Carl Bloch, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Luke 2: 8-12

To live in a field among sheep, to stay awake, alone and vigilant, to live in solitude through long days and longer nights. For some, this may sound like a peaceful refuge in the midst of a busy, noisy world; to many others, however, this sounds more like a prison sentence. Separated from family and creature comforts, these shepherds faced considerable physical and emotional trials. To face these trials knowing that others looked down upon you, that you occupied the very bottom of the social ladder, and that you were crude, dirty, and uneducated, this might transform the consolation of solitude into desolation. As this solitude flooded your mind and soul with a tsunami of doubt and fear, you might struggle to maintain any peace and joy you’d found. And in your separation from others, you might also feel separated from God.

In his 2008 article “Shepherd’s Status,” Christian author Randy Alcorn explains the status of shepherds at the time of Jesus’ birth: “[S]hepherds stood on the bottom rung of the Palestinian social ladder. They shared the same unenviable status as tax collectors and dung sweepers.” To share the same status as dung sweepers is to share no real status at all. Add to this the fact that because shepherds were perpetually dirty from living in fields among sheep, they would’ve been regarded as ceremonially unclean, unfit to be in the presence of God. We could argue the stable was already unclean and question whether a few unwashed shepherds could contaminate it further. Still, this was a holy place with a Savior King, and a group of lowly shepherds would’ve been customarily barred entry.

God had another plan, though, as He brought the good news first to shepherds, invited them to see the sign themselves, and to worship the Messiah, their Lord. On a Sunday 30 years ago, God had another plan for the church I was attending. After our contemporary service ended and as we were hauling off musical and sound equipment to prepare for the traditional service which would begin in a few minutes, a man quietly entered the back of our sanctuary. I saw him tentatively make his way down the aisle and went to greet him. I quickly discovered that he couldn’t speak English, and given that my Spanish was woefully limited to a few conversational phrases, I couldn’t really communicate with him. There was an urgency in his voice, though, and as I led him down the aisle towards the front of the sanctuary, I could see that our pastor was already coming to us.

I won’t forget this moment. My pastor stuck out his hand in greeting, but the man shook and lowered his head, ashamed to offer his own filthy hand. He’d obviously not washed for days. His clothing was soiled, his hair matted, and his skin blackened with dirt. But my pastor smiled, never breaking eye contact as he grabbed his hand and welcomed him. This man wasn’t a shepherd, but he was the equivalent. He’d hopped a train at the border and was making his way to his cousin in Kansas. And here he was in southern Iowa, having unknowingly overshot Kansas and traveled many rail miles beyond. As our group stood near the pulpit and parishioners were filing in for the next service, our pastor looked out into the pews and yelled, “Does anyone speak Spanish?” A timid hand went up in the balcony, and a small woman made her way down the stairs. Through her translation, we learned the man’s story and his need to unite with his Kansas cousin.

A period of silence ensued during which the organist didn’t begin the prelude and the church service was delayed. In a huddle near the pulpt, our pastor and several of us formulated a plan. My husband, who worked for the railroad, took him to our home to find him a winter coat and a few provisions for his trip. Then, at some risk to his employment, he drove him to the trainyard and helped him hop the right train, the one that would bring him to his Kansas family. On that Sunday morning, we were less concerned about doing church and more concerned with being the church.

For years, I’ve thought about the courage of this man who was as unclean and lowly as a shepherd. I’ve thought about how he humbly offered his hopes and needs before us–before God. And I’ve thought about this encounter as a powerful affirmation of how God uses the lowly, the sick and weak, the alien and estranged, to bring us back to the manger. At the manger, we are all ceremonially unclean, humbled in our shared humanness. At the manger, we are all shepherds, perplexed and amazed that God would bring the Good News to us. At the manger, we kneel before a baby who will one day sleep, unbathed, under the stars, who will work with his hands, fish for his supper, and ultimately save the world.

On that Sunday morning so many years ago, we were able to offer some consolation to a man in desolation. On that night in fields outside of Bethlehem, God offered great consolation to a group of shepherds who’d undoubtedly experienced the desolation of their position and status. As tinseled and bedazzled as our Christmas seasons often become, this splendor pales in comparison to what must’ve been an amazing sight: shepherds kneeling at the manger and taking their honored place as Jesus’s first visitors. This Christmas, may we take consolation in the assurance that the last will be first, the meek will inherit the earth, and the spirit and good fortune of these shepherds lives in us.

And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Luke 2:7

When one door closes, another door opens. We’ve all heard the saying. Undoubtedly, it’s been used by well-meaning folks to console us when doors are shut in our faces and the entry into places we’d intended to go is blocked. We may find these words cavalier, too dismissive of the disappointment we truly feel because a closed door is, first and foremost, a denial: no entry, no vacancy, no possibility.

Although the inkeeper in nativity plays is not mentioned in scripture, we faithfully cast him as an integral actor. He is the story’s foil, the gruff-speaking man at the door who barks, “No room!” As he shuts his door to a pregnant woman and her husband who’ve just made a 70-mile trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, he becomes the reason for a king’s humble birth in a stable.

It takes little to imagine Mary and Joseph’s desolation as they stood before the closed door. Alone and facing an imminent birth, they were desperate to find an open door. In traditional crèches, we often find cozy, clean stables and sweet-smelling mangers, serene-looking parents and well-groomed barn animals. It’s as if our crèche makers are saying, “Look how beautifully another door opens!” The reality of Jesus’ birth–in a stable or cave, as some suggest–was cold, foul-smelling, and crude. If there were a hotel rating system at that time, Jesus’ birthplace wouldn’t have even earned 1-star; it would make economy lodging look luxurious.

Yet, the King of Kings, the Savior of the World was born into this desolate place. And herein lies one of the greatest consolations: that God sent His Son into this desolation to live among us, to celebrate and suffer with us. Jesus is no door-slamming innkeeper; rather, He is the hotel clerk who smiles, opens the door and says, “Come in! There is always room for you.” Even in times of greatest desolation, even when life’s doors shut in our faces, He stands on the other side of a door which is always open for the asking:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Matthew 7: 7-8

And yet as St. Ignatius cautioned, even this consolation may fade into desolation as life throws down its gauntlet of trials. Decades ago, I suffered a period of infertility and miscarriage during which the door to motherhood was resoundingly slammed in my face time and again. I recall sitting in the waiting room of my gynecologist, a small room burgeoning with pregnant women. Burying my head in whatever magazines I could find (generally Parents and Mother and Baby), I plowed through holiday recipes and child-friendly vacation tips. When my name was finally called, I escaped to an examination room, grateful not to be reminded of my barrenness.

