Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

As humans, we’ve always been master wailers, raising our fists and sending our cries into the swaddling band of darkness. And it goes without saying that we’ve always had much to wail about. The human condition pits us against forces that seem indifferent at best and hostile at worst. We’re hungry, we’re cold, we’re frightened, we’re unhappy, we’re alone, we’re unable to control our own destinies. At best, our wailings have fueled–and continue to fuel–some of the greatest writing, speech, and art the world has known. As readers, listeners, and viewers, we take solace in others’ wailing and find comfort in the awareness that we’re not entirely alone.

Yet, Dillard suggests that we must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it. To consider only our wailings is myopic. Best known as a nature writer, she, like American Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, takes to the woods to write. In The Atlantic article, “Where Have You Gone, Annie Dillard?” William Deresiewicz writes that Dillard scrutinizes nature with monastic patience and a microscopic eye. Along the banks of Tinker Creek, she writes about the flora and fauna, about her experiences and revelations there. And she writes brilliantly, wisely, and always reverently. As I read her work, I want to be her, to give magnificent voice to the flora and fauna in my own part of the world.

Deresiewicz contends, however, that for all Dillard’s brilliance as a nature writer, nature isn’t finally her subject. He believes that she is always looking for God and offers his insights into how she takes a wider view:

She is not a naturalist, not an environmentalist; she’s a theologian—a pilgrim. Her field notes on the physical world are recorded as researches toward the fundamental metaphysical conundra: Why is there something rather than nothing, and what on Earth are we doing here? What, in other words—with crayfish and copperheads and giant biting bugs, with creeks and stars and human beings with their sense of beauty—does God have in mind?

For Dillard, to wail the right questions and to choir the proper praise requires a look at the whole landscape–the natural and the spiritual landscape–with keen eyes and minds. Those who really see, then, are pilgrims, like Dillard, devoted to the spiritual quest. This type of seeing, she explains, is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. Deresiewicz elaborates on this:

You do not seek, you wait. It isn’t prayer; it is grace. The visions come to you, and they come from out of the blue.

Dillard’s seeing–the letting go and the waiting–is intensely spiritual. It’s directed toward God, the creator and giver of grace. God, she suggests, should direct the wider view.

I think most of us believe that we see, wail, and praise just fine. We justify our wailings because the world looks as though it’s going to hell in a handbasket: people are tearing each other apart at school board meetings and in the halls of Congress, the supply chain has stalled, and gas prices are going up. If we’re not looking into the swaddling band of darkness these days, what would you call it?

And we do offer praise as we celebrate the good and the beautiful in our midst: the generosity and heroism of others, the gifts of music and art, the sunrises and sunsets that give us pause. To peer into the darkness and to celebrate the light–isn’t this taking the wider view into the whole landscape?

I think Dillard would respond with some serious questions: To whom or what are you directing your sorrow and your joy? When you look to the hills, from where does your help come? The wider view, she’d say, is a world view. That is, it’s the way you explain why there is something rather than nothing and what on Earth are we doing here. Wailing to nothing is much different than wailing to a suffering God. Facing the swaddling band of darkness utterly alone isn’t the same as walking through the valley of the shadow of death with the God who will one day wipe every tear away. And lifting our praise to nothing is a far cry from lifting our praise to God, the creator.

Of course, these are questions and differences in worldviews that theologians and philosphers have long explored. We expect no less from them, for this is their job. But most of us in the cheap seats struggle with the scholarship and wisdom of such individuals. So, when a naturalist, like Annie Dillard, or a poet, like Mary Oliver, helps us see from the wider view, we’re grateful. We’re familiar with their crayfish and creeks, fawns and flowers. When Dillard and Oliver reverently offer this familiar natural world, they give us eyes to see the supernatural, if we will but use them, and a leg-up into the sacred.

The world would be a much poorer place without Annie Dillard, Henry David Thoreau, Mary Oliver, Aldo Leopold, Marianne Williamson, Bono, Roma Downey, Kurt Warner, and so many other non-theologians whose worldview is founded on God. Through nonfiction, poetry, music, political and social activism, movies, and athletics, they keep the wider view alive–inside and outside of church walls. They call our attention to a sacred audience of One.

