Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.
― Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

Recently, I was working with a former colleague who asked if I’d ever read Sherry Turkle’s essay, “Growing Up Tethered.” I hadn’t, but my interest was piqued, so I read it. Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, has written much about the effects of technology on how we relate to one another. I can’t say that I was surprised by the discoveries and claims she makes in this essay. But I was troubled by them, particularly by the notion that technology purports to be the architect of our intimacies.

We’ve all seen, and undoubtedly lamented, the types of scenes that frequently unfold at restaurants and family dinners, in classrooms and waiting rooms: people glued to their devices, fingers and thumbing pecking, eyes riveted to screens, heads bent attentively. Eerily quiet except for the rapid tapping on keys, these scenes are peopled by those who may be communicating with distant others or with those sitting right next to them. They may be using their devices to close a gap of miles or inches. Either way, they’re using these devices as conduits. And are these technological conduits building intimacy? Turkle and others continue to weigh in on this.

The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines intimacy as:

an interpersonal state of extreme emotional closeness such that each party’s personal space can be entered by any of the other parties without causing discomfort to that person. Intimacy characterizes close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationships and requires the parties to have a detailed knowledge or deep understanding of each other.

Most of us would agree that intimacy involves a detailed knowledge and deep understanding of another. To have an intimate conversation requires time, proximity, full attention, and intense desire to really know someone. Whether in friendship, parenthood, or marriage, this type of intimacy characterizes the relationships that most of us seek and treasure. Is it reasonable to suggest that technology can play a legitimate role in fostering intimacy?

In her book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Turkle cites what she calls the Goldilocks Effect:

We can’t get enough of each other if we can have each other at a digital distance—not too close, not too far, just right. But human relationships are rich, messy, and demanding. When we clean them up with technology, we move from conversation to the efficiency of mere connection. I fear we forget the difference.

If just right means establishing the correct digital distance and cleaning ourselves up with the technological tools at hand, what does this say about intimacy? Like Turkle, I fear that it reveals much. It reveals that if we’re reliant on technology to build intimacy into our lives, we’re building our emotional foundations on the sinking sand of mere connection. And it reveals that we increasingly rely more on these technologies than on face-to-face conversations and relationships.

Turkle argues that these technologies facilitate connections in sips, for gathering discrete bits of information. She goes on to explain, however, that they neither have the power nor means to faciliate genuine understanding and intimacy. I confess that an I love you (followed by an exclamation point and a heart emoji) is always a weak substitute for looking deeply into another’s eyes and speaking these words with clear intent. Understandably, most of us use our cell phones and computers to send words of love and encouragement to loved ones who live too far away to frequently visit. We rely upon social media to see pictures of our families and friends, our former classmates and their families, etc. And we’re grateful for the technologies that make these connections possible. But to confuse these connections with intimacy is quite another thing.

For me, Turkle’s most troubling claim is that as we lose the ability to converse intimately with others, she fears that we also lose the ability to converse authentically with ourselves. And as we lose the ability to converse with ourselves, she argues that we also lose our capacity to self-reflect. I’ve thought a lot about this recently. I can painfully recall how many times I was frustrated by my students’ inability and unwillingness to be self-reflective. This frustration only grew throughout my 40-year teaching career. More than anything, I dreaded teaching the narrative essay, for increasingly students responded with comments and questions like these: I don’t have anything to write. What do you mean “write about a time or incident that mattered to me”? And what do you mean by “mattered”? Do I just write about what I did last summer? No matter how many examples I provided, how much I modeled reflective thinking, most of my students still looked at me with expectant faces–as if I could do more, as if I could just think reflectively for them.

In her essay “Growing Up Tethered,” Turkle also writes about how technology may be seriously delaying the rite of passage from adolescent to adult. If you can’t be self-reflective, if you’re tethered to your phone, if you’re reliant on how others see and respond to you digitally, if you’ve never experienced genuine solitude, how can you mature into a self-reflective, independent adult capable of intimate relationships? And worse yet, will you even want to?

I agree with Turkle when she writes that [o]ur networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. What an incredible paradox: the desire to be hidden and yet to be connected. It’s no wonder that this tension manifests itself in the types of depression, anxiety, and loneliness that we read about and experience now. A year of Covid-induced Zoom schooling, working, and communicating has only exacerbated a problem that had already grown deep roots in our society.

To a certain extent, we’ll always rely on technology. That barn door is open and won’t likely be closed. Still, I’m grateful for and encouraged by frank discussions about how technology is affecting our relationships, positively and negatively. And because, like Turkle, I’m convinced there are no cheap substitutes for intimacy, I’m hoping that we continue an honest investigation into the notion that technology can be the architect of our intimacies.

I do the splits perfectly in PE. I lose half a pound in two days. I get the spinach and pig-meat frittata from the lo-carb section for lunch. And no-one else knows. I mentally construct a MyFace status, polishing the memories carefully until they shine. The need to record my life is as fundamental as my need to breathe. Without MyFace, I’m floating. I have nothing to anchor me down, to prove I exist.
― Louise O’Neill, Only Ever Yours

I remember the secret (who were we kidding?) notes we passed through the rows of our elementary classrooms, notes carefully folded into shapes so small that even 10-year old hands could palm them. On these notes were written the all-important words: Do you like me? Check yes or no. With baited breath, we waited until our intended opened the note, checked one of the boxes, and sent it back through the same rows of classmates who ferried it surely along its return route. Before social media, we had notebook paper, gracious and practiced peer accomplices, and the occasional teachers who had more important things to attend to than student notes.