During this period, I remember the encouragement and advice from others: Don’t give up hope–you’ll get pregnant when you least expect it! Just relax–take a vacation! Go on a cruise! For them, it seemed the door to motherhood would open benevolently in its own time. But for me, the door felt hopelessly and permanently locked. Yet, even as this door closed–or seemed to close–I felt the stirrings of another door opening: the adoption of our first child, Megan.

In three days, we’ll celebrate Megan’s birth. Out of the despair of infertility and miscarriage, her birth ushered in a period of great consolation, a joy I’d previously not known. In the years to come, this joy grew exponentially with the births of my daughters, Collyn and Marinne, and the adoption of my son, Quinn. When one door closed, four doors swung wondrously open.

For centuries, we’ve portrayed Christ’s birth in a lowly manger. I’ve often wondered what it might’ve been like if the innkeeper had happily ushered Mary and Joseph into a room where Jesus could be born in a cleaner, more appropriate environment. But God had a better plan. The closed door, the crude stable and simple manger testify to a divine paradox: the Son of God, the King of Kings, born humbly as a baby to bring consolation to a desolate world.

As humans, we may be tempted to view our condition as a series of closed doors that prevent us from pursuing our hearts’ desires and fulfilling our best-laid plans. We may view our world as a dark and dangerous wilderness through which we must make our way, hoping for refuge at every door we encounter. One of Advent’s greatest consolations is that Christ lived 33 years as a man, so that He might know our human condition, so that He might feel its joys and sorrows. As we wander through our own wildernesses, He is with us. And when doors close before us–as they inevitably will–He waits to greet us, swinging His door open with merciful abandon.

painting by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato

And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. Luke 1:38

A few weeks ago, I attended my annual silent retreat at the Cloisters on the Platte near Gretna, Nebraska. Seven years ago, I was fortunate enough to be moved quickly off the waiting list into a spot which I’ve held ever since. During my first retreat at the Cloisters, I was wholly unprepared for the beauty of the facility and grounds and for the power of three days of silence, prayer, and meditation. Since then, I’ve returned each November–blesssed.

During my last retreat, Fr. Paul Hoesig led us in a study of St. Ignatius’ Rules for the Discernment of Spirit. Ignatius contends that we all move between periods of spiritual consolation and spiritual desolation. He defines spiritual consolation as “when some interior movement in the soul is caused, through which  the soul comes to be inflamed with love of its Creator and Lord; and when it can, in consequence, love no created thing on the face of the earth in itself, but in the Creator of them all.” When we experience an increase in hope, faith, and charity as well as an “interior joy” from the Lord, this is spiritual consolation. And this, Ignatius explains, is much more than a feeling; it’s a state of being.

On the other hand, spiritual desolation is “the contrary of [spiritual consolation], such as darkness of soul, disturbance in it, movement to things low and earthly, the unquiet of different agitations and temptations, moving to want of confidence, without hope, without love, when one finds oneself all lazy, tepid, sad, and as if separated from his Creator and Lord.”

For most, the world at the time of Christ’s birth (between 6 and 4 B.C.) was oppressive. The Romans had ruled the world for half a century, and their republic had turned into a tyranny, with the emperor, Caesar Augustus, in charge of the empire. In most agrarian societies, 90% of the population worked the land as peasants, while 10% were born into nobility and, therefore, into power and wealth. It goes without saying that the world was a dark place for many who struggled to survive. And it doesn’t take much effort to imagine the spiritual desolation of the oppressed. Into this world, an angel of the Lord appeared to a teenage girl in a backwater town. We know the story well. Perhaps we know it too well, often joyfully skipping to the good part: the birth of a healthy, pink-cheeked baby boy destined to be the Savior of the world.

We may unthinkingly skip the almost certain fear, confusion, and inevitable shame that would accompany an apparently illegitmate pregnancy. And we shouldn’t. For into this desolate world, into these dark circumstances, Mary consented to bear God’s Son, opening her soul fully as she declared: Let it me unto me according to your word.

Although we know that spiritual consolation–our souls inflamed with love of our Creator and Lord–is grounded in this kind of open-hearted submission, sadly, we often turn to ourselves, resolved to create a kind of consolation of our own making and effort. We get about the business of doing–rather than being. We make plans and resolutions. We get to work on ourselves. I don’t know how many times in the past year I’ve heard, or read, about people “doing the work” on themselves. It’s not that we don’t bear some responsibility for our own wellbeing–or that we should ignore how God works through pastors, counselors, mentors, friends, and family members. It is, however, that too often we ignore the source of all consolation which Mary understood well.

Thirty-two years ago at this time, we were preparing to adopt our son, Quinn. I confess that there have only been a handful of times in my life when I was fully aware that I had no real control over my circumstances and stood, as Mary did, before God as a supplicant. On the day that we traveled to the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis to meet our new son and take him home, we couldn’t have known that we’d be there for hours–first at the church and later in a congregant’s home–as we waited for confirmation from the State of Iowa that his official paperwork had arrived in Des Moines, granting us the legal right to bring him home. These were hours fraught with worry, frustration, and confusion as our caseworker repeatedly called to check whether the paperwork (on a FedEx truck during peak Christmas delivery hours) had arrived. At one point, perspiration running from her temples, she turned to us and asked–hopefully, desperately–if we knew anyone of political prominence in Iowa who might intervene on our behalf, so we could leave Minnesota and legally enter Iowa.

Of course, we didn’t, and the minutes that ticked by were fraught with tension. There was much hand wringing–for almost everyone but me. The Iowa official communicating with our caseworker had informed her that their offices would close promptly at 4:30 for Christmas that afternoon, and if they hadn’t received the official paperwork by then, she’d have to fly Quinn back to Georgia and try again after the holidays. Throughout all this, an uncharacteristic and miraculous sense of peace pervaded me. As I held my infant son, I sensed the concern and frenzied actions around me, but I felt warmed with the assurance that all would be well. And it was. With minutes to spare, we finally received word that we could take Quinn home.

Although I didn’t speak Mary’s words of submission, I can look back on this day and know, with certainty, that I felt them. Let it be unto me according to your word. I felt the peace that passes all understanding. I know the spiritual consolation that illuminates the darkness. And I know, with certainty, that this was not of my own making, not a result of my own effort nor any human effort.

A 16th century Carmelite monk, St. John of the Cross, understood the darkness of spiritual desolation. In his poem, Noche obscura del alma (translated “The Dark Night of the Soul” ), he writes of the worldly struggle to know and feel an “interior joy” from the Lord. Like St. Ignatius, he knew that we would move into and out of periods of spiritual consolation and desolation. One of the pillars of our Christian faith, Mother Teresa, experienced decades of this “dark night of the soul.” And yet, she continued to seek God, to do His will on earth, and to live with the hope that her soul would be once again ignited with this “interior joy.” Throughout her desolation, she kept her soul fixed on the consolation she’d once experienced and prayed to experience again.