The Gift
Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful.
That the gift has been given.
       --Mary Oliver, Felicity, 2015

What we have is a system driven to create the illusion of education without the inconvenience of learning. –Shane Trotter, Setting the Bar

Most would agree that the illusion of anything is obviously a poor substitute for the real thing. High school teacher and author, Shane Trotter, makes a bold claim that our current educational system is driven to create the illusion of education. And bolder still? He argues that we believe we can educate students without the inconvenience of learning. For Trotter–and many others–American education is a far cry from the real thing.

Recently, I was struck by the title of an essay written by California high school civics teacher, Jeremy S. Adams: “My Late Father Was a Great Teacher. He Wouldn’t Last a Week in the Modern Classroom.” Like Trotter, Adams bemoans the current state of education, insisting that one of the greatest teachers he’d known–his own father–wouldn’t be able to navigate classrooms in which he was expected to educate without the inconvenience of learning. In the midst of nationwide calls for retired teachers to fill desperately-needed teaching positions, Adams’ essay suggests that, like his father, many of these retired teachers would struggle to last a week in classrooms today. Clearly, some with strong constitutions might be able to muscle their way through five school days, keeping students physically in their desks and maintaining some sort of order. But would they be able to teach?

Adams lovingly paints a portrait of his father as belonging to an elite group of teacher-celebrities who hear superlatives like, “You made a real difference in my life” or “I wouldn’t be where I am today without you.” These teacher-celebrities, he explains, are localized versions of Jaime Escalante or non-fiction avatars of John Keating. After his father died, he writes that he was overwhelmed by the number of letters he received from former students, letters that testified to his father’s unwavering sense of purpose and ubiquitous passion. As not only his son but one of his father’s students, Adams agreed with others who admitted that his father was tough and demanding but that he inspired them to be better than they were.

His father never let his students wear hats or chew gum in class because classrooms were serious places that demanded respectful behavior. He believed that his students could learn and used the Socratic method to discipline them to think more deeply and critically. He did this, as Adams writes, because a good teacher doesn’t tolerate student ignorance or indifference. And to his knowledge, Adams claims that his father never had to apologize for his high standards.

As a literature teacher, his father taught novels, short stories, poems and plays if they were instructive about the human condition. Adams explains:

He never judged literature through a postmodern kaleidoscope of race, gender, or class. He simply asked if the reading was instructive about love or hope or death or dreams. Did it touch on vital and timeless human concerns? Did it connect a young mind to a mature aspiration or did it slightly transform the delicate fiber of youth into something resembling wisdom or fortitude?

But Adams goes on to speculate about what his father would do in today’s classrooms when students cursed at him, and when his adminstrators insisted that he perform a classroom intervention rather than giving them detention or kicking them out. He wonders how his father would handle the incessant disruption of cell phones vibrating and blinking as he tried to hold class. And he suspects that his father wouldn’t take kindly to those who call Shakespeare problematic and grammar unnecessary. In short, he’s painfully aware that the father he knew and admired wouldn’t last a week in a classroom today.

As I read this essay, I couldn’t help but think of the best English teachers I’ve known: my dad, my best friend, my daughter, and a handful of colleagues over my 40-year career. My dad, the single best lecturer I’ve ever known, would probably be put on some kind of evaluative plan today and required to work with an instructional coach. He’s a sage on the stage, they’d proclaim, all talk and no student interaction. And they’d be right that there was a lot of talk in his classrooms, but they would’ve failed to identify the quality of this talk in their shortsighted dismissal of his methods. They would’ve failed to recognize that each class period was a extraordinary invitation for students to interact with the best ideas from the best thinkers of all times. They would’ve failed to understand that student interaction doesn’t always require groups clustered together in beanbag chairs throughout the room with designated learning tasks, but that it may be minds-on interaction–often intensely independent–that occurs when students wrestle with challenging ideas. Most students today genuinely struggle to listen to their teachers for any amount of time. Undoubtedly, they’d tune my dad out after a few minutes or when they encountered the first big word they didn’t understand, whichever came first.