To be liked may, indeed, be a sanctuary. That is, while we feel liked, our moods improve and our dopamine levels increase. Today, for better or worse, being liked is a primary contributor to social media’s success. According to the Addiction Center, neuroscientists have compared social media interaction to a syringe of dopamine being injected straight into the system. Like other addictions–drugs, alcohol, gambling–social media offers the same physical and pyschological “high”:

. . .when an individual gets a notification, such as a like or mention, the brain receives a rush of dopamine and sends it along reward pathways, causing the individual to feel pleasure. Social media provides an endless amount of immediate rewards in the form of attention from others for relatively minimal effort. The brain rewires itself through this positive reinforcement, making people desire likes, retweets, and emoticon reactions. [The Addiction Center]

To bask in the warmth and excitement of a dopamine rush can be a wonderful thing. It goes without saying, however, that a dopamine rush is like any other rush: an immediate, but fleeting, pleasure. And when it goes? When you don’t receive as many likes as you did the day–or hour–before? When you find your social media following slipping away? Or, worst of all, when you discover that you’re receiving as many or more dislikes–perhaps even hate–than likes?

Recently, I’ve begun thinking more about this whole notion of being liked through social media. Over the weekend, my granddaughter and I watched several episodes of a new Hulu series, The D’Amelio Show. The show profiles TikTok sensations, Charli and Dixie D’Amelio, who, according to Adrian Horton of The Guardian, are two of the most recognizable faces among Gen Z, superstars on the most culturally influential social media platform in the country right now. Horton reports that 17-year-old Charli currently has 123.6 million viewers on the social app, TikTok. At age 66, it’s not suprising that I’ve never heard of Charli or Dixie D’Amelio, though I admit to being current enough to recognize the wildly popular app called TikTok. As a grandma, I thought it wise to watch The D’Amelio Show with my granddaughter, to see what all the fuss is about.

In his article, “The D’Amelio Show: what do you do with TikTok fame?” Horton describes the intent of the series:

The D’Amelio Show, in both its very existence and primary storylines (Dixie’s nascent singing career, Charli’s business deals, mental health), is primarily concerned with the question of professional likability. What does it do to someone, especially young women, and what do you do with it?

Midway into the first episode, I realized that the emerging theme (one that persists throughout the entire series) was primarily the mental health of the young women, Charli and Dixie. Both young women speak candidly and repeatedly about haters who often respond with vitriol to their social media posts. They cry, they seek solace from other social media influencers and their family, they question their worth and the worth of their work. To say that it’s painful to watch is an understatement. It’s grueling, at best, and wholly defeating, at worst. On a positive note, however, as my granddaughter and I watched, it did offer us valuable opportunities to talk about the effects of social media fame and the compulsion to be liked on social media platforms.

This series and recent research into the addictive nature of social media also raise disturbing questions: Do social media users increasingly need these platforms to feel anchored, to prove that they exist? Can users successfully manage their fluctuating dopamine levels? Are we creating behavioral addictions that seriously damage users’ mental health and drain energy and attention from life in general? Should we shape ourselves (and how we present ourselves) and our interests based on how many likes and dislikes we receive?

Pete Cashmore, founder of mashable.com, claims that [w]e’re living in a time when attention is the new currency. Some may argue that even being disliked is preferable to being invisible. Commanding attention is gold, they may insist, being noticed–even negatively–is marketable. Clearly, the D’Amelio sisters’ fame is a testament to this argument. Still, it makes me wonder whether the relative invisibility characteristic to most of our lives is always and necessarily a bad thing. Most of us live without huge social media followings and have little time or inclination to check our likes on social media platforms. We’re simply too busy with the stuff of ordinary living where dopamine rushes come occasionally as pleasures to enjoy rather than highs to sustain. Of course we’re human and, by nature, we want to be liked. But wanting to be liked and living to be liked are clearly different things. I fear that those who live to be liked will invariably lead less healthy, rewarding lives than those who simply want to be liked. And talking about this difference and why it matters is truly important.

Perhaps The D’Amelio Show will prompt these types of conversations. Or perhaps–tragically–it will give birth to a new generation of social media users eager to supercede the popularity of Charli and Dixie D’Amelio, driven to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records for most social media likes. I’m really, really hoping for the former.

P.S. If you like this post, check yes ________ or no __________ (Just kidding!)

for all those grandmothers and grandmothers-to-be

Every house needs a grandmother in it. —Louisa May Alcott

In a new research paper, ecologist and lead writer Zoe Muller stated that after reviewing more than 400 existing studies on giraffes, ecologists discovered that, like elephants, giraffes have complex social dynamics. Muller explains that giraffes benefit from the grandmother hypothesis: the idea that the presence of grandmothers increases a populations’ chances of survival because of the authority, knowledge, and resources they contribute to the group’s young. This matrilineal pattern can also be seen in elephants, orcas, and humans. Those who have studied the grandmother hypothesis contend that older matriarchs create a bank of generational knowledge.