Regardless of our circumstances and in spite of the desolation we often experience in this broken world, there is consolation. And this is the good news of Advent: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:5) Mary understood this, both as a young mother and later as she knelt at the foot of her son’s cross. Before I celebrate the birth of Christ this year, I plan to spend some time with Mary. As I give thanks for my own son, I plan to remember how on that long, snowy day in Minneapolis, I, too, opened my soul before God in humble submission. And I plan to live fully and joyfully with this consolation, even as I prepare myself for the inevitable times when I struggle to feel God’s presence and peace.

Photo by Ante Hamersmit

[Lowry] Pressly’s book is a probing critique of a modern public sphere that overwhelms the private realm, but it goes further than that. He argues for privacy, or what he more accurately terms “oblivion,” as not just freedom from surveillance but a positive, albeit essentially unknowable value—a place where true human depth and personality reside. –John Kaag, “The Virtue of Being Forgotten,” The Atlantic, Oct. 29, 2024

In Lowry Pressly’s new book, The Right to Oblivion, he explores the notion of privacy. Although it’s common now to define privacy in digital terms, Kaag writes that Pressly advises caution and consideration:

Today, when people think of privacy, they are likely to think of the protection of one’s personal data and information. But according to Pressly, that definition makes a dangerous assumption, namely that humans could be wholly reduced to a set of descriptions or records. As he explains, this notion is an outgrowth of the “ideology of information,” a worldview that holds that who a person is can be fully articulated, comprehended, and stored in data or other representations of them—whether in images, texts, or other accounts. This error has encouraged people to neglect aspects of their subjective interior lives that could never be captured by such data points. As a result, it has made our private lives shallower, and our public lives, in turn, less meaningful and trusting.

Carefully curating our public lives, attempting to be seen and remembered through posts, photos, and videos, has become a familiar practice in the age of social media. Pressly makes an interesting–and perhaps damning–remark that, in doing so, we neglect our interior lives and make our private lives shallower. To promote our public selves, we often focus on the exterior at the expense of the interior.

And this promotion may also come at the expense of our safety. Hence, we’ve become fearful of how our public identity is managed–or mismanaged. In our desire to promote our public selves, we may open ourselves up to comments that shame and frighten us. We may also open ourselves up to hackers and extortionists. An online presence comes with risks, some more dangerous than others.

In his book, Pressly offers a remedy to this fear by “inviting readers to slip into oblivion: to recognize the freedom of being temporarily forgotten, and resist the forces that reduce them to what can be gleaned on the internet.” To slip into oblivion? To gain freedom by being temporarily forgotten? Really? In the age of social media, this advice seems countercultural. Yet, Pressly argues it’s sound advice and notes that prescriptions of online abstinence aren’t new. Nearly 20 years ago, I recall reading an article that featured individuals who actually paid to attend technology-free weekend retreats. They lauded the benefits of leaving their computers, tablets, and phones behind and spending a few days free from the compulsion to check emails or text messages. As I was reading this article, I remember thinking how silly it seemed that some would actually pay for a technology-free weekend. What might have seemed foolish 20 years ago, however, might not seem so foolish today. We’ve all heard the warnings about how dependence on digital technologies re-wires our brains. We’ve read research regarding the addictive nature of our digital devices, and we’ve witnessed the anxiety that separation from these devices often provokes. Today, online abstinence may be just what the doctor ordered.

And what the philosopher ordered. Pressly contends that the call to oblivion isn’t new and cites several 19th-century philosophers who extolled the virtues of interior life. Philosopher Friedrich Schelling called this the Abgrund or the “groundless ground,” an experience of the Romantic “sublime” that can’t rationally be explained. Likewise, Søren Kierkegaard advocated “inwardness,” a state of personal and absolute belief that can’t be directly explained. Pressly also cites Edwardian feminists such as Ella Lyman Cabot who referred to the “reserve, those psychic regions of individuality—both private thoughts and partially conscious dreams—that refuse to ever go public.”

We may not be able to live in our current age without leaving some sort of public, digital footprint, but Pressly argues that, at the very least, we should consider protecting and nurturing our “most personal feelings and experiences.” To support his argument, he offers these words from French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault:

The game of life depends on remembering that each person lives partially in shadow. That it is necessary, at times, to access, and embrace, our deepest parts, the ones that can’t be plumbed by anyone—or anything—else.

Again, all this seems to fly in the face of current trends which encourage individuals to be seen, to live in light and not in shadow. We’re supposed to be our own agents, promoting our best selves in hopes of gaining “likes” and “followers.” As we plumb our deepest parts, we’re encouraged (expected?) to make our journeys public. If you don’t believe me, just watch reality TV where participants are urged to “be vulnerable,” so viewing audiences may have full access to their interior lives. Or browse through an assortment of social media posts that publicize individuals’ lives with everything from photos of their evening meals to political, philosophical, and social treatises. Plumbing our deepest parts is now celebrated as a group activity.

A few years ago, I read several books by Henri Nouwen, ordained priest, professor, and public speaker. At the height of his professional career as educator and public speaker, he left academia to reside in a L’Arche community in Trosly-Brueil, France and then in L’Arche Daybreak in Richmond Hill, Ontario. Both of these communities are for people with intellectual disabilities. I recall reading The Road to Daybreak, Nouwen’s diary of a year he spent in Trosly. In his article for Christianity Today, “What Henri Nouwen Found at Daybreak,” Arthur Boers writes that Nouwen confessed he left his Harvard teaching position and popularity as a public speaker because “[s]omething inside was telling me that my success was putting my own soul in danger.” He abandoned a very public life to lead a private one among disabled adults. In doing so, he risked being forgotten as the celebrated priest, professor, and speaker the world had known. At L’Arche, however, not only was Nouwen able to live a richer interior life–intellectually and spiritually–but he was able to minister intimately to the “least of these.” For Nouwen, there was freedom and blessing in slipping into oblivion. In the presence of a handicapped resident, his former public self mattered little; he was seen and known simply for the kind hands and heart he happily offered.

Since retirement, I’ve thought a lot about the tension between wanting to be seen and known and recognizing the freedom in being temporarily forgotten and in slipping into oblivion. Although I am an introvert by nature, for decades I lived a very public life in classrooms all over the Midwest. And I admit that when things were going well, it was a heady feeling to stand before a classroom of young adults, a work of classic literature in hand. For most of my life, I positioned my public self behind a podium and taught as though my life depended upon it. And then after 41 years, it was over. I moved quicky from the public realm into the private one. I had a closet of professional clothes I took to Goodwill. When once I would have been teaching 1st period American Lit, I now sipped coffee from my complimentary retirement mug in the quiet of my home. Thrust into what Lowry Pressly calls oblivion, I stood, trembling, at the door of that place where true human depth and personality reside.

