You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
― James Baldwin

Like Baldwin, books have been the primary means through which I’ve walked a mile in others’ shoes. To the extent that a willing reader can experience the pain and heartbreak of others, real and fictional, I have. That is, I’ve given myself over to the stories of those whose trials and failures moved me beyond the walls of my own sensibilities and self-consciousness and into worlds I would only experience through books. And yet, as Baldwin contends, even as a young reader, I realized that the very things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive. I remember closing a book and thinking You, too? Yes, you, too.

Reading became a primary means through which I learned empathy. I lived vicariously through thousands of characters, sharing their joys, their disappointments, their conflicts and pain. In the process, I pushed myself through complex text and remarkably beautiful–and often challenging–language. For most of my life, I’ve been an empath-in-training who’s become increasingly grateful for my rich, literary training ground.

In her article, “Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound” (The Guardian, 2018), Maryanne Wolf writes: When the reading brain skims texts, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings or to perceive beauty. We need a new literacy for the digital age. Wolf, a neuroscientist, researches the reading brain and its influence on the development of some of our primary intellectual and affective processes. She studies the effect on analysis and inference, critical reasoning, empathy, perspective-taking, and the development of insight. Her conclusions are disturbing. She explains that we are not born readers but rather, we need an effective reading environment in which to become good readers. We will adapt, she claims, to the demands of this environment. Currently, however, the dominant digital environment promotes processes that are fast, geared toward multi-tasking, and designed for large volumes of information. And the result, she contends, is that less attention and time will be allocated to slower, time-demanding deep reading processes, like inference, critical analysis and empathy, all of which are indispensable to learning at any age.

In the past few years, I’ve had many conversations with fellow English teachers about the “state of reading” in our schools. Many have confessed that administrators have encouraged (or demanded) that they replace classical texts, which are traditionally challenging and complex, with lighter, more “relevant” choices. Never mind that these classical texts provide us with some of the most valuable insights into human nature. Never mind that the language of these texts–albeit challenging–is exquisitely well-crafted. Never mind that these themes and plots have stood the test of time. Students don’t like them, the powers-that-be argue. They’re too hard, too long, too old.

In her article, Maryanne Wolf cites English literature scholar and teacher, Mark Edmundson, who laments how many college students avoid courses in which they’ll be expected to read the classic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. These students, he claims, don’t have the patience to read such texts. Wolf argues that we should be less concerned with students’ “cognitive impatience” however than by what may underlie it: the potential inability of large numbers of students to read with a level of critical analysis sufficient to comprehend the complexity of thought and argument found in more demanding texts, whether in literature and science in college, or in wills, contracts and the deliberately confusing public referendum questions citizens encounter in the voting booth.

Wolf refers to another researcher, Ziming Liu from San Jose State University, who states that what passes for reading today is often skimming or word-spotting and browsing through the text. When readers skim, they aren’t taking the time or using the skills necessary for deep-reading processes. And failing to spend this time or use these skills, they often struggle or fail to understand complexity, empathize with others, perceive beauty, and generate their own thoughts.

Many of us undoubtedly made New Years’ resolutions to improve our health, to get into better shape. Use it or lose it, we profess as we uncover our treadmills and elliptical machines from under the clothes we’ve hung there to dry. Wolf explains that the same adage is true in neuroscience. This is good news when it applies to reading, she says, for we can recover what we’ve lost (or are losing). We can once again begin to use those reading muscles necessary for deep-reading. She argues that this recovery doesn’t mean that we must reject the digital medium and embrace only the traditional, print medium. Instead, she proposes a new kind of brain: a “bi-literate” reading brain capable of the deepest forms of thought in either digital or traditional mediums. She explains that this issue can’t, and shouldn’t be, reduced to a print vs. digital reading. The most pressing “collateral damage” is [t]he subtle atrophy of critical analysis and empathy that should concern us all.

Recently, I talked with an English teacher who was nearly reduced to tears as she confessed her failure to make her students care. They’d been studying the Armenian and Rwandan genocides when a student interrupted her to ask, Why should we care about any of this? Why, indeed. I suppose one could attempt to explain this away by arguing that adolescents are often ego-centered, happily sheltered in their own world of friends, pleasures, and concerns. Still, I remember the first time I read about and saw an image of Auschwitz. In an instant, I was sleeping four to a wooden bunk, head shorn, the cries and ragged breaths of fellow prisoners filling the room. In an instant, I was contemplating my impending death and fearing that my family members would suffer the same fate. In an instant, I felt my world become so small, so tenuous, that a single crust of bread was life-giving. And I wasn’t alone as I watched the faces of my classmates. Certainly, there were some students who may have been unable or unwilling to empathize, but there were more who were. Then again, when I was in 8th grade, there were no cell phones, no computers or I-pads, no digital medium of any sort. And what I was asked to read in 8th grade was challenging, even by high school standards today.

I’m sure that I didn’t understood all that I read, but I worked at it enough to understand much of it. As I became a better reader, more importantly, I became aware of what it meant to be a better human being and to create a better world. I thought critically about what I’d read, and I felt those things that the best writers believed should torment me because they were the very things that had tormented, and continued to torment, all humans. To the teachers who demanded that I read complex texts and to the authors of these texts, I owe so very much.