According to the hypothesis, in our earliest years as humans, grandmothers helped gather food for their sons’ and daughters’ children. This made it possible for their daughters to have more children. Consequently, the strongest, most evolutionarily-fit grandmothers would have the greatest number of grandchildren who, in turn, would inherit their good genes.

Since retirement, I admit that I’ve often struggled to define my purpose beyond a lifetime of teaching and mothering. But this is good news, perhaps the best news for those who, like me, may feel a bit out-to-pasture. I question my evolutionary-fitness, but I’m giving myself the benefit of the doubt here. I can still get down on the floor to play board games and get up (albeit with some effort and the aid of nearby furniture). I can still run across the yard to fetch a ball (run might be too generous—it’s probably more like a jog, but it’s definitely more than a walk). I can still speak the language of my grandchildren (hey, I know what Tik Tok is and that mom jeans are once again fashionable!) So, I’m giving myself a pass on evolutionary-fitness, and I’m encouraging other grandmothers to do the same.

I’ve begun to contemplate the bank of generational knowledge that I could pass on to my grandchildren. I know that they like my brownies and that over time, I perfected a pretty decent slime recipe, so there’s always this. But I’ve come to see that my greatest generational gift may be more in the realm of love than knowledge.

I’d be the first person to admit that my bank of knowledge is limited at best and woefully lacking at worst. What we know changes so rapidly that few of us can keep up with this pace. But loving?

In his novel, The Guermantes Way, French novelist Marcel Proust writes:

My grandmother had a love which found in me so totally its complement, its goal, its constant lodestar, that the genius of great men, all the genius that might ever have existed from the beginning of the world, would have been less precious to my grandmother than a single one of my defects.

It goes without saying that there is much knowledge that grandmothers might gift their grandchildren, but Proust’s words get right to the best stuff: the abiding love that says you are loved—unconditionally, warts and all. This is, indeed, a constant lodestar, a gift which keeps on giving through thick and thin. This is what grandmothers are most fit for. Long after they’re not physically fit for bending and running, they’re just coming into their stride for constant, unconditional loving.

I take heart in the whole concept of the grandmother hypothesis. I’m both humbled and privileged by the role I might play in my grandchildren’s lives, a role that has much less to do with passing on good genes and so much more to do with passing on an abiding love. This is a purpose I can wholeheartedly claim.

The lilies say: Behold how we preach without words of purity. –Christina Rosetti

I just like to say it: Behold! This is a word that commands attention, calls us to reverence. It’s a word of sacred proportions, a soul-shivering word. Behold is a word that should be in everyone’s vocabuary, and it should be used more frequently.

The Lakota Sioux people understood the power of the word behold. Lakota medicine man, Black Elk, writes: The song and the drumming were like this: Behold a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling. Another Lakota, Chief Sitting Bull, writes: Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love! Both men use the word as a kind of invitation. Father Richard Rohr, Franciscan spiritual guide and writer, shares his insight into this invitation. He recounts how he borrowed a strategy from wilderness guide, Bill Plotkin, who suggested that we draw a symbolic line in the sand and expect things on the other side to show themselves as special, invitational, or even a kind of manifestation (Rohr, Just This, 2017). The Lakota clearly expected their world to be special, expected that the sacred would be manifested in the physical. They expected to hear a sacred voice and to see the results of the earth’s and sun’s love. Black Elk’s and Sitting Bull’s words testify to how these expectations were met, time and time again.

Behold is also a word that many associate with the Bible. In the original King James version of the Bible, behold appears a whopping 1,298 times. In today’s King James Bible, however, the word appears only 586 times; in the New Revised Standard version, it’s used 27 times, and not at all in The Message. When the angel appears to the shepherds on the night of Jesus’s birth, the proclamation Fear not! For behold, I bring you news of great joy seems so much more befitting this miracle than Don’t be afraid! I bring you good news. Some contemporary translations just don’t seem to offer the same expectation to imagine and revere. They don’t seem to have much use for beholding.

I fear that many of us may be losing–or have lost–these expectations. I suspect that we don’t wake enough to the day’s invitation to behold. Too often, our expectations are low, very low. We don’t draw a symbolic line in the sand because we can’t imagine that what’s on the other side is any different or more special than the same-old stuff that weights our days. We plow through our lives like work horses, one steady foot in front of the other. I suspect that the invitation to behold may have been drummed out of us.

I can recall working with several groups of elementary students in a creative writing workshop. We often opened our sessions with language warm-ups, and one day, I asked the students to fill-in this blank: Too many _____________ are dancing on the ______________. One of the fifth-graders responded quickly: Too many dancers are dancing on the stage. She looked up at me quickly, hoping for affirmation that she’d gotten the right answer. Contrast this response with one I received from a first grader later in the morning: Too many moons are dancing on the water. This first-grade boy was already an expert at beholding. He talked openly about how he saw this when his family was camping, how the moon just wriggled across the lake. I remember lamenting the fact that by fifth grade, the power of beholding had largely been drummed out of many students. By age 11, they were all about filling in blanks with correct answers.