What if I opened the door to a private realm where no one was home? What if I’d been so busy cultivating my public self that my private self had become shallow from years of neglect? What if I didn’t know how to plumb my inwardness or to call upon my reserve? As Pressly points out, I’m certainly not the first nor the last person to ask such questions. But now, perhaps we should be asking what we’re doing to prepare ourselves for occasions when we lose our public selves? Perhaps we should be asking how to cultivate richer interior lives that can never be never be measured by data points. In an age of influencers, what are we doing to prepare a sanctuary for those whose fickle followers change teams, casting them into involuntary oblivion? What are we doing to prepare a interior space for those whose public selves collapse in the void when the internet fails, when cell phones are lost, broken, or confiscated? As we fill our children’s lives with activities and entertain them with technology, what are we doing to grow their interior lives? And do we even give their interior lives a second thought?

Pressly and others believe that we should. I was fortunate that my parents and many of my teachers believed that we should. They modeled the riches of cultivating interior lives in which, as Foucault maintains, we might access, and embrace, our deepest parts, the ones that can’t be plumbed by anyone—or anything—else. In the years since my retirement, I’ve come to see how their examples helped prepare me for a more contemplative life, a life beyond the busyness of my former public one.

Granted, we all have public lives, and these public lives matter deeply. And undoubtedly, we all use digital technologies that offer benefits ranging from access to family photos to breaking news. Pressly’s argument is that we balance our public lives which are increasingly promoted through digital technologies with a sincere interest in our interior lives which are cultivated through privacy and reflection.

As I’m typing these final words, a red-headed woodpecker and a host of nuthatches are ravaging the bird feeders outside my window. For a time, I’ll sit alone, watching them and moving gratefully into oblivion.

photo by Collyn Ware

Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and myself is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing. –Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal (2013)

Written in 1946 during her time at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, 21-year-old Flannery O’Connor penned these words to God in a standard composition notebook. Years later, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published her 24 prayers for the world. O’Connor, a Christian writer, is one of my favorites, and I thought of her words last week as I walked at the nature preserve in the half-hour before dawn. The Supermoon was blindingly bright and so fully present that it consumed the world, filling each moment with incandescent glory. And I gave thanks that my self shadow couldn’t block it, that nothing could block it. I gratefully walked my miles in moonlight.

Again and again, O’Connor prays that she might accept what she perceives to be her spiritual and artistic mediocrity. She laments, If only I could hold God in my mind. If I could only always think of Him.The final prayer in her journal reveals this struggle:

My thoughts are so far away from God. He might as well not have made me. And the feeling I egg up writing here lasts approximately a half hour and seems a shame. I don’t want any of this artificial feeling stimulated by the choir Today I have proved myself a glutton–for Scotch oatmeal cookes and erotic thought. There is nothing left to say of me.

Upon reading this prayer for the first time, I thought: Yes, this is it exactly. I was moved by her struggle with worldly appetites that separated her from God. Here, O’Connor reveals her self shadow as it blocks the whole moon. She concedes that God has given her everything, all the tools, instructions for their use, even a good brain to use them with, a creative brain to make them immediate for others. Yet, she grieves that even as God is feeding her, she lacks a healthy appetite.

O’Connor presents us with fictional characters whose self shadows have no appetite for God. Instead, they insist on feeding themselves, on being their own light, and on trusting human intelligence and understanding. For a time, some believe they’re enlightened; ultimately, however, they find themselves consumed by darkness. They fail to see the price of their own arrogance until it confronts them, often violently. That O’Connor empathized with such characters, seeing her own spiritual struggles in theirs, is evident in her prayer journal where she reveals a raw and ravenous humility. She sees that her self shadow is nothing, and she prays fervently to get out of God’s way.

Through words, art, and music, some succeed–at least for a time–in subduing their self shadows, so that they might stand–stripped of all pretense–before God. They bring us under the Supermoon of His majesty, offering us such gifts as the Psalms, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and the Messiah. They make it possible for us to experience much more than a slim crescent of glory.

As I walked in moonlight last week, I recalled the photo my daughter took several years ago in which my granddaughter appears to hold the moon in her hands. An illusion, certainly, but the effect is powerful. Walking beneath the moon, I could imagine lifting it high into the sky, so my self shadow could never steal its light. I could imagine holding God where my shadow would never cast a sliver of darkness upon Him. Like O’Connor, I lament the many ways in which I get in God’s way. Too often, I find myself repeating the Apostle Paul’s words from Romans 7:15: I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

There are many writers with whom I’d like to sit down over a cup of coffee. Flannery O’Connor is at the top of this list. But perhaps our time might be better spent without coffee. Perhaps we might walk together in moonlight. And perhaps, rather than converse, we might spend the time in prayer, asking God’s light to increase as our self shadows decrease.

_{“Lucy Barton, the stories you told me, for all that I could tell–had very little point to them. Okay, okay, maybe they had subtle points to them. I don’t know what the point is to this story!”
“People,” Lucy said quietly, leaning back, “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.’
“Exactly,” Olive nodded.} —Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

In Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel, Tell Me Everything, writer Lucy Barton makes weekly visits to 92-year-old Olive Kittredge who lives in a care facility. They meet to share stories. Wasting no time with small talk, one or the other begins with “So, here’s the story.” Both occupy that rare space of being heard. They tolerate each other’s interruptions, for they understand the stories they spin often need clarification and elaboration to make them come fully alive.

When Olive becomes frustrated during one of Lucy’s stories and demands that she reveal the point, Lucy answers: “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.” These are stories of ordinary people living their lives, lives that both women narrate with uncommon care. Throughout this novel, I was struck with the same sentiment that a younger Olive Kittredge once shared: “All these lives,” she said. “All the stories we never know.” (Strout, Olive Kittredge) And I kept thinking how wonderful it would be if everyone’s stories could be told, their lives becoming known in the telling, their stories heard.

For decades when I taught the narrative essay, I was met with collective groans from my students who insisted that nothing important had ever happened to them, that they had no stories to tell. I knew what they were thinking: Hollywood producers would never visit their homes to hear the stories that would become feature films or Netflix mini-series. They were thinking there was no point to the stories they might tell. And yet, like all of us, they did have stories to tell, and their stories were poignant, funny, terrifying, and sad. They were people living their uncommonly common lives.

