Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children. –Sitting Bull

When a call goes out for unity, most of us will rally–at least in theory–around the prospect of bringing people together. Some of us who are old and sentimental enough might even clasp hands and break out in Kum Bah Ya. Or perhaps we could belt out a rousing chorus of the 1971 Coca Cola theme song, remembering times when our youth fueled our idealism and certainty that if we just put our minds and hearts to it, we could live in perfect harmony:

I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I’d like to hold it in my arms
And keep it company

Our grown-up, supposedly more mature selves still elect officials who promise to unite our communities, states, and nation. We continue to live under the banner of unity. We speak passionately about the life we can make for our children if we’d only put our minds together. We understand that our very survival depends upon it.

And yet, we remain–as we’ve always been to some degree–divided. Today, many would argue that we’re not just divided; we’re deeply divided, perhaps irreparably divided. We can no longer even see the other side, who live in another far-off galaxy, lightyears and principles away. In truth, there are more times than not when we prefer not to see them. Better they remain in the black hole in which they belong. Better they live among their own ignorant, misguided, hateful kind.

For most of my life, many people thought they knew me. As a college-educated daughter of a college professor, they professed to accurately identify my politics, my faith, and my principles: Democrat, spiritual but not Christian (and certainly not evangelical), and progressive. As a young college instructor, I learned this early as I overheard colleagues ridiculing a student whose narrative essay recounted her experience at summer church camp. As if this was the most significant thing she could write about, they said, as if she really believed in this crap. They spoke believing that I shared their sentiments, that I was one of them, that we were unified in our common disdain for this young woman’s provincial views and simple-minded faith. But they were wrong.

I didn’t correct their misconceptions because I was fairly certain that I, too, would be cast off and privately ridiculed. At 26 and at the beginning of my teaching career, I was genuinely afraid. And I was convicted that I should work hard to get along with everyone, regardless of what they believed or didn’t believe. I’ve lived most of my life under that same conviction, and to say that it’s cost me is an understatement, for I’ve often found myself in No Man’s Land, that lonely space between ideologically diverse factions, slogging my way forward. Moving forward has meant working hard to act compassionately towards my opposition. Moving forward has meant growing into a certainty regarding my own ideas and principles, while struggling to remain open to others. In truth, moving forward has often meant embracing the complex nature of most issues and forsaking the unity that others appear to enjoy with their like-minded friends and colleagues.

English Puritan writer John Trapp maintained that [u]nity without verity is no better than conspiracy .Herein lies the painful truth of ideological unity: it’s improbable (at best) and impossible (at worst). How does a nation ideologically unify those who believe in life at conception with those who don’t, those who believe that women should have a choice to abort or not with those who don’t? How does a nation ideologically unify those who believe in the tenets of capitalism with those who don’t? How does a nation ideologically unify those who believe the government should fund private and public schools with those who don’t? The list could go on and on. We know it all too well. When people hold ideas and principles absolutely, there isn’t any compromise they’re generally willing to make.

In short, to unify means that some group will lose something–or possibly everything they believe is good and true. And losing is something we’re not particularly good at, especially when the stakes are high and the principles we hold most dear are in jeopardy.

Romanian-French playwright Eugene Ionesco wrote that [i]deologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together. We know that ideas separate us, and, for the most part, we have no common dreams now. Sadly, anguish remains as the sole factor that occasionally unites us. Mass casualities, natural disasters, and sometimes wars unite us as we offer aid and comfort to victims. For a time, our ideas and principles seem to take a back seat as our anguish reminds us of our common humanity. For a short time.

I’m not a cynic who’s ready and willing to argue that unity is the pipe-dream of Pollyannas who refuse to see the way of the world. But I do understand the painful reality of unity. As difficult as it is, we’d do better to accept the fact that there can be no ideological unity. In the court of law and in public opinion, some group and its principles will win, and the other will lose. Losers can pray for the wisdom and guidance to live out their principles in whatever ways they legally and realistically can, working devotedly to affect the kind of change that will one day change policy and public opinion. During the battle (and make no mistake, it’s always a battle), both sides can choose civility and understanding, or they can choose to inflict terrible harm with little thought to the world they leave their children.

photo by Collyn Ware

Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird? -Sir David Attenborough 

For much of my life, if you’d have asked me about birds, I’d have probably scoffed and conjured up an image of a doddering old fool decked in camo with an expensive pair of binoculars around his neck and an official Audubon bird guide in his pocket. I say “his”, not to be sexist or discriminatory in any way, but my notion of a birdwatcher has always been male. Probably because my father was a bird person.

