This is the entrance to the Vesely household. In the window to the left of the front door, the sign I bought at the dollar store (as a prop for playing “store” with my grandchildren) now has a permanent spot. Thanks to Gracyn, who explained that this way we will know that you are open for us! The fact that the sign has never been flipped to announce “CLOSED” speaks volumes.

The Sanctuary of Open welcomes visitors with come in, come as you are, come often, and come again. It fries another hamburger–or many–and is never ashamed of paper plates. Its arms are always bigger than one imagines, folding others securely into the deep bosom of home. And, in the Vesely house, its dining room willingly becomes a playroom whose toys are never quite put away and lay partially assembled and ready for the next round of train station, grocery store, doll house, or camper.

Years ago in my Ottumwa church, our adult Sunday School class took a “spiritual gifts inventory.” As we considered the results of our individual surveys, no one was the least bit surprised when a senior member of our class, Ruth Rice, revealed that she had the gift of hospitality. Actually, this was one of those duh-we-could-have-told-you-this moments, for Ruth’s very pores exuded hospitality. Before and long after June Cleaver, there was Ruth: gracious, generous, hospitable, open to any and all. I remember thinking, I hope I can grow up to be a Ruth. 

Still, as good and true as the virtues of generosity and hospitality are, veteran members of the Sanctuary of Open carry discernment in their back pockets. For if Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy appeared at the door, they would not greet him with a plate of freshly baked cookies and a well, for heaven sakes, come in! Even Christ, the consummate model for loving openness, cautioned his disciples to be discerning as they traveled to preach the gospel:

If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. [Matthew 10: 13-14]

Discernment is the tempering factor in the Sanctuary of Open. Its still small voice whispers: What are the rewards? What are the risks and costs? Are you willing to sacrifice? Your time, yourself, your heart and your life? Some are all too eager to shake the dust off their feet as they quickly abandon people and places, while others struggle to do so, willing themselves to give more time, more effort, and more heart in genuine openness. The Sanctuary of Open may, indeed, be a tricky place to maneuver, even for seasoned veterans.

Today, we live in a country and society that generally purports to value openness. Open communities, open schools, open borders and open minds. For the past five years, I worked in an urban high school that opens its doors and services, daily, to students from all over the world. It is not uncommon for a 17 year old student from Guatemala, Honduras, Ethiopia, or Sudan to enter as a new student in December or March or even May. It is not uncommon for this student to come with little–or no–formal schooling and no English language skills. All come with their parents’ and guardians’ sincere hopes for the better life that American education offers. All come carrying their past experiences, positive or negative as the case may be. And all are expected to graduate, meeting baccalaureate requirements, on pace with their peers.

In American schools, open means inclusion. A typical classroom, then, may host exceptional, proficient, and struggling native and non-native students, as well as students with special needs. In the spirit of inclusiveness, the teacher is charged with meeting the educational and personal needs of each and every student. Open classrooms require differentiation, tailoring instruction and assessment to individual needs. In my high school, this means that every 45 minutes for six periods a day, a new diverse group of 20-24 students arrives. The Sudanese student who has limited English and finished her last formal year of schooling when she was ten years old sits beside the National Merit finalist. The student with a significant reading disability sits beside the student who has just rebuilt his friend’s computer hard drive. And the homeless student who spent the night in his uncle’s car–and who can rarely stay awake for more than a few minutes of class–sits beside the student who is writing and illustrating her own graphic novel. And where is the teacher in this mix? He or she is taking up the gauntlet. Jim, would you wake up and join us? Juan, would you translate this for Ricardo? Please put your phone away, Carrie. Last warning. Amy and Taylor, once again, I need your attention up here. Taking up the gauntlet in the Sanctuary of Open is daunting and unrelenting. Most days, it is downright hard.

And yet, the best teachers open their classrooms, their minds and hearts in spite of the seeming futility of such unrelenting challenges. Graduate a new, previously unschooled, student who now has 18 months to learn the host language, become proficient in mathematics, social sciences, physical and life sciences, and English language arts? In our American system of open public education, the answer must be a resounding yes, knowing that each school will be held accountable for graduate rates and sanctioned if it fails to meet them yearly. 

So where is discretion in such an open educational system? It would seem that discretion would be the compassionate response to such real and individual challenges. Perhaps expecting students with genuine educational deficits, with special needs, and without native language skills to graduate on pace with their peers is neither compassionate nor realistic. Sadly, expecting bureaucrats to fully understand this reality and respond compassionately–for students and teachers alike–appears to be equally unrealistic.