In this novel, Strout also develops the friendship between Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess, friends who walk frequently, so Bob can smoke his one secret cigarette away from the watchful eyes of his wife, the Unitarian minister. Their friendship is founded on the assurance that each will be heard by the other. Lucy often looks expectantly at Bob and says, “Tell me everything, Bob.” As they pour out their experiences in the intimacy of this friendship, they rest in the assurance they won’t be rushed or judged; they’re confident they’ll be heard. There’s something remarkable about how Lucy and Bob not only invest in each other but in so many others. Throughout their small community, people and their stories are being heard every day.

American author Barry Lopez’s novel, Crow and Weasel, is mythic fable of self-discovery. In it, Lopez contends that sharing stories is a powerful way to care for people:

The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves.

It seems serendipitous that everything I’ve read in the past few months has revealed this truth. In Chris Whitaker’s New York Times best-selling novel, All the Colors of the Dark, the protagonist, Patch, is abducted and held captive with Grace, who’s also been abducted and abused by their captor. Both seek to survive their captivity by telling each other stories so that, though blinded by the abject darkness of their basement cell, they can see these settings and events vividly, as if they’re living lives far from the despair of their imprisonment. After Patch is ultimately freed, he’s obsessed with the girl whose stories sustained him. The words of these stories echo through his memory, compelling him to search for her in hopes that she, too, somehow escaped. For weeks, Grace kept Patch alive, her stories feeding his imagination and fueling his desire to live. These stories, as Lopez says, “have a way of taking care” of people.

In an interview with Book Browse, Elizabeth Strout spoke openly about what she hoped to give her readers:

I would also hope that readers receive a larger understanding, or a different understanding, of what it means to be human, than they might have had before. . . . I would hope that my readers feel a sense of awe at the quality of human endurance, at the endurance of love in the face of a variety of difficulties; that the quotidian life is not always easy, and is something worthy of respect.

The stories of our lives–of most people’s lives–are generally quotidian. That is, they are stories of ordinary people living their lives. And these lives, as Strout maintains, are often difficult and always worthy of respect. Yet, too often we discount the value and impact of these stories. Too often, we’re not the tell me everything kind of folk, neglecting to take the time and make the space for stories that deserve to be heard. In the sanctuary of such stories, however, we can learn much more about what it means to be human. This is holy ground where the lives of those we love and meet become the stories we remember and revere. Here, we discover heroes and heroines who endure the trials of our shared human condition and fallen world.

And this, as Lucy Barton insists, is the point of every story: though the settings and circumstances are unique (and oh so fascinating!), all people live, love, and endure all sorts of things. This theme is universally human. Although I try not to be discouraged, my years of teaching has given me cause for concern. Generally speaking, my students struggled to actively listen. Fed on a flashy diet of sound bites, Instagram posts, and TikTok videos, they weren’t in shape to listen to anything that took more than a couple minutes to deliver. Truth be told, they didn’t want me to tell them everything; they wanted me to tell them little and tell it quickly, to offer them a Reader’s Digest condensed version on a platter. A story, real or fictional, deserves the time and space to be told well. Most of my students didn’t have the will or skill to hear and read such stories. Regrettably, neither do many adults who often mentally will storytellers to “just get on with it.”

I’m not certain what it would take to ensure that more of us are in shape enough to enter the sanctuary of a good story. The training program, I fear, would be rigorous and time-consuming. Can you imagine meeting with 92-year-old Olive Kittredge or walking with Bob Burgess and setting aside time for them to tell you everything? Can you imagine listening with the same intensity and interest as you give an Audible book, living vicariously through each scene, holding your breath as the action rises, climaxes, and falls, and leaning into what it means to share this human condition? Can you imagine caring for people by hearing and sharing their stories?

Certainly there are those who have recorded and continue to record the life stories of ordinary people. These are the writers, the documentary producers, the journalists, and family members who make these stories available for interested readers and viewers. Through their efforts, I’ve learned about the lives of those who homesteaded the Sandhills of Nebraska, who endured the ghettos and concentration camps of WWII, and who’ve navigated the poverty of Appalachia, India, and so many other places. I’m grateful for these stories which transport me into lives that deserve my attention and respect.

What I’m proposing, however, is something for those of us ordinary people quietly living our lives. I’m hoping that more of us might be like Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess, intentionally making space and time for others’ stories. I’m suggesting that we might be better listeners who help others to feel “heard.” I’m envisioning a world in which more common people recognize the uncommon worth of their life stories. And I’m praying I’ll be patient enough not to grumble about the length of another’s story or its apparent lack of a point, patient and wise enough to remember, “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.”

photo by Collyn Ware, Griffin age 2

How do you like to go up in a swing,
   Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
   Ever a child can do!  --Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Swing"

These were the first lines of poetry I ever memorized. Poem #33 from Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses was my favorite. From the time I opened my book–a birthday or Christmas gift, I forget which–I loved everything about “The Swing”: the illustration, the rhythm and glorious rhyme, the way it lifted me from the page into the reverie of flying through the air. There is real magic in a swing. When the world drags me to the mat, give me a good swing where I can pump my legs until I’m “Up in the air and over the wall,/ Till I can see so wide/ Rivers and trees and cattle and all/Over the countryside–” Everything is better from the seat of a swing.

In poet Robert Frost’s “Birches,” he writes of a boy who rides birch trees. He laments “when life is too much like a pathless wood” that he’d “like to get away from earth awhile”:

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.

He concedes, however, that “earth is the right place for love” and cautions that he doesn’t want some fate to misunderstand him, whisking him away forever. As child, I understood this as I swung for sky on the swingset in my backyard. I liked to go “toward heaven” but was happy to return to earth again. While some children had imaginary friends, I had Ginny and Susie, my red swings. I told them secrets and sung them made-up songs. I loved them, and earth was the right place for this love.

There are no more swings at my house. My husband recently removed the swingset we’d erected for my grandchildren who’ve outgrown the small yellow rubber seats that hung a few child-safe inches from the ground. And the two bigger swings that hung from the glorious oak in their yard are gone, too. A summer storm took the old oak and left a sunny spot where, for years, we’d taken refuge to swing in the shade. The absence of these swings haunts me. I can still see my grandchildren, heads thrown back, legs kicking out, shoes flung off. I can feel the rush of wind, hear the creak of the chains as we work them hard. And I remember their cries, “Do it again, Grandma!” as I push with all my might to give them an under-doggy.

Children grow up, and the heaven of childhood may live in memories on a swingless earth. This is the way of things. And though “earth is the right place for love,” some of us may find ourselves saying, “But not this earth. Not this place where the sweet days of swinging and singing and opening new boxes of Crayola crayons have left us. Not these days when we sit alone in a house once littered with toys and smeared with the remnants of sticky fingers. Not this life of repurposing ourselves as ones who look on from the sidelines. Certainly, not this.”