I admit that I’m a much better beholder now that I’m retired. I have eyes to behold because I have time. A coneflower that’s naturalized along the edge of the timber can make my day. More days than not, I step out of bed and cross the symbolic line in the sand, expecting something special, expecting that what I experience will, as poet Christina Rosetti claims, preach without words of purity. A lone coneflower, a stand of Queen Anne’s Lace, a single word from my grandson as it floats across the yard–all are worthy of beholding. Father Rohr suggests that [b]eholding happens when we stop trying to “hold” and allow ourselves to “be held.” I like this a lot. We can–if we will allow it–be held by moments, by sounds and words, by places and things, by the manifestation of the sacred into the profane, the extraordinary into the ordinary.

In “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tinturn Abbey,” poet William Wordsworth writes that [a]ll which we behold is full of blessings. See how the trees frame a perfect opening in my daughter’s magnificent photograph above, how this leafy aperature reveals river and hills. Behold the greens, the golds and distant blues! Behold the vista beyond! In the end, to behold is to be blessed. We would do well to draw our symbolic lines in the sand and expect to be blessed.

Etty Hillesum

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. –Mark Twain

It will always be both blessing and curse, my father said, as, minutes before bed time, I confessed the turmoil that continued to ravage my inner life as surely as acne was ravaging my adolescent face. My father was referring to my sensitivity which–even on my best days–reached hyper-levels the moment I stepped out of bed. If a single paradox could define one’s life, then my father’s insightful words would be my lifesong.

To say that I’ve lived in my head would be an understatement. I’ve lived in my head, dreamt in my head, argued and speculated in my head, grieved and celebrated in my head, died in my head. And, as my father proclaimed, this inner life blessed–and continues to bless–me in many ways. My inner life has made me wildly empathetic, so much so that I’ve often found myself wearing the lives of others–at least to the degree that one who is determinedly empathetic can. Ironically, this has often helped me to get out of my own head, to act compassionately, and to treat others as broken and beautiful beings. Paradoxically, my inner life has also cursed me with self-doubt and indecision. It’s also cursed me with the same acute pain of those with whom I’ve empathized. I’ve walked a mile in their shoes–internally, that is–and I’ve got blisters to prove it.

My journey with my own inner life brought me to another woman whose inner life was also both blessing and curse. Etty Hillesum reveals this paradox in the diaries she left with housemate Maria Tuinzing before she left the Jewish transit camp, Westerbork, for Auschwitz in 1943. In her teens and early 20s, Etty’s inner life was tumultuous, often tortured. She wrote:

I still lack a basic tune; a steady undercurrent; the inner source that feeds me keeps drying up. Worse still, I think much too much. My ideas hang on me like outsize clothes into which I still have to grow.

I think too much? Preach it, Etty. There’s something to be said about a continuous loop of thoughts (the unexamined life not being worth living and all), but the relentless presence of ideas–old and new–can be exhausting. Like Etty, when I desperately desired a basic tune, I often got a cacophony of independent notes and rhythms which was anything but a steady current.

Etty confessed that her inner life was often too complex, too indulgent. At times, it was marked with self-doubt–even self-loathing. She explained that she suffered from a bacchanalia of the spirit and lamented that she was taken in by everything she read. Someone like Dostoyevsky still shatters me, she said. Yet, at other times, her inner life was marked with the exquisite joy of experiencing the world around her. Whenever I saw a beautiful flower, what I longed to do with it was press it to my heart, or eat it all up. To be like a lily of the field, she said, would be the right way–the best way–to live. Etty Hillesum’s inner life was, indeed, a paradox.

Always, however, it was marked by her desire to know and serve God. In her diary, she wrote:

Something I have been wanting to write down for days, perhaps for weeks, but which is sort of shyness—or perhaps false shame?—has prevented me from putting into words. A desire to kneel down sometimes pulses through my body, or rather it is as if my body had been meant and made for the act of kneeling. Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge, head deeply bowed, hands before my face. 

It has become a gesture embedded in my body, needing to be expressed from time to time. And I remember: “The girl who could not kneel,” and the rough coconut matting in the bathroom. When I write these things down, I still feel a little ashamed, as if I were writing about the most intimate of intimate matters. Much more bashful than if I had to write about my love life. But is there indeed anything as intimate as man’s relationship to God? 

She confessed that she had been the girl who could not kneel for much of her life. A host of physical ailments, as well as sexual desires and struggles, tormented her. But in spite of these and in spite of her impending deportation to Poland, she ultimately discovered a peace that she claimed was neither indifference or helplessness in the face of suffering and evil. For in Etty's inner life, she claimed that she would be with the hungry, with the ill-treated and the dying, every day, and yet also with the jasmine and with that piece of sky beyond my window. Every day, she discovered there is room for everything in a single life. For belief in God and for a miserable end. 

In the end, Etty Hillesum’s inner life led her to the conviction that all must turn inward with sharp, humble eyes if the world was ever to recover from the current hatred. She conveyed this passionate conviction to friend and former lover, Klaas Smelik Sr.:

Klaas, all I really wanted to say is this: we have so much work to do on ourselves that we shouldn’t even be thinking of hating our so-called enemies. . . And I repeat with the same old passion, although I am gradually beginning to think that I am being tiresome, “It is the only thing we can do, Klaas, I see no alternative, each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate we add to this world makes it still more inhospitable. And you, Klaas, dogged old class fighter that you have always been, dismayed and astonished at the same time, say, “But that—that is nothing but Christianity!”