From childhood, my father loved birds, particularly homing pigeons. So, we grew up with a backyard filled with homing pigeons, enough to fill two lofts that flanked the yard. We grew up in a home graced with feathers and occasional pigeon droppings. We grew up with a father who spent his Saturdays watching the sky for his birds to return home (and hopefully win the weekly race) and his evenings in a den littered with Racing Pigeon Journals, photos of champion homing pigeons, and large and assorted bird books.

Our home at 611 West 27th Street was a veritable pigeon-central. Members of my father’s racing pigeon club (I know what you’re thinking, but there are clubs of homing pigeon racers!) met there regularly to open their specialized clocks which recorded the exact minute and second that their pigeons returned from races in which they were shipped as far as 500 miles and released to fly home. The winning and losing in these races involved a lot of math, as members calculated the air speed per minute that each bird flew. Silence pervaded as men crowded around the dining table, pencils scratching away on slips of paper (no calculators or cell phones then) until someone yelled, “I won!” These were bird people at their best (or so I’m told).

One Christmas, my mother gave my father a customized sweatshirt that read Strictly for the Birds, and we all understood how absolutely perfect this gift was for a man who knew the intricate structure and feather pattern of a pigeon’s wing, a man who could identify a common barn pigeon from a homing pigeon in the air, a man who once stitched up the breast of a pigeon who’d failed to clear a utility wire in our alley. Indeed, he was strictly and wondrously for the birds.

So imagine my surprise when a few days after my recent birthday, I woke up and said to myself, “Wow, I’m a bird person!” In truth, I’d been becoming a bird person for quite some time, but I’d spent so many years with my head in books or bent over student essays that the realization snuck up on me. The signs were there, though. In the early days, my family snickered when I walked the edge of the timber searching for the elusive indigo bunting whose song I’d heard all day. When I walked into a bush once (my eyes had been fixed on the tree tops), they guffawed. I was becoming the doddering old fool I’d imagined a bird person to be. Outfit me in camo and hang a nice pair of binoculars around my neck, and the picture would be complete.

Oh yes, the signs had been there for quite some time. A solar bird bath, a line of bird feeders edging my deck, and jumbo bags of black-oiled sunflower seeds–always a surplus, just in case we run out. It would probably behoove me to invest in sunflower seed stock at the rate and quantity we buy them. And grape jelly stock, definitely grape jelly. We’ve taken to buying it in gallon cans to keep up with the local oriole population’s needs. This is what bird people do, I’m told. They present a smorgasbord of food choices in an array of feeders. They aim to please.

The naturalist John Burroughs writes:

 The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.

For my father, and now for me, the bird as a poetic subject is gloriously at the top of the scale. How can you not love a creature that’s large-lunged, hot, and ecstatic? How can you not marvel at the gold of the gold finch, the blue of the mountain blue bird, the scarlet of the cardinal and tanager? How can you not be humbled by the dogged persistance of the arctic tern who wings its way thousands of miles from its Antarctic breeding ground to summer in the north? Or the soul of the sandhill crane who mates for life?

So, in my 67th year, I’d like to reintroduce myself: Hello, I’m Shannon. I’m a bird person. Better late than never, I say.

Barn Swallows

As I push my cart of baby carrots,
two onions, and a bunch of green bananas
around the corner of the produce aisle,
a barn swallow swoops 
from the bunting above the meat counter.

Instinctively, I duck.
It flies yards above me,
but I fold myself over the cart,
which I’ve pushed to the side
seeking refuge beside the canned goods.

Silly me, I think, as I push my cart
back into the aisle
and am just passing the condiments
when the swallow slices
the air so deftly
I don’t feel the cut
until seconds later.

I stand agog—
there’s no other word for it.
I stop traffic.

For seconds, I throw my head back and say
(aloud and to no one in particular)
Would you look at that—

And just as I turn down the cereal aisle,
a second swallow bisects the path of the first, 
shearing the fluorescence above. 

Such cruel geometry,
their angles too desperate,
their lines unfixed.