When I took the leap, I had faith I would find a net; Instead, I learned I could fly. — John Calvin

Weeks ago, I gave into curiosity and clicked on a sky diving video that popped up on my Facebook feed. As you can imagine, I’ve since been deluged with similar videos of men and women bungee jumping, skydiving, cliff diving, base jumping–people leaping from places so incredibly high that even the videos terrify me. Most of these people smile with abandon as they leap from mountains, planes, and buildings. They simply let go and give themselves to the air.

Granted, some of these thrill seekers were outfitted with harnesses (and parachutes, of course), but many took to the air with wind suits or nothing at all. Years ago–when I was a young 54–I joined my daughter in a tandem paragliding adventure in the Swiss Alps. After the tram took our professional paragliding partners and us straight up the mountain, we reached a point where we had to get out and continue the trek on foot. When we finally reached the spot where we’d be outfitted with harnesses and bound to our partners, I was so oxygen deprived at that point that I remember thinking that death would be merciful. So when my partner told me to begin running down the mountain, I did. Within yards, we were airborne, gliding through the cold, clear air of the Alps just ourside of Interlaken. Sometimes I think back to this eventful day and can’t believe that I actually leapt off a mountain with nothing but manmade wings–and a partner who appeared skilled, healthy, and wholly intact. I did scrutinize him for evidence of past injuries before I got into the tram!

Truth be told, for much of my life, I haven’t thrown caution to the wind unless there was a strong net–or two or three–ready and able to catch me if I fell. My paragliding adventure was an anomaly, a freak departure from the common sense and persistent worry that had always influenced my decision-making. On that day, however, I ran when my partner told me to, I pulled my legs up when he told me to, and I gave into the incredible sensation of flying.

John Calvin, a pastor and reformer during the Protestant Reformation, never leapt from a mountain or plane. Still, he knew much about leaping. As a man of faith, his leaps were spiritual as he literally let go and let God. As a pastor and theologian, Calvin believed that we are wholly dependent upon God’s free grace which can help recover our original relationship with God before the Fall. This process he referred to as “quickening.” To begin this process of recovery, we must make the proverbial leap of faith.

I recall a difficult conversation with a biology colleague years ago during which he tried desperately to school me in the true account of creation. For over an hour, I listened as he brought forth biological evidence to support his claims of evolution. Finally, I interjected and said, “I understand and wholly agree with your examples of micro-evolution, changes within a species. But what I want to know is where did the original matter come from? Before the Big Bang, what was the source of the matter that exploded?” He began again to bombard me with even more examples of evolution within species until I asked again, “Where did the matter come from? Using a scientific explanation, help me understand the source of this matter.” Frustrated, he threw up his hands and said, “You don’t understand! We don’t start there!” Oh, but I did understand that he didn’t start there. I knew that his explanation of creation began with the premise that matter already existed. Because we’d been at it for close to two hours by this time, I brought the conversation to a close by leaving him with this: “Everyone takes a leap of faith to explain the universe’s creation. You take a leap of faith to assume that matter existed at the very beginning, that something came from nothing. I take a leap of faith to believe that God not only gave us matter but shaped the universe, that something came from a Creator.” I could’ve pointed out that his scientific explanation of creation–of something coming from nothing–was about as unscientific as you could get, but I was tired and hungry. We parted amicably and walked to the faculty parking lot, spent.

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ, we might take a moment to ponder our own leaps of faith. Many of us tend to look to all sorts of nets to catch us from our loneliness, worry, and despair: possessions, money, work, and people. Trusting that these nets will catch us, we are more prone to leap, to put our faith into those people and things that have always been our safety nets. But Elizabeth, Mary, and Joseph took unimaginable leaps towards God, trusting that, in spite of their extraordinary circumstances, He was the only net they would ever need. They leapt, and oh, how they flew!

Have a blessed Christmas!

This is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. –Neil Armstrong

Since Neil Armstrong broadcast these famous words from the moon at 10:56 p.m. on July 20, 1969, most of us who are old enough to remember may have associated big leaps with space travel, moon suits, and inhospitable-looking, cratered landscapes. As the world watched, Armstrong planted his left foot onto the lunar surface, and the rest was history. There was, however, some discussion of what Armstrong actually said. I’ve heard many misquote him saying This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Some later questioned whether or not Armstrong meant, and should have said, one small step for a man–not man, in general. Armstrong claimed that he did say a man, and a computer programmer Peter Shann Ford found the missing “a” with his software in 2006. A 2013 study confirmed this finding. Armstrong was keenly aware that his step as a single human being was a step for all humanity. His courageous big leap onto the moon continues to influence and inspire us today.

What can a single individual with courage accomplish? There are far too many examples to convince even those of little faith that one human can change the world. Take Mary’s betrothed, Joseph, for example. Here was a simple man, a carpenter who spent his days working with his hands. Even a simple man, however, had his reputation to consider. Even a simple man would’ve known the shame that a fiancée carrying another’s child would bring. Even a simple man could see how terribly and painfully stories like this play out.