That is nothing but Christianity. And that, I believe, is everthing. Turning inward, facing our own real and present demons, and destroying all we seek to destroy in others is a curse because it’s hugely painful. It’s also, perhaps, the greatest blessing because it’s hugely redemptive. As Klaas Smelik proclaimed, this attitude and subsequent act is what it means to be real Christians. That is, Christ calls us to love our enemies as ourselves, to see and love their brokenness as He would. Etty came to understand that this would only be possible if we all lived inner lives that invited this kind of self-destruction, the kind that obliterated every atom of hate.

Ultimately, the magnificence of Etty Hillesum’s inner life was birthed from and sustained with a paradox, and her life and death gave testimony to this. She could love herself and the world, yet criticize both. She could find refuge in her inner life and also find pain. She could live gloriously in the sanctuary of her neighborhood at the same time that she projected herself into the concentration camps. She could be righteously indignant and yet at peace.

Etty’s diary has had a profound impact on me. I find myself thinking about her inner struggles and marveling at her wisdom often. As I read, I couldn’t help but think that I wished I could be more like her, that we all could be more like her. As she was packed into a cattle car to be taken to Auschwitz, witnesses reported that she was singing. As I consider our present troubled world, I believe that her words have as much value–perhaps more–than they did in 1943:

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. John 16: 33

photo by Collyn Ware

 
It is a serious thing—just to be alive—on this fresh morning—in this broken world.                                                                                                                                            – Mary Oliver, “Invitation” 

Oh, I know that there are some who may roll their eyes when I couple morning with sanctuary. These are the I’ve-never-been-a-morning-person folks. As the sun breaks and its first rays cut through slender openings in their room-darkening curtains, they squint, cover their eyes, and deep-dive under their blankets where they hide like vampires in protective darkness. But if I can bring even one of these folks over from the dark side, I’ll consider my efforts successful.

Consider the final stanzas of the poem "Invitation" by Mary Oliver:

 And if your spirit
 carries within it
  
 the thorn
 that is heavier than lead—
 if it’s all you can do 
 to keep on trudging—
  
 there is still
 somewhere deep within you
 a beast shouting that the earth
 is exactly what it wanted—
  
 each pond with its blazing lilies
 is a prayer heard and answered
 lavishly,
 every morning,
  
 whether or not
 you have ever dared to be happy,
 whether or not
 you have ever dared to pray. 

Oliver is clearly a morning person who embraces each pond with its blazing lilies as a morning prayer, whether or not you have dared to be happy or dared to pray. Morning is a tight tangle of petals that every bud yearns to unfurl. For there, in its center, the good stuff lies, the sacred pocket of possibilities. What will the day bring? What will I choose to do–or not do? If this, then what? These possibilities may be exhilarating and enticing. Or they may be–at times both expected and unexpected–foreign and forbidding. Such is the nature of morning. It is wildly original, lavishly dependable. It arrives, as it must, whether the sun shines or not on this broken world.

For much of my life, I spent the minutes (or hours) before sleep reliving the day, often worrying myself into the kind of heart-pounding anxiety that seriously delayed any real chance of sleep. I tortured myself with what-ifs, and in the quiet dark, I let myself imagine worst-case scenarios, each one a thorn that is heavier than lead. But eventually, blessedly, I’d fall asleep and wake to a morning where mercies and possibilities were new. I never tired of this gift, nor took it for granted, for there is something miraculous about this light that teases you from doubt and dares you to be happy.

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau writes:              

Morning brings back the heroic ages. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world.

I like this so much: a standing advertisement of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. Even for us foot soldiers, there can be a genuinely heroic element to the morning. That feeling of proudly brandishing your pitchfork as William Wallace rides up and down the line, urging you forward, reminding you of your cause, and validating your humble effort. That feeling of daring to believe–if even for a moment–that you are the protagonist of an epic story in which you handily overcome every challenge you meet. As you look over your cereal bowl, you can see yourself save the day. The world is vigorous and fertile. And so are you.

I’m painfully aware that by now the eye-rollers have undoubtedly written this post off as rubbish. Just as I’m painfully aware that there are mornings, that there will always be mornings when you can’t hit the snooze button enough, when you desperately want to extend the night, when you long to burrow back into dreams. In his Book of Hours, German poet Ranier Maria Rilke writes that [e]ven when we don’t desire it, God is ripening. (I, 16) Even in our dread and reluctance to face the day, God is ripening our souls. If we let it, morning can be a generous reminder of this ripening. No matter our circumstances, it can nudge us on, one painful moment at a time until we ripen into something less painful, less dreadful.

The photo above that my daughter took while she and her family were camping in McGregor, Iowa testifies to all that is right in our broken world. The ribbon of gold that hugs the horizon, the wash of coral and violet above, the water that reflects the sky at dawn–what a sublime reminder that just to be alive on such a morning is a serious and sacred thing.