The Sanctuary of Open–open communities, open schools, open homes, open minds and hearts–is a sanctuary for which to aspire. But it necessarily comes with discretionary cautions that must not be misconstrued and labeled as intolerance. Openness tempered with discretion is a more complex, intellectually and emotionally demanding venture. In Shakespeare’s King Henry IV, Falstaff proclaims that Discretion is the better part of valor. Indeed it is. It goes without saying that openness often requires a degree of valor, but discretion discourages us from the kind of blind courage that feeds good intentions but may, ironically, leave all unsatisfied and wanting.

My personal wish for our country, our communities and schools? That we move forward–mind, heart, and soul–in discretionary openness. I would really like to see where this might take us.

Dilemma: a difficult decision, a quandary, a predicament

It may seem counterintuitive to laud dilemma, to consider it sanctuary-worthy. Yet, The Sanctuary of Dilemma is alive and worthy of its place among other sanctuaries. For those willing to enter, it offers a full-body workout. Clinched fists and jaws, adrenaline rushes, pacing, trembling, pounding, head-scratching. And that’s just the physical stuff. Pondering, analyzing, fixating, obsessing, wrestling–that’s the mental stuff. Yearning, seeking, tempering, testing, loving and losing. The soul stuff.

Just the other day I reread William Stafford’s poem, “Traveling Through the Dark.” For the past forty years as an English teacher, this poem has been one of my go-to poems. In it, Stafford presents his dilemma:

Cliches concerning the blank page abound: your life is a blank page, this day is a blank page, etc., etc. And while there is intangible truth in these cliches, there is truth and inestimable worth in the tangible blank page. The new notebook opened to its first clean page, the just-gessoed canvas, eager for new color, the computer screen, its cursor blinking, yearning for release. In its discrete form, the Sanctuary of the Blank Page invites beginning.

As children, my friend, Val, and I spent hours with yards of newsprint. Inch by inch, hour by hour, and room by room, our pencils shaped homes that had germinated only in our dreams. We seldom knew–nor worried about–where our pencils would take us. Commenting on the poet’s craft, Robert Frost claimed, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” In our case, this translated into “No surprise for the creator, no surprise for the beholder.” As children, we understood the magnificent power of the blank page, upon which preferences, prospects and possibilities lay before us as the Promised Land. White was good. White was life-giving. White held infinite surprise.

When my father had to attend the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to complete his doctoral work, my family moved to Lincoln, where I attended a new school. Unlike my Kearney school with a playground as gateway to Harmon Park, Bancroft Elementary had a gravel playground. With no playground equipment, it was literally a blank page. While the boys tossed or kicked balls in the west section of the playground, the girls lost themselves in creation. With the edges of our shoes, we painstakingly scraped the gravel into ridges, creating the outlines of rooms which–through collective effort–grew into houses. If we were lucky enough to find unique rocks, we added fish to the aquariums which graced our rooms. Sticks offered more scraping potential and ultimately became light poles or lamps or whatever. Recess after recess, we put shoes to gravel. When the boys inevitably ran through our homes, scattering neatly-edged gravel and ruining any semblance of rooms, we began again. This time would be better. This time we would add more. This time we would protect our work.

As a child, I understood the joy in the parameters of the blank page. In her book, Juliet Immortal, author Stacey Jay writes:

Seven, ten, fifteen, eighteen years old and still there is nothing finer than a blank sheet of paper, the white promise that the world can be what I make it. A magical place, an adventurous place, a possible place. Erasers take away the mistakes. Another coat of paint to cover them up. Black and red and purple and blue. Always Blue.

The white promise that the world can be what I make it. Exactly. I lived for this white promise, seldom passing up an opportunity to fill a blank page with something. In fifth and sixth grades when we finally were able to use cartridge pens during penmanship class, there was something even grander about this white promise: the loops and whorls, the slant and slight made from a cartridge pen. I could feel the tension of push and restraint as I learned to make the pen move across the page. And it was this tension that began to initiate me into a new realm in the Sanctuary of the Blank Page.

In restraint, I began to learn the power that such pause gives. And with pause came fear. Stephen King warns that you must not come lightly to the blank page. Writer Margaret Atwood writes that blank pages inspire me with terror. English novelist, Virginia Woolf, writes: My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry. Ah yes, like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry. Where yards of newsprint and pages of notebooks once made me giddy, my fingers itching to put pen to paper, now they began to terrify me, leaving me on the bottom step of the page, crying.