And yet, it is this. Swinging takes us up and away, only to return us to where we began. The absolute rush of reaching the peak of a swing’s arc is shortlived. We gasp, we feel the bottom of our stomachs drop, and then it’s over. We can make it happen again, as we pump our legs to keep up the momentum. But we can’t make this one incredible moment last for more than a second or two. This moment is a brief but wonderful gift.

Gifts such as these give us glimpses of heaven on earth. Whether we’re transported by swings, by experiences or memories, we escape momentarily from the world. And, thankfully, from ourselves–that is, from selves that are too often burdened with fear, insecurity, anger, and despair. These moments may open our eyes and hearts in surprising ways. And when they do, we pray the words from the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” and really mean them. For we begin to understand how heaven visits earth in childhood, in hillsides of autumn colors, in final visits with loved ones, and in all those moments that delight and bless us. We begin to understand that even as these moments transform us, we, in turn, have the power to transform the earth in small, yet heavenly ways.

Of course, from time to time, we can expect to be grounded. Herein lies the magic in a swing, though. In the midst of the world’s brokenness, we’ve only to pump our legs again, pushing up towards that sweet spot at the end of the chain, and believing as Robert Frost claimed: “one could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”

In our view, liberal education requires that students, like rowers, face backward in order to move forward. If they are to become active and reflective individuals, they must learn to regard the past not merely as the crime scene of bygone ages, but as the record of human possibilities—an always unfinished tapestry of admirable and shameful lives, noble and base deeds. . . [they must] allow themselves to be inwardly formed and cultivated by the classics—what the English critic Matthew Arnold called “the best which has been thought and said.” –Jacob Howland, “What the Freshman Class Needs to Read,” The Atlantic, August 24, 2024

During the past year, I’ve read a bevy of journal articles making much ado about liberal education. Some pronounce the death of it, bestowing last rites to humanities majors; others defend its inclusion in our universities, and still others argue for its renaissance in a culture that has increasingly abandoned it. In light of these diverse views, I read Howland’s Atlantic article, “What the Freshman Class Needs to Read” with guarded interest.

He had me at the claim that students, like rowers, face backward in order to move forward. He’s clearly not performing burial rites for liberal arts, I thought, as he cited Matthew Arnold’s defense of the classics as “the best which has been thought and said.” Howland described a classic work as one “with imperishable cultural vitality,” offering the Hebrew Bible and Homer’s Iliad as examples. He contends that [“a] liberal education must begin at the beginning, where strange, beguiling voices of the distant past speak with authority of what it means to be human.”

As I read on, Howland preached to the choir of liberal arts proponents in passages like this:

Today’s students tend to value social influence more than human excellence. Worse, they pay more heed to antiheroes—people who tear down civilization—than heroes: those who protect, repair, and rebuild it. So, at the outset of their studies, we think undergraduates should encounter not just thinkers and writers but also founders, doers, leaders, and pioneers such as Abraham and Socrates, da Vinci and Mozart, Lincoln and Churchill. They should study the works of great men, to use another unfashionable phrase, but also of great women: Sojourner Truth and Malala Yousafzai, Ada Lovelace and Lise Meitner. It is no small part of a liberal education to show students the broad range of meaningful lives they might aspire to lead.

Like Howland, I believe a liberal arts education is valuable and that much ado should be made about it. I concede my bias, but I also acknowledge my familiarity with opposing arguments, namely that a liberal arts education is impractical, colonialist, exclusive, elitist, and irrelevant. Certainly, good arguments can–and should–be made for including new and diverse voices in the literary canon and for acknowledging centuries of “white-washing.” I’ve heard and read these arguments for years. I’ve seen major textbook companies flush the likes of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner from their anthologies because they were dead, white males who were no longer relevant and represented the worst of our paternalistic practices.

And I’ve witnessed cultural and literary flattening. Turning away from classic works, many postmodernists reject tragic heroes and, instead, embrace antiheroes. My father referred to this as “writing down.” In the introduction to his collection, Greatest Hits: Don Welch 1975-2001, he commented on his poem, “The Unicorn:”

“The Unicorn” is a poem about the loss of belief, especially the nihilism of the second half of the century. Beginning with the 1960’s it became fashionable to talk down, dress down, act down, eat down, and believe down, although there was also a small effort to dream up.

Like Howland, my father valued a liberal arts education because it offers the kind of heroes who protect, repair, and rebuild civilization, who dream up and value the pursuit of human excellence. The last time I taught Hemingway’s classic novel, The Old Man and the Sea, to a group of high school students, I was met with collective groans about its value. What’s the point? they asked. It’s just 128 pages of a pathetic old guy losing his battle with a big fish, they whined. (One student did, however, point out that the book was relatively short, the only marginally positive comment from the group.) In spite of my best efforts, few students embraced Santiago’s heroism. They’d flattened Hemingway’s hero into a loser, failing to honor his efforts to dream up.

At my university alma mater, students currently must enroll in only one 3-hour humanities course to meet the General Studies requirements for graduation. Here, as in other universities, a liberal arts education for many students has been reduced to a single semester course. In some of these institutions, you might not be able to major in philosophy or literature because they’ve cut these majors and have decimated their respective departments. The message seems all too clear: Out with the old, in with the new.

So much for looking backward in order to move forward. Too often we seem hellbent to move forward without giving much thought to the past. For years, I heard educational experts tout the benefits of technology in the classroom. Just teach students how to use it, they argued, and watch the progress we’ll make with student achievement. But consider the research on how this technology affects brain chemistry, how we’re losing the ability to memorize, to perform basic math, to read critically, and–this is the big one–to think for ourselves. And consider the schools who are now going “old school” with print materials and no-cell phone policies. They’re looking backwards to the days before the proliferation of technology in order to move forward. Their answer to progress seems clear: Out with the new, and back in with the old.

A day after I’d read Howland’s article, I discovered Ezekial Emmanuel’s article, “The Worst Advice Parents Can Give First-Year Students” (The Atlantic, August 25, 2024). He opens by featuring Ben Franklin’s curiosity and desire to improve the world and argues that parents should promote such values:

When parents send their children off to college, they need to encourage them not to focus on narrow careers but to acquire the sort of all-purpose intellectual skills that allowed Franklin to thrive: the ability to ask deep questions and wrestle with big issues like human equality, the limits of individual freedom, and justice. Students need to learn how to reason critically; to distinguish bad, baseless ideas from deep and eternal insights; to justify their views; and to express those views lucidly enough for others to grasp. These skills have proved essential for thousands of years and will never become obsolete.