So, if you’re not a morning person, you could try one on for size. Grab your beverage of choice and find a good spot for watching the sun rise. And who knows? You might come over from the dark side and join those of us who can’t get enough of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world that each morning brings.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Price of Abissinia

In 2008, I went with a group of Iowa volunteers on a mission trip to Nigeria. The children in this photo are but a few of the many who greeted us openly and wanted to hold our hands as we walked from one spot to another. I recall spreading my fingers on both hands as far as they could go, so that ten kids could each hold a finger. During our three weeks there, we visited both urban and rural areas, schools, libraries, and villages. Both this trip and my family’s year of hosting a Nigerian high school student were life-changing.

You think you know what an African country might look like, how the people might live. And then you actually go there and realize that the distance that has separated you from this place and these people is much more than geographical distance. You’ve been distanced culturally, psychologically, politically, and morally. Truth be told, you might as well be visiting another planet–heck, another galaxy!–as another continent. It’s as if you’ve been standing on a metaphorical mountain top where you’ve looked out on people that, from this distance, bear more resemblance to insects than humans. Perhaps at this distance, you’ve tried to explain things you’ve haven’t experienced, or you’ve romanticized peoples and places you’ve never known. Maybe this distance, as Samuel Johnson writes, has had the same effect on the mind as on the eye: what you can’t see is what you can’t know.

In a recent Newsweek opinion piece, Nigerian Anglican priest and journalist, Hassan John, sends a desperate warning to the West that he argues has largely ignored–and continues to ignore–the genocide in central Nigeria. He writes:

The central region of Nigeria has been trapped in a slow-motion genocide for over a decade now. More than 35,000 Christians have been massacred. Whole villages have been exterminated. Thirteen thousand churches and 1,500 Christian schools have been destroyed. More than two million have been displaced from their homes, and 304,000 are refugees. According to the International Red Cross, by September of last year 23,000 had gone missing.

According to John, the Fulani (cattle herdmen he claims are working with the Islamic militant group Boko Haram) aim to rid Nigeria of Christians. He laments that the government of Nigeria has described the massacres (the Fulani armed with machetes) as clashes between farmers and herders who are both at fault. Jonah Jang and David Mark, former high-ranking military officers and members of the Nigerian Senate, have argued that the way that these attacks were carried out bore the markings of a planned and orchestrated genocide.

Tragically, this is just one example of genocide in the world today. For me, however, it’s one I can see clearly and feel deeply because I’ve gone the distance to experience this country and love its people. Danny, our former foreign exchange student, lives in Kaduna State where there have been many such massacres. Danny who lived safely in our home for a year, who joined our small rural Midwestern community and whose biggest concern during the time he lived here was whether or not he remembered his clothes for basketball practice. Distance may literally separate us by thousands of miles now, but it can’t separate me from the horrific scenes that play out in my mind. It’s impossible to use distance to swaddle myself in ignorance. When I read reports of this ongoing genocide, for me, it’s all too real.

The former president of the University of Notre Dame, Rev. Thedore Hesburgh, writes: All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance. From an agreeable, safe distance, it’s all too easy to suggest the kinds of humanitarian and military aid we should offer countries like Nigeria, Myanmar, Syria, or the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sadly, we are experts at practicing this kind of virtue at a distance. We may argue that we can’t possibly have firsthand experiences in all of these places, that our current technology offers us a nearly firsthand experience. And all this is true. Still–and perhaps I’m speaking mostly to myself–distance serves as a buffer so that we can be virtuous from the comfort and safety of our own arm chairs. There can be, and often is, sanctuary in distance.

At times, there is some necessity in out of sight, out of mind. Our psyches would implode if we took in all the suffering of the world, if we let the buffer that distance supplies dissolve, bringing us face to face with the atrocities we only read about and experience through media. In Robert Frost’s poem, “Out, Out–” he tells the story of a young boy who suffers a fatal accident while cutting wood. As the doctor is summoned, the onlookers wait. Frost writes:

And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

There are times when we turn away because we are not the one dead. We turn away because we must create some distance between ourselves and tragedy–at least initially. Later, we often revisit and reconsider what we’ve seen and experienced. Distance in geography or time affords us a psychic respite during which we can regroup. And this type of distance is often a blessed sanctuary, too.

In the end, as novelist Zora Neale Huston writes: [a] thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it. Historically, there have been so many mighty big things that neither time nor distance have shrunk. Even today, we experience them through the printed page and testimony, in video and in film. Their impact is not lost on us. And much as we’d like to think that the world has finally matured into a civilized adult, there continue to be so many mighty big things that time and distance cannot shrink.

Perhaps the best we can do is to bear witness to those big things we’ve experienced directly and to listen well to others who bear witness to those we haven’t. We can also check ourselves on the solutions we offer, often from a distance that should call our proposals into question and subject them to scrutiny. Finally, we can pray that there will be fewer and fewer of these mighty big things and that when they do occur, we will respond with more than virtue at a distance.

Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world.
― Joseph Campbell

I think it’s safe to say that most people cringe when they hear the word zealot. It conjures up violent images of righteous indignation propelled by blind hatred and use of force. It just sounds bad. And if someone were to call you a zealot? For a few, this might be a badge of honor, but for most, this would be a terrible insult. Reasonable people aren’t zealots, they might say. Thinking people just don’t resort to such extreme measures, they might argue. And yet–

History is peopled with zealotry. The term has its origins in a Jewish sect that refused to compromise with the paganism of Rome (AD 6). This sect was a political party with deep concern for the national and religious life of Jews, a concern that caused them to despise even fellow Jews who sought peace and ccompromise with the Roman authorities. But there were clearly violent, single-minded individuals and groups who refused to compromise before, and after, the original Jewish Zealots. Zealotry is a force that knows no boundaries regarding people, time, or place.