In my academic work as a high school and then college student, I came to the blank page with trepidation. A productive day of writing seldom yielded more than a single paragraph of prose. Which had been written, rewritten and then rewritten again, looking and smelling more and more like something decayed, its dry bones sprawled across the page, stripped of their original promise. The more I wrote, the more I had to psyche myself into the sheer act of beginning. For beginning grew to mean inevitable dissatisfaction and failure. Beginning meant coming to Jesus. And beginning meant hours of agonizing reflection and revision in hopes of harvesting something passable. In truth, the Sanctuary of the Blank Page frightened me in ways that nothing else had.

As a graduate student, I spent an entire semester studying the work of the confessional poets, focusing primarily on Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton. Immersed in their lives and their work, I lived through their personal and professional pain, their valiant efforts to save themselves from the depression that consumed their days and nights. Each poem was yet another raw confession of self-doubt, self-loathing, self-denial. Each poem was an assault on the senses. In the Sanctuary of the Blank Page, these women were writing for their very lives, baring their deepest pain line by line, stanza by stanza. Sylvia Plath writes:

I have done, this year, what I said I would: overcome my fear of facing a blank page day after day, acknowledging myself, in my deepest emotions, a writer, come what may.

Come what may. Ultimately, neither Plath’s nor Sexton’s facing a blank page day after day was enough to save them. Both took their own lives after years of suffering with debilitating depression. Still, had they not committed themselves to filling the blank pages of each day, I am convinced that they would not have lived as long or as well as they did. Or that the world would now have the wealth of their insights and imagery.  Consider Plath’s poem, “Mirror.”

Mirror

Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present it to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry, and you give it to a friend.                                                                                             Gerda Weissmann Klein, Holocaust Survivor

Ask anyone in my family, and they will tell you that I don’t view television programs or movies. I experience them. We’re talking full-body experience of the often painful sort. I’ve clawed my way through suspense, wounding myself and companions and leaving bloody reminders of climatic scenes on forearms and hands. I’ve tented myself with sweatshirts or jackets, peering through a neck peephole at horror that is predictable (every seven minutes or so–I’ve timed the interludes between hackings) but nonetheless scream-worthy. I’ve outfitted myself with kleenexes and cried at the opening theme songs of Lassie and countless other poignant programs.

When I experienced Schindler’s List for the first time, however, this was both a full-body and out-of-body experience. Even today, having seen the film thirty or more times, within seconds, I am standing behind a barbed wire fence, my hair shorn, my hand clutching my mother’s, awaiting the selection. This film assaults my senses in ways I cannot begin to describe. And yet, it also ushers me into the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry, that tangible and intangible place in which singularity matters.

Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry, and you give it to a friend.  Yes, imagine this world of single possessions given willingly to another. In the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry, one thing, one word, one touch or gesture can save a life and soul. In the final scene of Schindler’s List, Oskar Schindler speaks through tears to a crowd of Jewish survivors, grieving his inability to save more of their families and friends. His accountant, Itzhak Stern, presses a gold ring into his palm, a ring that he and other Jewish survivors created in tribute to the man who gave them work and, as a result, saved their lives. Inscribed on the ring is this Hebrew line from the Talmud: Whoever saves one life saves the world entire. A single life, a single raspberry. In this sanctuary, singularity saves the world entire. 

For there is magic math in the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry. One word from a sideline coach affirms the efforts of a team, one raised hand, one question opens a room for many voices, and one touch–a hand that covers another–encourages one who sits weeping, solitary in his loss, to touch another, who touches yet another. In Mark 6:41, we read how Jesus fed 5,000:

Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. 

So little fed so many. This is the “new” math in the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry. It defies numerical logic. Turn your head, blink your eyes, and where there was a base of one, you find the exponent of many has performed its magic.

Don S. was the only fifth grader who was never chosen for a kickball team at recess. He was always the last kid standing in the middle of the field after the two captains had picked their teams. By default, he earned a spot as last man standing. As such, he had never heard his name called until one October recess when I was captain. To my shame, I had never chosen Don, never actually given him much time or thought. Until that recess, when I called his name. First pick. I’m not sure what prompted me to really see him that day. I’d like to think it was the prompting of the Holy Spirit or, at least, a sense of social responsibility, unfamiliar yet urgent. I called his name, and with that, I presented a single raspberry on a leaf to a friend.

Years later, I received a phone call in my college dorm room. Given his one phone call from the county jail, Don called me. I don’t remember what he had done to land himself there, but I do remember his voice, a voice that carried me back to that elementary playground on the day during which both of our lives were changed. In the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry, one moment in time can forge a bond that spans years.