A pair, I think,
star-crossed lovers destined to die
at the meat counter or in the freezer section.

I want more for them. 
I want the blue June sky that opens generously
over the world.
I want the breeze which fans the hardwoods.
I want the waning and the waxing moons,
the sun giving itself to the western hills
all orange and pink and carmine. 

I want to coax them through the electric doors
which stay open and expectant. 
I want the man who will enter after hours with his pellet gun
to find them gone,
to find only melons nestled in their bins,
bottles of laundry detergent and tubs of margarine
tucked in dreamless sleep.  

And in a dark corner of an old barn,
I want them paired and nesting,
the day but a sigh
in the wild, velvet night.

for Judy

I want you to be concerned about your next-door neighbor. Do you know your next-door neighbor?  –Mother Teresa

In the last half of my life, I’ve often heard people lament the fact that they don’t really know their neighbors any more. The folks who move into our neighborhoods may live next to us, they say, but that’s about the extent of it. We know very little about their lives except for the types of cars they drive and the number of FedEx deliveries they average a week. For many, neighborhoods are now defined more by geographical proximity than by relationships.

I’m blessed to live close to neighbors with whom I have genuine relationships. I know that I’m one of the lucky ones and understand that this is no small thing. I could answer Mother Teresa honestly: yes, I know my next-door neighbors.

Over the twenty years that I’ve lived here in rural Iowa, my friendship with my neighbor Judy grew. In the early years, our conversations were held in the yard, often with Judy seated atop her John Deere mower. She’d see me walking down the lane towards the mailbox, kill the engine, and we’d catch up on family and life events. She asked about my work at school, about each of my children, and about my family in Nebraska. She asked the kinds of questions that always made me feel truly understood and appreciated. I came away from our conversations feeling as though all was right with the world–or at least all was right in our little corner of the world on 114th Lane.

When I began to write blog posts, Judy quickly became one of my most devoted readers, responding to each piece mere minutes after I’d posted it. I can’t begin to measure my gratitude for her unfailing readership. As I was sitting in my little writing cabin drafting a new post, I’d imagine how she’d soon be sitting in her brown recliner reading my words, sharing a sacred literary connection with me, her neighbor and friend.

In his book, The Good Neighbor: The Life and Works of Fred Rogers, Maxwell King writes:

In everything he wrote, in all the programming he produced, in the life of caring, kindness, and modesty that he led, he set a very clear example. His legacy lives in the concept of a caring neighborhood where people watch out for one another, no matter where they come from or what they look like.

Recently, Judy died. I’ve had days to grieve her passing and to think about the rich legacy she leaves. Certainly, a vital part of this legacy is that she, like Fred Rogers, created a caring neighborhood where people watch out for one another. When the entire world was cloistering during the height of Covid, I lived in a small, protected neighborhood where I could pedal my boat on the pond, watch the birds from my porch, and talk with Judy and my other neighbors across their yards. For months, our world was small and intimate, founded–in large part–upon Judy’s loving care.

Another part of Judy’s legacy is that she leaves behind her son, Kevin, who has lived with and cared for her the past years. He, too, has become an integral part of our neighborhood, a part of a family who looks out for one another. Like his mom, Kevin often stops to talk from the seat of his mower, a neighborhood tradition that will undoubtedly live on.

Author Rabbi Harold Kushner writes:

The happiest people I know are people who don’t even think about being happy. They just think about being good neighbors, good people. And then happiness sort of sneaks in the back window while they are busy doing good.

Such simple advice: just think about being good neighbors, good people. And yet, it goes without saying that if all–even most–of us would follow it, the world would be a considerably better and happier place. As Kushner advocates, happiness will sneak in the back window as you live neighborly lives.

And who is our neighbor? We claim those who live near us as neighbors, but when an expert of the law asked Jesus this question, Jesus responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Being a good neighbor stretches far beyond the geographical and relational boundaries of traditional neighborhoods. A good neighbor, Jesus exhorts, shows mercy to those in need, even–and especially–those whom we don’t know and may not necessarily care to know. Clearly, the world would be a bettter, happier place if we walked humbly and showed mercy to all the Samaritans in our lives.

I will miss Judy. Neighbor, friend and mentor, she is the kind of woman I’d like to be when I grow up. Our neighborhood has been blessed by her presence; we will continue to be blessed by her legacy.