That we should see zealotry all around us today shouldn’t really surprise us. We may believe that we’re too civilized, too educated for zealotry, but sadly, this a pipe dream. Any age can be the right age for zealotry, and ours is no different. Some may even argue that ours is exactly the type of age during which zealots flourish. Israeli writer and journalist, Amos Oz writes:

As the questions grow harder and more complicated, people yearn for simpler answers, one-sentence answers, answers that point unhesitatingly to a culprit who can be blamed for all our suffering, answers that promise that if we only eradicate the villains, all our troubles will vanish.

Undoubtedly, we are living in an age in which the questions we have grow harder and more complicated, in which we turn to one-sentence answers–to tweets and sound bites–and in which we desperately want a culprit–preferably a political figure–who can be blamed for all our suffering. Truth be told, we’d prefer that life be a melodrama in which the good guys are resplendent in white, and the bad guys are wicked in black. Melodramas are psychologically and morally so satisfying. How cathartic to cheer for the hero and boo the villain! To feel so righteous in your cause, so vindicated in denouncing evil is pretty heady stuff, indeed.

Robert H. Jackson, American attorney and judge who served as a former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, had much to say about zealotry. Even though Jackson died in 1954, his words ring true today:

In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds—that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.

Read any news feed or tune into any news program, and you’ll find those who write and speak as if all thought is divinely classified into two kinds: their own (which is true and good), and the other which is false and dangerous. Depending on the news source, the other–that is, the false, dangerous group–will vary. What will not vary, however, is the presence of fanatical conviction. Progressive or conservative, secular or religious, fanaticism and zealotry abide. It would take an exceptional leader to rise like a phoenix from the ashes we’ll inevitably leave the next generation and proclaim: Look folks, we’re all zealots! We’re all using the same tactics! You want unity, a better world? Start by clearing your own heart before you try to clear the world!”

Norman Finkelstein understands that the line dividing current moral and political tribes is ideological–not tactical. Finkelstein is an American political scientist, activist, and author whose primary fields of research include the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He writes:

Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse.

Some may argue that really every -ism is religious in the sense that its devotees defend and promote it with something akin to spiritual ardor. I recall spending two hours with a colleague who defended Scientism with such ardor that I grew exhausted simply watching him proselytize. If you ignored what he was saying and simply listened to the pitch and rhythms of his speech, you might’ve thought that you were listening to an evangelist. The same could be said of many politicians, as well as all types of scientists: political, social, environmental, biological, educational, etc. Flip sides of the same coin.

I remember past years during which feeling or professing anything too passionately was uncool and unwise. These were years during which it was culturally and artistically vogue to be indifferent and cynical. Anything that reeked of sentimentality or ardor was to be, at best, laughed at, and at worst, scorned. At this time, the prevailing tone of all forms of art and entertainment was flat. Even the discourse of politics and social activism seemed relatively level-headed in contrast with the zealotry of today. This isn’t to say that this trend was necessarily preferable–just markedly different.

As different, perhaps, as the discontent of common people versus intellectuals. American academic Richard Pipes specialized in Russian and Soviet history and understands the particular zealotry of intellectuals throughout the ages:

When the so-called masses are discontented, they are inspired by specific grievances that are capable of being satisfied within the existing system. Only intellectuals have universal grievances: only they believe that nothing can change unless everything changes.

Pipes’ claim that intellectuals believe that nothing can change unless everything changes may describe the current climate of our own country as well as anything. This is the crux of the matter: the argument that we desperately need change, but that this change must be as comprehensive as a catastrophic forest fire which burns everything in sight, leaving the earth barren of any vestige of what once was and ready for new growth. And there is genuine fear on both sides of the political aisle and in diverse ideological groups. One side fears that what they have and love will be destroyed, and the other fears that it will not. It’s an all-or-nothing, apocalyptic kind of fear which leaves any real chance for compromise or working within the existing system unlikely.

Amos Oz argues that [m]ore and more commonly, the strongest public sentiment is one of profound loathing. Zealotry thrives on profound loathing, and today’s climate is rife with it. We’ve become zealots who are masterful loathers, killing with kindness or destroying with expletives. One sort of loathing may pass as more civilized, while the other reeks of vulgarity. Still, behind all of the rhetoric lies profound loathing.

How do we level the loathing, temper the zealotry? We might consider Campbell’s words carefully. We might consider clearing our own hearts as a necessary prerequisite for clearing the world. For much zealotry is fueled by hypocrisy, by our inability and unwillingness to see the logs in our own eyes. Turning attention away from the specks in others’ eyes and back to our own is hard work, though. Still, I’d like to think that we could take on this internal work with as much fervor and devotion as our own brands of zealotry.

They say that you can’t go home again. But thank goodness that the natural world pays no heed to such adages. Everything on my acreage testifies to the glorious return of birds and plants. They’ve come home again–the rose-breasted grosbeaks, the gold finches, the honeysuckle and wild raspberries, and the orioles. Oh, the orioles!

