If you’ve never heard of a Squishmallow, this was me three months ago. Fast forward to today, and I’m a grandma-on-a-mission. That’s right, I’m continually on the hunt for the elusive Squishmallow, the Beanie Baby of 2021, the equivalent–ounce for ounce–of stuffed animal gold. I know all their names. I know the rare, hard-to-find ones. I know a good deal on Ebay when I see it. In short, I’m actually kind of a Squishmallow expert (or lunatic, whichever title you prefer).

My granddaughter is amassing quite a collection, thanks to her Squishmallow savvy and my persistence. Squishmallows have taken over her bed, and recently she admitted to sleeping in a corner, so as not to topple the precious pile she’s lovingly organized. She’s since moved some to a floor pillow (never on the bare floor, Grandma!) These days, she’s talking about some kind of organizer, so she can reclaim a legitimate spot on her bed. And I should help her out, should care more about the quality of her sleep, should just say NO and stop looking for/buying them. But . . .

Few retailers carry them, which means most collectors must visit online sites like Ebay and Mercari. The Squishmallow folks know how scarcity drives such a market. And they’ve capitalized on marketing through Instagram influencers who post amazing photos of their Squishmallow “finds” and curated collections. A clerk at our local Walgreens admitted that a family had driven 45 miles and waited in the parking lot as the truck was being unloaded. They actually snatched some right out of the truck and rushed to check out. After hearing this, my granddaughter and I just looked at each other in resignation. There were clearly people in-the-know, and we weren’t part of this privileged group. Did they have an inside source which gave them an unfair advantage? We were certain that they did.

You know that you’ve probably crossed over from interest to obsession when you admit to your granddaughter that just once, you’d like to see shelves of Squishmallows on display in a real store. This weekend, our Walgreens received a considerable shipment of Squishmallows. It was the mother load! So, who could blame a Squishmallow afficianado for driving to town. My daughter said that she saw me fly down the lane and turn towards town. I think fly is a bit of an exaggeration (or not).

Walking briskly–not running, mind you–I entered the store and went straight to the aisle I knew that they’d be in. And there they were: five shelves of Squishmallows in a variety of sizes and styles. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see other collectors crowding in, reaching in front of me and snatching up entire rows. But I was alone, gloriously alone. I limited myself to three. On the first trip into town, that is. I went back the next day and bought two more. I boasted to my family that I didn’t want to become one of those hoarders who buys all of them and resells them for huge profits on Ebay. Five shows restraint. Five is reasonable, I thought.

And why not? The hours I’ve spent with my granddaugther–researching, planning our next hunt, comparing and contrasting our favorites–are priceless. I’m painfully aware that this phase won’t last long, that she will grow up and out of Squishmallows. But while it lasts, I’m all in.

P.S. If anyone can hook me up with an Archie, the axolotyl, that I could buy without mortgaging my home, I’d undoubtedly be the coolest grandma ever.

A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.
― Alice Munro, Selected Stories

“Why is Mom just sitting in her car?” my daughter once asked her dad. Having just returned from a work meeting (a 10-hour round trip) I was idling in the driveway, desperate to finish my book on Audible. In the past, I’d actually driven around the block several times to finish chapters, but on this particular night, I really didn’t care who saw me or questioned my time in the driveway. The book was that good. It was–as Alice Munro writes–a house that was opulently furnished, a magnificent, magnanimous shelter from the grind of 500 monotonous miles and countless cups of gas station coffee.

I would be a great story realtor. I have so many houses to show you, I’d say. Then, I’d guide you through all the rooms, stopping to view the world outside through their windows, commenting on the furnishings and foundations. You’d want to stay awhile, to give yourself to each experience, to return again and again. And the best part is that I wouldn’t even charge commission; I’d just do it for the love of it.

English author Sir Philip Pullman claims that [a]fter nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world. I’d go so far as to say that often stories are the best nourishment, shelter, and companionship. At least, they’ve been all this for me. I’ve inhabited lives and worlds that nourished me in ways that my real life and world couldn’t; I’ve sheltered with characters who provided fine companionship. And when these stories ended, I grieved the loss of such friends and their worlds. I’ve sought out their sequels and eagerly checked to see if Netflx renewed their series. For there’s not much that is lonelier than the white space at the end of a good book or the silence after a movie’s credits have rolled. I always find myself lamenting that there isn’t just one more chapter, one more scene.