Of course, he knows that “[m]ost universities are no longer set up to impart such skills, having deemphasized their core curricula in favor of offering more and more specialized majors and courses.” He understands that it’s become increasingly difficult to find the kind of liberal arts education in which students wrestle with big issues, learn to reason, read, listen, and communicate critically.

Emmanuel concedes that higher tuition costs have driven students, parents, and society to “adopt a narrow investment approach to higher education,” with hopes for “tangible returns denoted in postgraduate salaries.” Still, he argues for the benefits a liberal arts education–as opposed to “career training”–may provide:

Despite this, college students should take a wide range of courses and resist being pushed into majoring in business, economics, or computer science by default. Who knows what transformative insights and ideas they might gain from courses in art history, or the great American plays, or ancient political philosophy, or Russian novels? Serendipity is what makes college a truly educational experience, not just career training.

Whether or not to preserve and promote a liberal arts education may be more than an ideological battle, though. We may be forced to limit or abandon liberal arts courses simply because we can’t find the people to teach them. I recently learned of some high schools in the Nebraska Sandhills who’ve hired their English teachers from the Phillipines. For years, we’ve outsourced physicians from around the world to serve our rural areas, but English teachers? Students enrolled in high school English courses do much more than learn to speak and write the language well. Traditionally, they learn to read and think critically, to speak and write effectively, and to discover “the best which has been thought and said.” In the years to come, will we be tasked with finding American literature teachers from outside of America? Or will we choose to abandon such courses altogether as we narrow our curriculum and shift our priorities to career training?

Let me be clear: I’m a proponent of career training–just not at the expense of the liberal arts. We can, and should, embrace both. In light of this, we should be alarmed by the cuts to K-12 and postsecondary liberal arts programs. We should consider the efficacy of moving forward without looking back. And we should make much ado about this, for it is something worthy of serious consideration.

Photo by Michal Mancewicz, Unsplash

The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark… Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas – a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak. –Jodi Picoult, My Sisters’ Keeper

It’s 10:38, and I’ve just opened my Kindle to read in bed when my phone buzzes. It’s a FaceTime call from my grandson, Griffin. When I answer, he says, “Oh sorry, Grandma, I didn’t know you’d be in bed yet.” I assure him that I’ve just started to read when, a bit breathless, he blurts, “Do you want to come over on the deck and watch for meteors with me?”

I throw on some clothes, grab a blanket and flashlight, and make my way over to his house where he’s lying on a yoga mat, eyes fixed on the night sky. His dogs announce my arrival as I make my way up the deck stairs. He pats the mat to his right, inviting me to take my assigned position beside him. And we lie there, a whole grammar made of light above us, the night is falling down around us. For a few perfect moments, we take it all in: the silence, the starlit sky, the companionship.

And then his bright words percolate through the dark. He’s teaching me all he knows about the Milky Way, the speed of light, the night sky. With the patience of a good teacher, he warns me not to be fooled by the flashing lights of planes. You might think it’s a meteor, he cautions, but look closely for the three blinking lights. As he spots small meteors, he turns to me, hopeful. Did you see it, Grandma? Chastened, I admit that I didn’t. How can he see these small flashes? How can he, a boy who struggles to sit still for more than 60 seconds, remain so vigilant? Still, he continues his narration of interesting celestial facts as he encourages me to keep moving my eyes around the sky.

I feel him put his hand on my forearm and turn to see him pointing toward the northern sky. There, he motions, did you see it? I’m disappointing him. I’m disappointing myself. After 10 minutes of sky-watching, I haven’t seen a single meteor. But just as I’m ready to confess my failure, we both gasp as a meteor streaks across the west. I saw it! I say, That was awesome! He’s smiling as he admits that this was an even bigger one than he’d seen the night before. I’m smiling because I can see how happy he is that his tutelage has been successful.

We lie there in a post-game reverie, recounting the moment we both saw the meteor, declaring its beauty, and sharing our great joy. Above, the Milky Way stretches a filmy trail, a plane bisects our view, and pair of bats swoops perilously low. Bats! Griffin says. We giggle and pull our blankets over our heads. Emerging to find more bats flitting above us, he announces that he’s ready to call it a night.

As I walk the 100 yards home to my house, I navigate the familiar terrain with my face turned to the sky. But I don’t see another meteor. And it doesn’t matter. I shared one with Griffin, and this was more than enough.

Days later, I’ve been thinking about the shared moments my grandson and I’ve had. Earlier this summer as we were feeding the fish in our pond, we witnessed our favorite Koi swimming so closely to the edge that we might’ve reached out to touch them. They’ve been notoriously coy (forgive the bad pun!), hiding out in the shadowy eastern corner where it’s almost impossible to see them. On this night, however, flashing their fan tails and brilliant colors, they swam leisurely back and forth along the bank. Having just thrown the last handfuls of food into the pond, we turned to each other, smiling. That was awesome! he exclaimed. We could see them so clearly! It was Diesel and Angel-–oh, and Pumpkin swam by once, too! I nodded. Griffin has named all the Koi, and only we can identify them by name. I hope we see Camo next time, he said. He’s old and might not be around for long. In the June twilight, we walked back from the pond together without talking. I wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking, that, at 69, I might not be around for long.

I hoped he wasn’t, but I remembered a stormy night months before when we’d lost power. I called my daughter to see if they needed extra flashlights, volunteering to bring some over. In the background, I heard Griffin say, Don’t let her come over, Mom. She’s old, and we need her to survive. I chuckled and remarked, I don’t think my survival is at stake! But at 10, he did.

Recently, I’ve recognized how he’s assumed the role of caretaker. Last night he asked if I was o.k. to drive our sport utility vehicle home. I can back it up for you, he offered. When I assured him that I’d be fine, he watched me back out of his driveway and head for home. Like an anxious parent, he watched until he could no longer see me before he turned to go inside.

Lately, when I pitch the whiffle ball to him, he’s taken to walking into the outfield with me as I retrieve his balls. Sometimes he stoops to pick up the ball and hand it to me; other times, he just accompanies me as I retrieve it. In part, he does this out of gratitude that I’m willing to pitch and retrieve his balls. But in part, I fear he does this because he sees that I’m walking–not running–to field balls, that he knows I’m no spring chicken. Sometimes as we walk together, we talk about baseball; most often, however, we just walk in companionable silence, content just to be together. Between us, there is a whole grammar made of light where no words are necessary.

Last night, he wanted to drive me around in our sport utility vehicle. There is one particular stretch of gravel drive that invites speed. Instructing me to watch the speedometer as he sped up the hill, he pushed the accelerator. As he slowed at the top of the drive (he’s actually a really good–and safe–driver), he turned to me expectantly. 22 mph, I said. Grinning, he said, I just love this, don’t you? When I hit the gas, you’ll always see a smile that comes so eagerly to my face. I smiled and thought: What 11-year-old says uses adverbs like “eagerly”? He’s amazing, truly amazing.