Some may argue that anyone who leaps into parenthood must be a brave individual, for parenting is not for the faint of heart. I remember the moment that my mother pulled away from our home after the birth of my daughter. She’d come to help for several days, making meals, taking a night feeding so I could sleep, and offering the wisdom that only a veteran parent can offer. As she pulled away, I stood at the screen door and began to cry even before she’d driven 100 yards. How was I supposed to do this without her? What if I made a mistake or didn’t know what to do? I cowered in the face of parenting and imagined all sorts of terrible scenarios in which I failed to keep my daugher safe, fed, and happy. I was not brave–not by any sense of the word. Undoubtedly, many have had similar fears as they brought their babies home and began their lives as parents.

Still, one could–and should–argue that Joseph’s leap into parenthood was a gargantuan leap that required the kind of courage we only read about and see on movie screens. He could’ve quietly broken his engagement to Mary and left her pregnant and without a husband. For the Jews, betrothal was serious business, a pledge made one year before marriage that required a writ of divorce to break it. Joseph might’ve chosen to publicly break his pledge, for believing Mary to be pregnant with another man’s child would’ve given him just cause. Breaking this pledge, however, might’ve condemned Mary to death. But an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying: Joseph, son of David, Do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit [Matthew 1:20]. Waking, Joseph made a big leap, pledging his life as a husband and an earthly father to the Son of God.

There are so many unknowns in parenthood. No matter how much we’ve planned, how proactive we believe we’ve been, and how committed we’ve been to fulfilling our roles well, things happen. A child falls from the top bunk where we dutifully secured a safety rail; a child with a peanut allergy unknowingly eats a treat made with peanut butter; a teen skids off the road driving home during her first winter storm; a young adult loses his first love to another. Each day, parents all over the world wake and take a deep breath, praying for their children’s safety and happiness. For many parents, it often takes courage just to get out of bed. But imagine the courage it would take to rise each morning as the earthly parent to God’s son. Imagine the host of unknowns Joseph faced daily. Imagine his fear in the face of his own limitations as a mere mortal.

Like Mary, however, Joseph leapt bravely into parenthood with the assurance of God’s love. Though Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind is genuinely impressive, it pales in comparison to this simple man’s courageous leap. Sheltered in a stable in Bethlehem, Joseph gazed into his infant son’s face and understood that, in his earthly arms, he cradled the Messiah who’d come to change the world.

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore. . . Edgar Allen Poe (“The Raven”)

Opening with a line from Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “The Raven,” may be a strange way to begin a post about Mary, the mother of Jesus. But Poe’s narrator understands that stillness and mystery are necessary bedfellows. To still your heart as you encounter mystery is the best, perhaps the only, response. Even as a teenager, Mary refused to run in the face of mystery. Though she was understandably frightened and confused at the sight of the angel Gabriel, she listened as he revealed the destiny that would not only change her life but ours:

 “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob orever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” [Luke 1: 30-33]

Brazilian novelist and lyricist Paulo Coelho contends that [w]e have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery. And Mary did just this. She stood humbly in the face of the greatest mystery of all–a virgin who would bear the son of God–and stilled her heart, proclaiming: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” At the time she uttered these words, many historians believe that Mary was most likely between 12 and 14 years old. A babe herself, Mary gave herself wholly to this mystery, embracing her role as handmaid of the Lord.

We may believe ourselves to be mystery people, but in truth, we’re generally logic people bent on rational explanations and solid answers. If something seems too good or too strange to be true, we argue that it undoubtedly is. In the face of mystery, we often become rational, turning to science as authority. For to embrace mystery as Mary did requires a big leap out of ourselves and beyond reason. The young woman in this photo throws herself into the air, trusting that she will hang suspended above the earth, magnificently held in the mystery of the moment. She has faith that, for a time, her leap will defy reason and explanation. She leaps into the air, proclaiming let it be to me.

Author and theologian Frederick Buechner believes that [r]eligion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage. In a traditional sense, a pilgrimage is a journey taken into an unknown or sacred place in search of wisdom and transformation. An encounter with mystery, as Buechner maintains, is a summons to begin that journey, which may be physical and/or spiritual. Mary and Joseph travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, separating themselves geographically from their home and families. Their greater journey, however, is spiritual as they leave behind the selves and lives they’d imagined and step boldly into God’s love and assurance. Their pilgrimage is one that changed the world.

In my own life, I’ve stood in the face of mystery many times. Clearly, my encounters have been small and personal when compared to Mary’s. Still, there have been times when I’ve known things before they happened, when, beyond explanation, I saw in remarkable clarity how things would play out. This mystery occurred first when I was a teenager, and thus began my lifelong pilgrimage. On the night my father died, I went to bed, only to wake an hour later, certain that I should go to him. As my sister and mother slept, I walked to the hospital bed where my father had spent his final weeks and knew, even before I touched his hand, that he’d died. In the presence of this mystery–his soul having departed and the peace that passes all understanding washing over us–my heart was still.

Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers. Thus writes author Ray Bradbury. As we search for answers, we often slog our way forward, one logical, purposeful yard at a time. But when mysteries abound, we often leap, becoming servants to something, to someone bigger than ourselves. We leap, trusting in the sacred pilgrimage from reason to faith.

The Leap

When twilight eases into the tall grass
and the air groans under its own weight,
a girl leaps,
and there on the windless meadow hangs suspended 
above the foxtail and bushclover. 

And the leap--
call it abandon, call it rapture—
splits the plane of possibility.
Arms and legs take the evening by wing,
while gravity lies spent and breathless,
completely undone.