For the last week, I’ve been listening to Madeline Martin’s novel, The Last Bookshop in London. Inspired by the true history of the few surviving bookstores in WWII London. Martin’s protagonist, Grace Bennett, works at the Primrose Hill Bookshop by day and reads to fellow Brits in the bomb shelters at night. As the Blitz rages on, Grace reads through one novel after another, transporting them all from the horrors of war to the English countryside and cozy drawing rooms, to times and places far removed from the Nazis’ reach. There have been so many times when good stories have taken me out of some dark places in my life. As I’ve read, viewed or listened, I’ve been swept from my own troubles; I’ve been given a front row seat to others’ trials and tribulations, loves and losses. This respite–escape, if you will–has been invaluable and worth far more than the price of a book or movie rental. And if I had to live through a Blitz, I’d like to think that I’d be a Grace Bennett, paying it forward with the best stories I could find, raising my voice against the chaos and destruction.

For me, there’s nothing grander than reading aloud. I love the rhythms and sounds of good stories, the way they ebb and flow, build and drop, leaving audiences breathless. This is perhaps the thing I miss most about teaching, for I often read aloud from great texts, so that the language could do its magic, pulling students into stories they may have never read. For years, I fantasized about becoming an Audible reader when I retired. I could think of no work more glorious than reading aloud (if this could ever be considered work!) But having become an Audible aficianado, I’m painfully aware of the qualifications for such roles, which include, but aren’t limited to, being able to read with a variety of accents–French, Spanish, German, Russian, etc.–as well as in a variety of dialects. Outside of a strong Midwestern twang, I’m sorely lacking. So, I’ve decided to leave it to the professionals who are truly wonderful at bringing characters and stories to life.

In John Connolly’s novel, The Book of Lost Things, he writes:

Stories come alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth. Or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.

If stories need to be read, we also need to read them. If they want us to give them life, we also want them to give us lives we don’t have and never will have. If they lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge, we, too, lay dormant, hoping for the kind of transformations that the best stories bring us.

One of the greatest gifts of retirement is the time for more stories. I generally have a print book, a Kindle book, and an Audible book going at the same time. Lest I be a glutton, I limit my Audible books to driving and working out on the elliptical machine. Otherwise, I’d burn through them too quickly and have to take a part-time job to fund my Audible addiction. Because when it comes to books, I have been gluttonous in the past. I actually walked into a parked car in the school parking lot when I was trying to read and walk simultaneously, to squeeze in a few more glorious pages before work. Blessedly, it was early enough in the day that no students–and only a couple teachers–had arrived. My pride was intact for another day, and I’d successfully gotten to the end of a crucial chapter. Gluttony does have its rewards.

In her novel, The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy writes:

The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in.

I can’t count the number of times I reread the Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton series when I was a teen. Of course, I knew how each book ended. I even knew the smart outfits Nancy Drew would don as she solved each mystery! But that wasn’t the point. The point was that I wanted to read these stories again because they truly were as familiar as the house I lived in, a place I could inhabit comfortably. There’s something to be said about this kind of comfort and familiarity, particularly when the world outside is so chaotic and unpredictable. When the world is spinning out of control, you can just inhabit a great story, a snug home with a hearth by which to warm yourself.

My love for stories is so great that I’ve become choosy about the television series and movies I watch. If there’s only one season, or the movie is only 75 minutes long, I’ll generally pass. I want an eight-season series, an epic film of several hours, a story that I can really sink my teeth into. I want to feel as though the characters are my friends and acquaintances, to revel in their triumphs and weep at their losses. I know that these stories will end. But the journeys to get there–the rising action and conflicts, the crises and resolutions–are so worth it. I may have grieved (for days) when Downton Abbey came to an end, but I don’t regret a minute of the journey. Now, if Julian Fellows would just renew it, I’d do a happy dance the likes of which you’ve never seen!

So bring on the stories! Let them be read, viewed, and heard. Let them carry us beyond our ordinary days, beyond our dark times, beyond uncertainty and fear into worlds both familiar and unfamiliar. For as novelist Cormac McCarthy writes:

Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place. [The Crossing]

It is all that is created.
― Julian of Norwich, on holding a hazel nut in her palm

 
 All The Best Things
 are smaller than we imagine.
  