Truthfully, too much of my life has been defined by the pursuit of many and more. I have chanted more is better when I knew better. More time, more money, more knowledge, more accolades. And at my fingertips? Single moments, single things, single words and ideas that could be–should be–served up lovingly on a bed of leaves.

When I was in Nigeria several years ago, I was smitten with this little girl who came out to meet us in the village of Bambur. Before I left Iowa, I had been warned–by family and friends–that I wouldn’t be able to bring any children home. (They know me all too well, I’m afraid.) All I could offer this girl was my hand as we walked the dirt paths of her village. Still, in the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry, I had felt the power of a single hand and understood that long after I left Africa, I would carry this child with me.

A month after I returned, I thought about Gerda Weissmann Klein’s words and imagined myself in Bambur, a single mango my entire worldly possession. I imagined myself gathering cassava root for drying, working the maize fields, the mango stowed lovingly away until I could return to the village. Until I could give it to my friend.  An ocean away, however, I had to settle for writing my intentions.

To My Friend

In the dry season when little grows,

everything is edible:

bark from breadfruit trees,

termites, even goat dung.

When land and skin turn ashen,

you feast on the memory of mango,

now a shimering specter

in the noonday sun.

In the absence of sweet meat and juice

that once stained your fingers and chin,

you drool dust.

.

In a world gone dormant,

how can your loveliness live?

If there were one ripe mango in your village,

I would carry it in my pocket

all day.

And tonight when you lie outside your mud hut—

one perfect piece

in a quilt of small, sleeping children–

imagine me kneeling,

then placing my gift on a leaf

near your face.                                                                                                                                                                            .

Imagine me your friend.

The Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry opens up before us daily. I’m training myself to do the “new math” and present single gifts for multiplying. For if a single raspberry or soul can save the world entire, then I can think of no greater singularity to steer my course.

Lighthouse, Harmon Park

In the Sanctuary of a Park, you can have Disney Land in your backyard. Or nearly your backyard. Two blocks from my childhood home is Harmon Park, 6 1/2 city blocks of bliss. In 1924, having received a Harmon Foundation grant, the city of Kearney, Nebraska purchased land, designated as Harmon Field, for a playground. A plaque in the park reads:

This playground was made ours through the assistance of the Harmon Foundation, 1924, dedicated forever to the plays of children, the development of youth and the recreation of all. “The gift of land is the gift eternal.”                       Wm. E. Harmon

Lighthouse, Harmon Park, circa 1936

And what a gift eternal it is. From the window of Park Elementary School, the magic kingdom spread out before me as far as I could see. Once these acres held chautauquas, pony rides, and a petting zoo complete with monkeys. But for me, my sisters and friends, they held something better: the promise of what could be. In the Sanctuary of a Park, if you can imagine it, it will be.

Just outside the Youth Center, a WWII tank found a permanent home on a concrete slab. Wars were fought on and around this tank. Dares were made. Can you shimmy out to the end of the gun and drop to the ground? Can you stand on one foot on the top of the tank? And lunches were eaten on its fenders, while the stories of wars and war strategies continued through pb & j and baggies of crushed potato chips.

The Sonotorium, an open-air Art Deco theater, was constructed in 1938. Home to concerts, dramas, graduations, and community gatherings, the Sonotorium hosted our childhood pageants and plays, performed for park squirrels and neighborhood dogs.

But the real magic was found in the Rock Garden at the northern edge of the park. Initiated in 1936, the Kearney Daily Hub reported that if all Kearney residents who travel to mountain country, the Rockies or elsewhere, …will pick out just one or two odd-shaped rocks or stones and bring them back to Kearney, the park would soon have a very good start toward its proposed rock garden. A rock pyramid near the entrance of the Rock Garden testifies to the fact that residents did, indeed, contribute rocks–from every state–to the project. Still, the Works Progress Administration did the majority of the construction during the Depression years, creating a paradise from rock.

And the rock came in. Union Pacific flatcars brought stones from Wyoming, Utah, North and South Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska. WPA workers unloaded them and moved them to their final destinations. According to personal interviews with Kearney residents and records from the Kearney Daily Hub, this was no small task:

The story is told of one huge rock weighing 8,400 pounds being moved on a sled through the park and while crossing the stream the rock rolled off blocking the water. It was too heavy to move so workmen dug under it to let the water flow. The rock stayed where it fell and can be seen today. 