Such an extravagant offering:
the height and breadth of mystery,
this kinder air.

photo by Collyn Ware

A wounded deer leaps the highest. –Emily Dickinson

Barren. What a wound this word inflicts! Though I’ve been blessed to mother four children, I will always bear the scars of infertility. Like Elizabeth–a Levite, wife of Zacharias, a priest–I have known the longing of a barren woman. But unlike Elizabeth, my longing was relatively short-lived, for 19 months after adopting my daughter, Megan, I became pregnant with my daugher, Collyn, followed 15 months later, with my daughter, Marinne. Elizabeth’s longing for a child spanned decades; she became an old woman whose barrenness followed her well beyond child-bearing age.

Every time I look at this photo, I’m struck with the utter abandon with which this young woman throws herself into the air, her head and arms thrown back, defying gravity. This is, indeed, a big leap. Yet, aren’t all big leaps made with such abandon, often with the pain of one who’s been wounded and casts her longing away in hopes that it will find favor with God, the holy One who can breathe life into it?

In Luke 1: 6, we read that Elizabeth and her husband, Zachariah, were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. Bad things happen to good people. Suffering comes to the righteous and blameless. Early in my infertility, I was desperate to find a logical explanation for my condition. For months, I believed that I was quite possibly being punished, and the conditions of my punishment were barrenness. Infertility is a lonely business, for even today, a stigma surrounds it. Infertile women often don’t share their pain, believing their condition to be shameful, a mark of their inadequacy, a consequence of their sinfulness. Elizabeth’s story gloriously testifies to the foolishness of such thinking and to the blessing of God’s timing. For God sent the angel Gabriel to Zachariah to announce that Elizabeth would finally bear a child even though she was well beyond child-bearing age. After years of patiently, faithfully waiting, Elizabeth would bear a son, John the Baptist, the prophet who would proclaim Jesus as the promised Messiah.

When a pregnant Mary comes to visit her, Elizabeth welcomes her cousin in spite of the shame of Mary’s supposed “illegitimate” child. As she opens her arms to embrace Mary, her own baby leaps inside her womb, and she is immediately filled with the Holy Spirit. In Luke 1: 42-45 we read of Elizabeth’s great joy as she greets Mary:

 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.  Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

Elizabeth’s story is often understandably overshadowed by Mary’s. She may have been a wounded deer for most of her life, suffering the stigma and hopelessness of being unable to bear a child, but she, like her cousin Mary, makes a great leap into the arms of hope. And the fruits of this leap come miraculously in both her own child, John, and her Savior, Jesus. Elizabeth proclaims that she is favored, for the mother of her Lord stands in her presence.

I suppose that one might make the argument that, for most of us, greeting each day requires a big leap into hope. Hope that we might find favor with God, that our longing might be fulfilled, that our deepest desires might be met. Hope that we might literally make it through another day, that we might put one foot in front of the other and plow through whatever circumstances befall us. Hope that the world might become a kinder, gentler place, restored with beauty and grace. Hope that the Holy Spirit might inhabit us, too, filling our hearts with peace and assurance. Yes, one might make the argument that living requires magnificent leaps into the hope necessary to sustain us.

And one might argue that the wounded often leap the highest, that they offer themselves wholly, feeling as though they have little to lose, for hope is their last resort. I think if Elizabeth were here to counsel us, though, she’d say that hope is our first, best resort. She’d remind us that when we leap with abandon into the arms of God, this is a life-giving leap. Although our lives are filled with seasons of big leaps, Advent, especially, beckons us to make a big leap from the darkness into the light, from the pain of our wounds into grace.

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
― W.B. Yeats

I know, he said, his face uncommonly solemn. Griffin nodded towards his elves, artfully clothed and arranged with their arctic pets on the coffee table in his living room. Oh, sweet boy, I thought, and for a moment, my words caught in my throat as I struggled for the right thing to say. For I knew how much he loved these elves, how, over the years, he’d painstakingly written letters to them requesting permission to touch them (forbidden in the world of Elf on the Shelf) and for them to return throughout the year (because he missed them so). I knew how the magic burned bright and true in these little elves and how its passing signalled a end to an era. Of course, I knew it must end, as the magic of all childhood fantasies generally ends. But just as with my children, I couldn’t help but wish for one more season in which all things seem possible. In the end, I said nothing but pulled him in for a hug.

 Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef, writes American novelist Tom Robbins. I think Robbins is on to something here. How do you put into words the wonder, the absolute glory of magic? Even as I attempt to write this post, I’m painfully aware that I may be trying to finesse mystery and enchantment with a sledge hammer. Still, I’ve convinced myself, one must try. Because although we pull out all the stops during Christmas, dressing our homes and lives with the magic of the season, we tend to pack it away with the ornaments we stow in our attics. We ring in the New Year with resolutions about all sorts of practical things: health, time management, budgets and relationships. Out with wonder and in with self-improvement. So, I’ve convinced myself that even though my attempts to promote magic may be artless and oafish, they aren’t misguided. When it comes to the art of magic appreciation, most grownups are amateurs.

