guy wrote: “I never thought I could be so busted up about the loss of someone I never met.” At last count, hundreds had retweeted him. In these days of corporate rage and acrimony, of “Occupy Wall Street” protests, how is it that the founder of the highest (or second) market cap company in the world, sitting on $76 billion in cash, gets such unfettered love? People despise Exxon Mobile. They love Apple. They adore Apple. The Mercury News asked, “How could the death of a distant figure touch so many so profoundly.” Indeed, why?

For me, the question takes on strange, spiritual overtones. I have long wondered why Apple is so successful in ways the church so typically fails. READ MORE >>>