I’ve watched my best friend, my daughter and some of my English teacher colleagues attempt to make the best literary works–and the invaluable ideas in them–accessible for all of their students. I’ve watched them use powerful anecdotes and make excellent allusions. I’ve watched them offer their best, day after day. And, sadly, I know that there are more and more of their students who are, in essence, saying no thank you. No thank you to their attempts to bend over backwards so that students might really understand. No thank you to their offers to meet students before or after class for extra help. No thank you to the comments they’ve painstakingly written on student work and the hours they’ve invested on students’ behalf. No thank you, in short, to almost anything they’re offering because, as students, they’d rather not be inconvenienced to learn.

Is their response exceptional? Blurting out comments–often unrelated and sometimes vulgar–refusing to make eye contact with teachers or peers who are speaking, blatantly using cellphones, coming to class late, leaving for extended periods of time for bathroom breaks, turning in work late or not at all, asking to redo assignments that were, in all truth, thrown together in the first place as drafts–all of this and more are increasingly characteristic in classrooms today. This isn’t the exception but rather the norm. Those like Trotter and Adams who argue that what we’ve created is an illusion of education understand this all too well.

Adams concludes that the greatest educational illusion is that teacher compassion is tantamount to an endless softening of standards, of letting things slide, and of ultimately excusing poor student behavior and performance. This compassion, he argues, is producing a generation of students who want the trophy without the excellence and the “A” without the effort, who insist that high achievement can be accomplished on the cheap. This, he laments, is an illusion his father would not have suffered–for all the right reasons.

In the past few years, I’ve held too many conversations with good teachers who’ve admitted–regrettably–that they don’t know if they’ll be able to last in the classroom much longer, that if they could secure another job with a similar salary and benefits, they’d consider taking it. I’ve talked to too many administrations who complain that they can’t recruit or retain quality teachers and that they’ve had to take what they can get (and hope they can keep them). We have many beautiful educational buildings, more educational initiatives and regulations than you can imagine, and in the end, I’m afraid that the emperor has no clothes.

Let me go on record as saying that our best eductors are knocking themselves out to make a difference to their students, educationally and personally. They always have, and they always will. But theirs is a lonely struggle, and their efforts alone are not enough. As a nation, we’ve paid much lip service to the fact that our educational system needs help. Many insist that we need a system overhaul that begins with honest conversations about what is working and what isn’t. They argue that we must examine why the best teachers of our pasts couldn’t make it in classrooms today and whether or not this is acceptable. And they’re truly frightened by today’s desperate shortage of quality teachers and by the inevitable costs of what it would take to recruit and keep more of them. In the end, many concede that, in spite of our best efforts, we’re creating an illusion of education, one that grows less and less like the real thing with each passing day.

Perhaps the saddest thing of all is the fact that no matter what educational initiative or reform we throw out there, most educators will simply smile and mutter, This, too, shall pass. For they know that initiatives and reforms come and go, and historically, few have had real sticking power. And they’d be right. But our current situation is a watershed moment, I think. We have the opportunity–and the responsibility–to do something different, something better for students, for educators, and for our nation. Only time will tell if we rise to the occasion or continue to settle for an illusion.

The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding the capacities which the outside didn’t indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn’t detect. –Mark Twain

He burst through the front door, charged up the steps, skidded to a halt and said, “Grandma, you got a new candle!” My grandson, Griffin, has truly uncommon eyes. For an eight-year-old boy, he doesn’t miss a thing–including a new Yankee candle on a side table in the corner. He and his sister have always had these eyes, eyes like heat-seeking missiles that lock onto their targets. Their targets may be small and ordinary, the very things that just don’t show up on others’ radars. They may be objects, or, more importantly, they may be the nearly imperceptible looks that cross one’s face and give brief, yet valuable, insights in the heart and soul. In a world of common eyes, Griffin and Gracyn have truly uncommon ones; they have seeing eyes that Mark Twain describes as those that pierce through and read the heart and soul.