Oh, I know that keeping the magic of elves (and other things) alive is not for the faint of heart. It requires planning. It takes creativity. It often means rising earlier or staying up later. In short, it’s work. I’ve heard parents complain that such work is just one more holiday obligation, one that compounds their already large list of things to do before December 24th. But I’ve seen friends create incredible elf tableaus from household things: elves skiing down bannisters, swimming in bowls of marshmallows, ziplining from light fixtures. There is much magic at work in the creation of these tableaus. Worth the time and work? Those of us who are big fans of magic will respond with a hearty yes it is! After all, as Tom Robbins argues, [d]isbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business, and no one wants that.

In his novel, A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett writes that [i]t’s still magic even if you know how it’s done. Years after I learned the truth about Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny–after I understood how it’s done–I held fast to their magic. I still do. In his famous editorial, “Is There a Santa Claus?”, Francis Pharsellus Church responded to Virginia, an 8-year old who really wanted to know if Santa Claus was real. Church concluded his response with these words:

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. [The Sun, Sept. 21, 1897]

We may know how it’s done and may tear it apart to see what makes it work, but Church reminds us that there is nothing else real and abiding but the unseen world which no one can tear apart. Thank God, he claims, the magic lives forever!

Frances Hodgson Burnett offers some sage advice in her children’s classic, The Secret Garden:

Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world . . . but people don’t know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.

This sounds like the kind of experiment I can get behind. When I forget what magic is like or how to make it happen, I can just say nice things are going to happen until I can actually make them happen. And if I can’t make them happen? Well, there will be a lot of magic in all the proclaiming and hoping. One of my granddaughter’s favorite authors, Kate DiCamillo, believes that hope and magic are probably connected. I have an unusually active imagination and a generous capacity for hope, so I begin my experiment with optimism.

On the evening that Griffin revealed to me that he knew about the elves, I gave him the elf clothes and the elf pet that I’d previously planned to smuggle into his house. Even armed with newfound awareness, he was excited to dress his elves in their new duds and place their new pet in the menagerie. As he worked, he said: Grandma, I just thought you should know that I know the elves came from my mom and dad’s closet–not the North Pole. Thank goodness it’s just the elves and not Santa! Ain’t that the truth!

The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July. –Henry David Thoreau

This is a juvenile eastern (red-spotted) newt. You may be thinking what an odd picture for a post on bounty. You may be expecting a more traditional cornucopia or Thanksgiving table laden with all the seasonal favorites. But earlier this fall as a fellow writing resident and I were walking Tewksbury Hollow Road in northeastern Pennsylvania, we looked down on the gravel road to find a red-spotted newt making his way across. As like-minded bounty hunters, we stopped and stared at the 3 1/2 inches of scarlet glory below us. Oh, it’s true that bounty and plenty are most often kissing cousins, but bounty, like the best gifts, can also come in the smallest packages. And bounty, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.

American Transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau, testified to this truth in his writing and with his life. He proclaims the thinnest yellow light of November is equal in value to the bounty of July, and in so doing, reveals his willingness to see beauty and bounty in almost everything. Not only would Thoreau marvel at the newt as he made his way into the forest, he would write pages about it, commemorating it as bounty in its purest form. Most famous for his book, Walden, a reflection of living alone in a simple cabin in the woods outside of Concord, Massachusetts, Thoreau understood that bounty may be everywhere, but one must intentionally seek it. He writes:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…

Perhaps because almost everything is so accessible now, quickly and often with just the touch of a keystroke, we may think little about the intentionality of bounty hunting. We’ve come to expect that people and things will come to us–physically or digitally. We wait expectantly more than we seek and suck out all the marrow of life. I’m afraid that if Thoreau was our life-coach, he would find that many of us aren’t living deliberately, for we haven’t yet come to know–or have forgotten–that living is so dear. If grades were given, I expect Thoreau might offer us a generous C and comment needs improvement. After all, here is a man who sought to rout all that was not life, to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, so that he might live bountifully. I suspect that he’d lament our mediocrity and passivity.

In his poem, “To the Holy Spirit,” Wendell Berry writes:

O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,
Who in necessity and in bounty wait,
Whose truth is both light and dark, mute though spoken,
By Thy wide Grace show me Thy narrow gate.

Paradoxically, the gate into bounty is often small and narrow. When we think big, God offers us a baby born in a stable rather than a warrior king. When we think more, Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein writes:

Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the concentration camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend. [All But My Life]

As I review my grocery list for our family Thanksgiving dinner, I’m painfully aware of the contrast between my world and one in which my entire possession is one raspberry that I give to a friend. I’d like to believe that I’d see bounty in a single raspberry, but I’m afraid that, living generally in abundance, I’d struggle. For those who know real scarcity and who struggle for their very survival are most often those who find the narrow gate into grace and bounty.

It goes without saying that bounty may also come so generously, so abundantly that it takes our breath away. That is, it may be gargantuan. Traveling up the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park, I could scarcely take in the majesty of creation. Here was bounty in its super-sized form, and the wonders just kept coming as we traveled to the summit. Likewise, the sheer force of love and familiarity often overwhelms me at family gatherings. In these moments, bounty takes the room like a tsunami, leaving glittering shells of gratitude on the shores of our lives.

Seeking bounty–in big or small packages–is a lifelong endeavor, one that might produce even greater fruits through intentionality and reflection. As a rookie bounty hunter, I’m writing my own improvement plan: one that involves daily reflection on the red-spotted newt, one I think Thoreau would approve.