At the risk of sounding corny and cliched, these moments are priceless. I’m painfully aware that Griffin is at the cusp of adolescence, a period during which he’ll undoubtedly want to spend time most of his time with peers–not his grandma. Perhaps it’s this awareness that sweetens our shared moments. These moments are meteors which flash brightly–and quickly. They are the exclamation points that punctuate my life.

How good it is to look sometimes across great spaces, to lift one’s eyes from narrowness, to feel the large silence that rests on lonely hills!
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen

“Too many trees,” my father said as we stood behind my home looking out at the treeline which had grown into its June fullness. Years ago, my parents had come to visit our new home in rural Iowa, an area abundant with hardwoods and hills. As we stood together, I tried to look through my father’s eyes at the timber I’d come to love. How could there be too many trees? I thought, turning my head to the sky to admire the overstory of large cottonwoods that flashed their waxy leaves like iridescent scales in the noonday sun. “It makes me feel a bit claustrophic,” he explained, “hemmed in.” A native Nebraskan who spent summers on his grandmother’s farm in the Sandhills, my father loved wind and wide open spaces. If he could’ve raised a staff to part this treeline, he would’ve. If he could’ve opened a way forward towards the distant ridge, he would’ve breathed more easily.

Recently, I drove from my Iowa home to my daughter’s home in Great Falls, Montana. A 19-hour roadtrip, this drive is not for the faint of heart. As I made my way across South Dakota, I recalled the jokes I’d endured when I moved to Iowa. One of my colleagues took great pleasure in catching me before a college break to wish me a good holiday in Kansas or Oklahoma or South Dakota. He smirked as he delivered his well wishes and safe travels, playfully refusing to identify my home state as Nebraska. Once in a defensive moment, I asked him what he had against Nebraska. He shrugged and smiled, remarking that Nebraska was a drive-through state, a necessary inconvenience on the way to great ski resorts and some of the nation’s most popular parks. With painful realization, I saw that my home state was little but an ellipsis in the travel plans of many who ventured west.

In her 1904 travel story, The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen, English novelist Elizabeth von Arnim celebrates the great spaces which rescue us from life’s narrowness. She would’ve found a kindred spirit in Nebraska author, Willa Cather. Cather’s love for the prairie is evident in her novel, My Antonia:

As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of winestains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.

As I drove across the prairies in South Dakota, I felt just this–the whole country running before me, the land stretching endlessly towards a suggestion of horizon. I felt my soul open. It was like shedding clothes, letting the the open road pull me forward. My only companions were sun and sky and land and silence. It was magnificent.

Oh, I’m well aware there are risks for a woman driving alone across a land where there are often no services for miles (as in nothing!) And I confess that there were moments when I felt particularly vulnerable, all that space unfolding before and around me, all that silence threatening to undo me. But most of the time, I felt particularly grateful for the wide open spaces. You would love this, Dad, I said aloud as I left Rapid City, South Dakota and headed into Montana. And knowing this made me happier than I could say.

Poet, novelist, and rancher Linda Hasselstrom grew up on a cattle ranch in western South Dakota, a family ranch homesteaded in 1899. For years she hosted writing retreats on her family ranch, offering residents an opportunity to understand and love the prairie as she did. She claimed that “[u]nless one has lived thus, intimately with the prairie, it is a universe difficult to understand, to feel” (“Thunder Butte: High, Solemn, and Holy,” in Land Circle, 1991). The prairie is, indeed, a difficult universe for many to understand and impossible for many to love. It’s an acquired taste developed from living intimately with a land others snub as “fly-over or drive-through” territory. If driving alone through this region is not for the faint of heart, just imagine the challenges of living as a female rancher here.

I’ve long admired the prairie photography of Solomon D. Butcher, who set out to photograph the history of pioneer life in Nebraska. Between 1886 and 1912, he enmassed a collection of more than 3,000 photographs. Many of his photographs are stark reminders of just how tough it was to survive the prairie’s many challenges. Families stood in front of sod homes that rose humbly from the prairie, not a tree or another structure in sight. Or they stood around a child’s grave, wearing their Sunday best as they paid homage to a life that might have been. Many families created unique tableaus, hauling their finest possessions out of their homes and arranging them in the yard as backdrops for their photos. One prairie woman instructed her family to move her pump organ a quarter mile away, so their crude sod home wouldn’t be seen in the photo. There, she arranged her husband and children around the pump organ, a piece of culture to impress–and allay the fears of–the family back east. Several of Butcher’s photos feature trees, animals, and people that he actually inked into the finished works. In his photograph, “Lookout Point Near the Snake River, Circa 1890,” he drew in 7 trees, 2 horses, and a man. Perhaps he thought that eastern folk just wouldn’t have the stomach for photographs of endless land and sky. Perhaps he feared that they’d see nothing when he saw something, that they simply didn’t have eyes to see the wonder of the great grasslands. Perhaps he, like writer Randy Winter, feared that they might look at the prairie and “see a great emptiness, a void that staggers the psyche and leaves much too much room for a mind to wander” (“Nature Notes”, 1987).

In Cather’s novel, O Pioneers!, her protagonist, Alexandra Bergson, settles in Hanover, Nebraska where she’s determined to farm. Through the years, Bergson grows to understand the power and endurance of this land:

The land belongs to the future, Carl; that’s the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk’s plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother’s children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it–for a little while.

A century later, I felt as Bergson did as I drove west across the prairie. The land is always here, and we own it but for a little while. At least, I hope that the land will always be here, for its loss would be immeasurable.

When I pulled into my daughter’s driveway in Great Falls, I took a deep breath and stretched, willing my 69-year-old bones to move after 2 full days of driving. Later that night when I eased myself into bed and closed my eyes, I could still feel the hum of the car on the road, feel the grasses, like waves, washing up on the shore of my soul. I could see a herd of pronghorn antelope grazing near a herd of cattle, see the sun, a bright tangerine ball, suspended in a sky veiled with smoke from Canadian wildfires. I could hear the sound of my own breathing, the words I spoke into the silence of my car. I could feel and see and hear all of this, and it was good.

And lying there, I understood what Cather’s Antonia felt when she said, “If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. . . I felt what would be would be.” There are times when feeling erased and blotted out isn’t painful but wonderful. To stand between earth and sky, to succumb to a geography where what would be would be can be a freeing thing. And a humbling thing. On the prairie, one can feel blessedly small and grateful for the immensity and wonder of creation. Here, one might be content to simply drive without arriving at any particular place. In these wide open spaces, one might roll down the windows, turn off the radio, and escape the narrowness that too often defines us.