In the Sanctuary of a Park, something as common as rock becomes the stuff that dreams are made of. The Rock Garden was not professionally designed–no blueprints for its design exist–but rock by rock, the garden took its shape organically, perfectly, until the whole became so much greater than its mineral parts. At the northern end of the park on its highest point, the headwaters of the Rock Garden flows from its largest waterfall down through a series of streams and small pools, around islands, through more waterfalls, and finally to the larger pools at the foot of a magnificent stone lighthouse with a curved exterior staircase. From the balcony of the lighthouse, you can look out upon a grotto, carved in the eastern hillside, and over lily pads that color the summer pools below. There are eleven stone bridges; some are wide slabs of rough rock, others are narrow cuts of smooth stone, but all lead to adventure for those of us who grew up in the park.

For who can boast that they owned an island before they were 12 years old? My sisters and I laid claim to an island near the lighthouse, having chosen it carefully from a host of other islands and christened it TES Island (Timaree-Erin-Shannon Island). We spent hours on and around this island, spinning stories of love and loss, venturing into less familiar Rock Garden territory, and grounding ourselves in the other-worldliness of this place that was, remarkably, so close to home and so accessible.

TES Island, Harmon Park

In the Sanctuary of a Park, there is a willing suspension of disbelief. Legend had it that a disgruntled fiancee threw her diamond engagement ring into the pool, an angry flash of brilliance cast into the mossy water below the falls. I can see us still: a cozy clutch of children, huddled beneath the big cottonwood tree at the base of Diamond Ring Falls, whispering the legendary words that held us all, spell-bound, in the magic of the moment. We would find the diamond ring. Who else but us, those who loved and haunted the Rock Garden most, should be the beneficiaries of this treasure? We would willingly suspend our disbelief, refuting the obvious: that the pool’s 18 inches of water was drained in late October, that if–and this is a BIG if–there really had been a diamond ring thrust into the shallows, it is more than likely that some park worker would have found it as they prepped the park for winter. Summer after summer, we spoke the legend into life, searching the water for some hint of the gem we carried in our hearts and dreams.

Diamond Ring Falls, Harmon Park

And we were willing to suspend our disbelief as we climbed the winding stairs to the top of the lighthouse, where we stood in front of the grafittied and padlocked black door. In truth, behind this door lay park workers’ tools. For us? Behind this door lay glorious possibilities. Kidnapped children (the ones who stole lunch money and cut in lunch lines, the ones we hoped would someday vanish)? Treasure (bags of gold, neatly stacked in circular rows inside the belly of the lighthouse)? Skeletons (of old people–the scary kind who invite you into their homes BEFORE they will give you candy on Halloween)? And what were these words scratched into our line of sight? Clues to mysteries long unsolved? Cautionary words to STAY OUT, to BEWARE, to WATCH YOUR BACK? Never mind that closer, more critical looks would reveal the work of vandals, drunks, and lovers. Never mind that the door was repainted yearly to remove the remnants of adolescent mischief. Just never mind. We could willing suspend our disbelief, fueling our adventures another summer.

In the Sanctuary of a Park, you can find magic when you need it. Even as I grew and understood, all too well, the workings of the real world–the world in which you do not make cheerleader even though you desperately want to, the world in which you remain ordinary even though you yearn to be extraordinary–the Rock Garden in Harmon Park remained a temporary stay against confusion, a Neverland, a refuge. In the small pool at the top of the waterfall we called Wishing Well Falls, I lovingly placed coins that I hoped would bring me luck and love. It was there that unspoken words of hope found their voice. It was there that prayer found me, sustained and chastened me. And it was there that, 1/4 mile from my high school, I could be utterly alone, cocooned in rocks and leaves, the songs of water over rock as familiar choruses, and the vista of the Rock Garden ever before me.

Wishing Well Falls, headwaters, Harmon Park

While many dream of people and plots, I dream in places. Though I rarely recognize or remember the people or stories of my dreams, I am fixed in the places of my dreams. I return to them, each time more familiar than the last. I know their nooks and crannies, I feel their colors and shapes.

Harmon Park is a place I return to–in dream and in person–time after time. This is a place for time-travel. This is a place for unraveling the best stories, those tightly wound balls of narrative twine, unconsciously or subconsciously hidden from the world. This is a place for gathering, a cloud of witnesses from days of swinging, climbing, frog-hunting, and adventuring who hold your hands and your dreams. And this is a place for children and grandchildren whose stories might also find the magic of water and rock and sky.