When one hand isn’t enough

to hold a hedge apple
or all the lemon luster of the hour, 
you need two hands—
fingers fused and heels pressed hard into the other—
to hold the day.

For one hand is rarely enough.
One hand cradles parts and starts
drawing itself up as large as it can—
larger even than it thought possible—
but never large enough. 

One hand can hold the corner of a smile,
catch a single tear,
nest a word or two.

But you want more,
and your two-handed gluttony
is a thing of real beauty,
a chaste and fitting bounty
for one who loves the world so,

for one who wants the sun and moon,
the seed and bloom,
the greening, growing grace of this day
and the next,

for one who walks the earth
a two-handed supplicant. 

When you listen to a witness, you become a witness.
― Elie Wiesel

Recently, I presented at a teachers’ conference held to commemorate the life and works of my father and to offer ways through which my father’s writing might be used in K-12 classrooms. Needless to say, there was considerable witness made to the enduring legacy of my father’s work as poet and teacher. Former students and colleagues, family and friends testified to the influence that Don Welch had–and continues to have–on their lives in and out of the classroom. To be in the presence of such witnesses was truly humbling, for it became evident that the father and teacher I knew was also present in homes and classrooms all over the world. Those who’d listened to my father were passing it on to others. In the sanctuary of a witness, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, you equip yourself to deliver what you’ve learned to others. The witness becomes a witness becomes a witness. And so it goes.

In his 2005 address to the United Nations on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel opened by confessing the challenges facing those who’ve witnessed things so unimaginable, so horrific that words fail them:

When speaking about that era of darkness, the witness encounters difficulties. His words become obstacles rather than vehicles; he writes not with words but against words. For there are no words to describe what the victims felt when death was the norm and life a miracle. Still, whether you know it or not, his memory is part of yours.

Though words may become obstacles, as Wiesel contends, and though they impose limitations–as all words necessarily do–on suffering and despair that are genuinely limitless, words remain the primary means through which we bear witness. And when those words have been carefully chosen and conscientiously crafted, the witness evokes in us such urgency and conviction that we’re forever changed. Wiesel’s words in this address, as well as in other speeches and writings, move us to remember and to become active witnesses to what we’ve heard and read. He concludes his address with these powerful words:

And now, years later, you who represent the entire world community, listen to the words of the witness. Like Jeremiah and Job, we could have cried and cursed the days dominated by injustice and violence.

We could have chosen vengeance. We did not. We could have chosen hate. We did not. Hatred is degrading and vengeance demeaning. They are diseases. Their history is dominated by death.

The Jewish witness speaks of his people’s suffering as a warning. He sounds the alarm so as to prevent these things being done. He knows that for the dead it is too late; for them, abandoned by God and betrayed by humanity, victory came much too late. But it is not too late for today’s children, ours and yours. It is for their sake alone that we bear witness.

Ultimately, we bear witness, as Wiesel contends, for the sake of our children and future children. We sincerely hope that our witness will help ensure that their lives are better and safer.

As effective as words often are to those bearing witness, there are other tools. In Walking on Water: Reflection on Faith and Art, American writer, Madleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time), writes:

As Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard says, “To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”

I think my siblings would agree that we grew up in a home where our father and mother witnessed daily through the way they chose to live their lives. Truly, they lived in such a way that their lives would not make sense if God did not exist. My mother is the human embodiment of Christ’s compassion and mercy. She’s an unfailing advocate for the least of these, the handicapped and poor, the grieving and suffering, the invisible and forgotten. For years, we watched her love our neighbors–both literal and universal neighbors. We witnessed her work as a community advocate for the handicapped and for those suffering from and surviving breast cancer. Year after year, she was God’s hands and feet on earth as she carried this witness into our community. Largely housebound now, her witness is nonethless powerful. She writes encouraging messages to literally hundreds of people. Facebook Messenger has become the primary means through which she witnesses, and what a powerful witness it is.

And as powerful as my father’s words are, his life, too, became the kind of witness that changed people’s lives. As an undergraduate and graduate student at Kearney State College, I lived for the precious moments I could spend alone with my dad in his office. During these visits, I didn’t have to share his attention with anyone, and through our conversations, I learned more about how to live a good life than I learned about how to improve the essays I was drafting. And perhaps more than anything, I learned the immeasurable worth of offering your undivided time to another, of making another feel as though he or she is just that important to you. I watched my dad give this gift of undivided time and attention to so many others: colleagues, family, friends, students–past and present. When he was dying and these people came to bear witness to his influence on their lives, I saw how the time my dad had spent with each of them had shaped the people they’d become.

English art critic and essayist John Berger writes of the photographer’s role as witness:

Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

Berger’s insights into the choices that good photographers make have broader applications, I think. We don’t bear witness to everything that happens, for if, as Berger argues, everything is worthy of witness, our witness would become meaningless. I’ve watched my daughter photograph individuals and groups, places and things, and I’ve seen the care she exercises in choosing what to shoot. Today, anyone with a smart phone can point and shoot. And the quality of these photographs is surprisingly good. Still, good photographers make careful choices about what to shoot and how to frame their shots, for they want these photographs to bear witness to a particular emotion or state, an atmosphere or attitude. They want their photos to be much more than technically good; they want them to be emotionally and spiritually good, to move audiences to think and feel as they look at their images. They want their photographs to bear witness to the noteworthy people, places, and events that they’ve chosen to record. And perhaps above all, they want their photographs to bear witness to what we abhor and what we cherish, to what we must destroy and what we must keep, to what we must change and what we must preserve. Their photographs can become a powerful historic witness in much the same way as words, spoken and written, can.