I set out my first bowl of grape jelly the last week of April and waited. Would they remember where the good stuff was? Would they come home to the faithful supply of grape jelly? Would they like the new feeder made especially for them? Would they return?

Yes. Within a week, a slew of orioles swooped onto and off of our deck. It was a veritable landing strip with orioles hovering, waiting to land. After landing, they ravaged the small bowl of jelly and relished the new feeder with its multiple-oriole capacity. They came home with a tangerine flourish.

There is a quiet assurance in the return we see in the natural world. Here, you can come home again. Here, perennialism is golden. Here, your reappearance is both ordinary and extraordinary, your homecoming wishfully anticipated.

In a world in which many things–and people–never return, there’s something particularly sacred about all this reemerging and reblooming and restoring. Sacred and hopeful. Every great story is founded on this archetype of leaving and returning (with a whole lot of searching and overcoming challenges in between). No matter how dark the journey may seem, how long the metaphorical–or literal–winter is, the hero returns in the end. Just as we wait expectantly for the return of our prize clematis, we wait expectantly for the hero’s return. Then, there is that moment when all seems right with the world. It may be just a moment–one brief but blessed stay against the confusion and despair of the world–but there it is, nonetheless.

Danish author Isak Dinesen wrote:

Nobody has seen the trekking birds take their way towards such warmer spheres as do not exist, or rivers break their course through rocks and plains to run into an ocean which is not to be found. For God does not create a longing or a hope without having a fulfilling reality ready for them.

This is it exactly: God does not create a longing or a hope without the assurance of a fulfilling reality ready and waiting. Herein lies the miracle of return in the natural world: that the long migration, the intervening seasons and unnatural intrusions finally culminate in the return to a fulfilling reality.

In this postmodern age, it’s often risky to talk about heaven as that fulfilling reality. It may be risky because there are some who’ll argue this is just foolish, wishful thinking. They’ll explain that we’ll return to the earth, period. That, they’ll assert, is our only reality. Others may cast us lovingly aside as sentimental, needy folks who must have something to long and hope for, something to keep us on the straight and narrow. Either way, if you talk of heaven, you may find that some respond cynically and some condescendingly.

Still, as the orioles’ almost-fluorescent orange backs flash through the leafed-out trees, I can’t help but think that this is one of God’s excellent ways to create a longing for a more fulfilling reality. And as these orioles return year after year, I can’t help but think that this is God’s assurance that there is, indeed, a fulfilling reality ready and waiting for us.

Undoubtedly, some will consider me a Pollyanna with all this talk of bird-watching and heaven. So be it. When I lose my way, when I find myself slogging about in perpetual winter, and when I long for something better, I’ll rest in the assurance that my journey will not end in a warmer place or in an ocean that doesn’t exist. No, I’ll find fulfillment in the place I was intended to be.

for Gracyn and Griffin

I actually did the math: I’ve been teaching for 70% of my life. And in all those teaching years, there have been many seasons. Seasons of teaching assistantships; seasons of community college, university, middle and high school teaching; seasons of teaching kids, young adults, adults, and seniors; seasons of salaried and volunteer teaching; seasons of classrooms in three different states.

But nothing could have really prepared me for this final season of homeschooling my grandchildren. Most of my teaching seasons have been spent on larger, more public stages on which I delivered lessons to hundreds, actually thousands, of students. This year, however, I spent my teaching days in my own home–sometimes in the office, sometimes at the kitchen table or on the couch. There were no bells or bathroom passes, and many times, snacks were involved. Some days, I dressed up and wore jeans (my best ones), and some days, I wore sweatpants (my respectable ones).

Each day, however, I wore my heart on my sleeve. I couldn’t help it. I’d been gifted with an opportunity to spend my days with two of the people I love most. When they burst through the door, kick off their shoes, and hang up their coats, I know that it can’t get much better than this: sitting side by side, learning together, laughing together, wondering and trying on new ideas together. This is a very small, intimate stage, perhaps the most precious and crucial one of all. And I’ve desperately wanted my years of experience to culminate in my best teaching performance.

I’d be lying if I said that each lesson came off without a hitch, that I remembered percentages, ratios, and algebraic equations, that I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the number of lesson plans I had to prepare every day. I worried nightly about all the things I’d never taught: phonics and lower elementary reading, science and math (at any level!), ancient world history. The list could go on, but these are the big ones. And if the truth be told, I cried more times than I can count, blessedly never in front of my students. I just wanted Gracyn and Griffin to genuinely learn, and I wasn’t sure that I was delivering the goods.

We have seven official school days left until summer break. Seven mornings of final math, science, social studies, language arts and spelling lessons. Seven afternoons of wicked UNO and Yahtzee matches, time on the swingset and pedal boat trips around the pond. We’ll probably eat the last cans of Spaghettios and the last box of Fruit Roll-Ups in my cupboard (admittedly, not every “school” lunch here is wholly healthy). And we’ll probably go to Dairy Queen to celebrate the end of the year.

What can I say as this teaching season comes to an end? I can say that it’s been one of the greatest privileges of my life. I can say that my grandchildren are truly wonderful people with tender hearts and glorious souls. I can say that packing up all of our books and school supplies will leave me bereft–at least until we fill our backyard pool, and the summer fun begins.