Undoubtedly, they’ve inherited them from their mother, and, I’d like to think, from me. When their mother was a girl, she once stopped me as I was weeding the garden to ask if I was alright. I can still recall how her concern momentarily took me aback. What could have led her to believe I might not be o.k.? Busily weeding, I was flinging dandelions over my shoulder into a pile on the sidewalk. What could she possibly have seen? When I pressed her, she said, I saw your eyes doing funny things, like they were pressed together. And then I understood that she’d misinterpreted my squinting for trouble. After I’d explained that I was just squinting because I’d left my sunglasses in the car, she gave me a serious once-over to confirm that I was truly o.k. before returning to her sisters.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how and what we see. I don’t think it comes as any surprise that most of the seeing we do is with common eyes that skim and scan. We beg forgiveness as we offer up all sorts of excuses for not really seeing something or someone: too busy; too difficult; too labor-intensive. In a world in which many of us struggle to see where we’ve left our phones or car keys, it may seem an overreach to expect us to have seeing eyes.

In the late 19th century, English archeologist, banker, and philanthropist, John Lubbock wrote:

What we do see depends mainly on what we look for…. In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the coloring, sportsmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.

Most of us are probably familiar with Lubbock’s claim that even when we’re all looking at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them in the same way. But perhaps we’re not as familiar with his claim that what we look for determines how and what we actually see. Here’s the rub: what we look for matters and matters deeply. Today, many argue that our nation is divided and divisive. In this climate, then, what are we looking for? Are we looking to see in others what we already believe, what will confirm the biases we hold and sharply define the lines we’ve drawn? Do our eyes, then, brush over the surfaces of others, confident that we’ve seen all we need to see? And do we count the costs of living with common eyes?

Years ago, my son, Quinn, was recruited by a Division II football program but became wholly invisible the moment he reported to camp his freshman year. For months, the head coach had wooed him. And for the previous two summers, he’d proven his talent and work ethic at this university’s summer camps where he earned the title of Most Valuable Player. He’d optimistically moved 400 miles away from home to pursue his dream of playing collegiate football. What prompted this coach to unsee what he’d previously seen? I can only guess that he was no longer looking for what he once had. Once visible, Quinn had become invisible. To make the team, neither talent nor work ethic mattered if no one would see him. After Quinn graduated and accepted his first teaching and coaching position, I reminded him of the lessons he’d learned from his athletic career and said: If you ever fail to see–I mean really see–your students and players, you’ll have to answer to me. I wasn’t messing around. I’d seen the painful fallout that occurrs when teachers and coaches aren’t willing to see. More than anything, I didn’t want my son to join their ranks; I wanted him to have seeing eyes.

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus speaks repeatedly about seeing and failing to see. In Luke 11:34, he instructs his disciples and the crowds that had gathered to hear him:

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.

Many of us have unhealthy eyes, and we desperately need eye exams to diagnose our maladies. Too often, we don’t see, and, sadly, we don’t want to see. Clearly, Jesus understood that only healthy, seeing eyes make for a healthy souls, and healthy souls are uncommonly compassionate. I’m afraid we’re all too content to look through the glass darkly, for if we clean the glass through which we look out upon our world, we might occasionally glimpse the hearts and souls of those we’ve been quick to dismiss. And then what? How would we proceed after we’d read their inner thoughts and feelings? In the end, would we choose to see or unsee?

Theologian and writer C. S. Lewis explains that [w]hat you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are. Could it be that we frequently stand too far away to see anything other than surfaces, our eyes conditioned to scan simple forms? And when it comes to how we see others, could it be that we’re hesistant–if not unwilling–to first consider the sort of people we truly are? That is, are we willing and able to see the logs in our own eyes before we search out the specks in others’?

I value the great gift that seeing eyes have given my children and grandchildren. As well as the gift they’ve given the rest of us who are–and will continue to be–touched by their sight. With children, it starts small: a coin-shaped rock in a driveway, a tear that pools in the corner of a mother’s eye, a lap that holds a pair of trembling hands. But small is good. Small is necessary when it comes to seeing eyes. For eyes trained on the small stuff will be far more likely to see the big stuff, far more likely to be full of light in a world too frequently full of darkness.