American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson understands that at the very heart of witnessing is the responsibility to speak the truth. He writes:

Speak the truth and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

In the sanctuary of a witness, the truth lives and moves through words and deeds. Many of us are blessed to live among those who witness with their very lives. And the least that we can do is to bear witness to their witness.

We’re built to live simultaneously in love and loss, bitter and sweet.
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

I confess to being a connoisseur of all things bittersweet, melancholy, and poignant. I take great joy as I weep during Hallmark commercials or tear up when my grandson takes my hand. Recently, I watched all 2 hours and 13 minutes–for the fifth time, but who’s counting–of the 1994 film, Legends of the Fall, just to cry at the scene where Tristan (Brad Pitt) kneels, sobbing, at the grave of his brother. After both brothers enlist during WWI, Tristan vows to watch over and protect his younger brother but ultimately fails. Tristan watches helplessly as his brother calls for him, wandering blindly in a mustard gas fog before he’s finally cut down by machine gun fire and takes his last breaths draped over a barbed wire fence in No Man’s Land. The bittersweet quotient in this scene is wonderfully, painfully off the charts.

In Susan Cain’s 2022 book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, she writes:

This book is about the melancholic direction, which I call the “bittersweet”: a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. The bittersweet is also about the recognition that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. “Days of honey, days of onion,” as an Arabic proverb puts it.

Some may argue that there’s nothing new about the pairing of light and dark, bitter and sweet. Still, as Bilal Qureshi maintains in his New York Post article, “In a relentlessly positive culture, a defense of melancholy” (April 8, 2022), we should seriously consider this celebration of the “melancholic” disposition in a culture fixated on relentless positivity. For better or worse, we’ve collectively become positivity junkies, plastering encouraging posters on our walls and subscribing to apps that provide daily doses of optimisim and encouragement. Our playlists are often filled with upbeat melodies to which we can dance with abandon in our kitchens and sing at the top of our lungs in our cars. Our classrooms promote positivity mantras which our children happily learn. But Cain understands that in a world increasingly designed for extroverts and positivity-pushers, there are introverts and melancholics as well. Her 2013 book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, testifies to her desire that we also celebrate the quiet, contemplative, melancholy individuals around us.

While Cain discusses the bittersweet, she repeatedly refers to the paradox of tragedy. She explains that while we don’t actually seek out tragedy, we do like sad and beautiful things—the bitter together with the sweet. This paradox is revealed, she claims, in our penchant for elegiac poetry, seaside cities shrouded in fog, spires reaching through the clouds. In other words: We like art forms that express our longing for union, and for a more perfect and beautiful world. Consider the appeal of a good, melancholy ballad. Or consider the juxtapostion of a tender baby’s hand nestled inside a gnarled elderly person’s hand. Here, the sweet and the bitter occupy a geography of beauty and sorrow. Here, as Cain writes, we cry tears of joy—which tend to come during precious moments suffused with their imminent ending.

As a child, I loved to watch the television series, Lassie. My mother likes to remind me of how each week when the first notes of the theme song began to play, I would tear up in anticipation of what was to come. Even then, I loved how the bitter would befall Timmy or another character, and then how Lassie would return everyone to the sweet, guaranteeing a poignant resolution.

Last month when I spent three weeks in northeastern Pennsylvania on writing residency, I spent hours of each day rereading my dad’s books of poetry, going through his journals, leafing through file folders I’d found in his desk, and reviewing the small notebooks he carried as he walked the streets and alleys of Kearney, Nebraska. And each day, I felt as though I were dragging myself back through the days I’d spent with my dad before he died, as though I were reliving the beautiful agony of those last weeks. As I read, I cried and occasionally talked aloud to myself saying things like, “This is so good, Dad, so very, very good,” and “If I had just one more hour, maybe just a few more minutes, there are so many things I’d like to say and ask.” This is territory of the quintessential bittersweet. In the words of singer/songwriter John Mellencamp, it just hurts so good.

In describing our response to the bittersweet, Cain writes that [i]t’s an authentic and elevating response to the problem of being alive in a deeply flawed yet stubbornly beautiful world. I like this so much. The world we live in is deeply flawed and stubbornly beautiful, and our days, as the Arab proverb proclaims, are those of honey and onion. Ultimately, Cain proposes that we embrace the bittersweet more, that maybe we could see it—rather than enforced smiles and righteous outrage—as the bridge we need to connect with each other. She already had me at embrace. I’ve been embracing the bittersweet for as long as I can remember, and I couldn’t stop now if I tried. For the cattails have burst, and the milkweed pods are spilling their floss. And there is such beauty in their dying.

Cattails
for my father

The cattails have burst
along Tewksbury Hollow Road,
entrails slipping from their soft bellies
like stuffing from a worn divan.
In early autumn, the breeze carries them away—
piece by piece, heart and soul.

Beside them, thick stands of goldenrod
thumb their noses, flaunting plumes
the color of egg yolk.

When I round the corner where a meadow stretches
expectantly towards the treed hills beyond,
I have the foolish urge to stuff their organs
back into the brown bodies
which have borne them for months.

Because aren’t the days still warm enough,
and haven’t the maples only just begun to turn?
Because shouldn’t bodies be brawnier,
matching spirit with good matter?

Tomorrow, I fear this whole stretch of road
may be a mortuary, the spent lives of cattails
lining the ditches, the shade of hardwoods 
casting their pall. 

Tomorrow as I walk,
I’ll think of you in your death bed;
I’ll remember finding you so still
as I put my hand upon yours
which was already fingering a finer air.

along Tewksbury Hollow Road, Auburn Township, Pennsylvania

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
― John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

I really like the fawns, he said, especially the fawns. I was walking down Pennsyvlania Route 6 to the intersection and was just about to turn onto Tewksbury Hollow Road when he pulled up beside me. He idled there in the center of the road, an older gentleman who leaned out from his open window into the morning air. His pickup had some serious battle scars, and its antenna hung unnaturally from the hood like a dislocated limb. It took me a few seconds, but then I realized that he must’ve been watching me watching the deer that had come out of the trees to graze in the clearing yesterday.

Did you get a good picture of them? he asked. And it was clear that he’d seen me photographing a doe and her fawns about 300 yards from the road. I did, I said. And though for a moment I wondered if I should be wary–after all, here was a strange man who’d been watching me and now sat idling in the center of the road–I began to tell him all about the deer in southeast Iowa, about the bucks I’d seen walking across my back yard last fall. And when he motioned up the big hill to the south and told me that he lived way up at the top in the house with all the stacks of cut wood, I found myself wondering what it would be like to ride up with him and to look out over the hollow from such a magnificent vantage point.

These are the perks of a good walk. You see things. You meet people you probably wouldn’t otherwise meet. You hear your feet on the road and fall into a rhythm as familiar as your own heart beat. I suspect that if there was a charge for all these perks, we probably couldn’t afford them. They’re that precious.

During the three weeks I spent in northeastern Pennsylvania, I walked daily along Tewksbury Hollow Road. Each morning, I set out from my lodgings, but, as John Muir writes, I was really going in. Into a world where fields of goldenrod flanked the road; where a great blue heron stalked the perimeter of a pond covered in algae; where the rain brought spotted red newts onto the road and sent the stream–previously just a trickle–crashing over the rocks like a full-fledged river; where the hardwoods arched over the road in a canopy so dense that I walked for yards in near darkness; where the cattails had burst, and the milkweed pods had just begun to spill their milky floss; where deer dotted the tree line, and somewhere, deep within the forest, black bears slept. Each day, I was walking into another world, and I marveled at the new things I encountered there.

In his essay, “Walking,” American author Henry David Thoreau writes: I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. I confess that there were days I walked down Route 6 and onto Tewksbury Hollow Road bodily but not necessarily spiritually. My body struggled with the humidity and with one wicked hill that literally took my breath away and often caused me to stop, mid-hill, to regulate my heart which was hammering against my chest. During these moments, it was challenging to be there in spirit. Still, there were more times when my spirit grabbed me by the hand and pulled me down the road. Even now, weeks after I’ve returned home, I walk the road in my mind. As I mind-walk, I see each bend, each sunny field, each tree stand, and cabin.

Rebecca Solnit, author of Wanderlust: A History of Walking, examines the many benefits of walking. She writes:

For [Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice], as for Mr. Darcy, [Elizabeth Bennett’s] solitary walks express the independence that literally takes the heroine out of the social sphere of the houses and their inhabitants, into a larger, lonelier world where she is free to think: walking articulates both physical and mental freedom.

Oh, to be taken out of the social sphere and ushered into the larger, lonelier world where you are free to think! This is it, exactly. A good walk opens up real space to flex your mental muscles. It pays no heed to your reputation or attire. You can be unabashedly yourself. You can make unfiltered exclamations when something catches your fancy. Will you look at that! I often say to no one in particular. There’s no etiquette about this sort of thing on a good walk. And truth be told, most drivers or passersby who might be alarmed if they saw you talking to yourself are probably texting or scrolling through social media, so they won’t register an occasional Oh, wow!

You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to. J.R.R. Tolkien is keenly aware that a good walk has the power to sweep you off to places you’ve only imagined. Or perhaps to places you’ve never imagined. I’ve been so wholly swept away that I lost complete track of where I was and how I got there. For minutes or hours, I’ve walked into great tales in which, as heroine, I met every challenge and vanquished every evil handily. I’ve been swept into other ages and other places, and all this sweeping became, in the words of poet Robert Frost, a momentary stay against confusion. I gratefully let myself be swept into all sorts of worlds, and as I walked on, the miles kept the pain and terror of this world at bay.

On my very last walk down Tewksbury Hollow Road, I met a man I’d seen walking a few days before. We met in a sunny spot of the road where the morning sun burst through an opening in the upper story of the poplar and oak trees hemming the road. For 15 minutes, we stood and talked about all sorts of things. As if we’d been friends for years. As if we’d expected to find each other at this very time on this very road. As if the bounty of the day depended upon our meeting. A great walk can really deliver the goods.