 Think of acorns with their wee brown caps;
 pieces of bottle glass hidden in the gravel,
 their edges worn smooth enough to pocket;
  
 of snowdrops and their paper white blossoms—
 but think smaller still
 to the embroidery of green that hems
 each petal.
  
 Think of wrinkles that run like tributaries
 from your grandmother’s eyes:
 such rare, fine lines spilling into
 the delta of her life;
  
 of all those frothy seeds that catch the breeze
 and how silently they travel,
 how they make a way
 without fuss.
  
 Think of the moment inside a moment,
 the nucleus of your time here.
  
 Think smaller than you’ve ever dared—
  
 and even smaller still.
  
  
  
   

If I had a flower every time I thought of you. . . I could walk through my garden forever.
― Alfred Lord Tennyson

Throughout my life, I’ve been blessed with a garden of best friends. Brilliant blossoms, each one of them. And how much richer, how much lighter my life has been because I’ve taken counsel from and found refuge in them. Tennyson is so right: if I had a flower each time I thought of these friends, I could walk through my garden forever.

In Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved (1987), Sixo, a slave at Sweet Home plantation offers his feelings about a woman he walked 30 miles to see:

She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

Someone who gathers up all your messy pieces and gives them back in the right order, who is a friend of your mind, is a best friend, indeed. In some of the lowest points in my life, I can recall the remarkable comfort of knowing that my friend would gently put me back together again. Because she knew me–my past, my dreams, my mind. My best friendships have always been open invitations, guarantees that the door would always be open and compassion just a phone call away. How do you measure such gifts?

And when a child becomes a young woman, when she evolves from one being cared for into one who cares, this is a friendship blossom of rare distinction. My granddaughter, Gracyn, will turn twelve in a few weeks. For eleven years, she has been my granddaughter, but recently, I’ve come to know her also as a best friend.

How do I measure this gift? I hope that I’ll have years to walk through this garden, for each bloom here is more extraordinary than the next.

 
 Why I Am Without Words
         --for Gracyn
  
 Rooted to the kitchen floor, I stand before you
 as sobs crash against your tight-lipped resolve,
 your tongue useless to stay the flow
 of something dark and cold that rises within
 and threatens to undo you.
  
 I’m leaving for three weeks,
 and you’ve just helped me load my suitcases for the trip. 
 We can’t bear to look at each other,
 and shoulder to shoulder as we close the car door,
 we quake, our fragile souls quiver.
 It’s not for long, I say, just a couple weeks.
 But the March wind seizes my words 
 and whips them away like chaff.
  
 Today, you’ve sent me a photo of the hyacinth
 blooming in my garden.
 Because I know you were waiting for them to bloom, you say,
 because they might die before you get back.
 Miles away, you think of how I’ve waited for these first blossoms
 and how I might be missing you as much as you miss me.
 Best friends do such things.
 For eleven years, you’ve been my granddaughter,
 but now—
  
 Now, I’m without words.
 I have no language to speak this mercurial joy that washes over me
 each time I think of you thinking of me.
 What can I say but that the blossoms here are lovely enough;
 that time crawls on as it must;
 and that even if all the hyacinth wither and die,
 my best friend is watching the road
 waiting for me to come home.
  
  
  
  
  
   

  I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
 Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.
 “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” The Animals
    

One of the most complex moral positions I can think of is balancing good intentions with humility. Because our good intentions tend to elevate our self-importance. And because armed with good intentions, it’s too tempting to rationalize that the end really does justify any and all means. We have a penchant for knighting ourselves and climbing onto our moral high horses, intent on vanquishing the enemy and saving the land. For as Ralph Waldo Emerson argues, a good intention clothes itself with power.

As in any age, there is no shortage of good intentions today. Choose any political, social, economic, spiritual, or cultural ideology, and you will find individuals of good intent. At one time or another, these individuals have probably paid lip service to Samuel Johnson’s claim that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But clothed in moral power, they may not have the eyes to see that they’re traveling a a deceptively dangerous route.

Whether we canonize ourselves or villanize our enemies, both come too easily for many of us with good intentions. To keep our moral fervor burning, we frequently fuel the fire with a tried and true accelerant: a big, fat, decisive battle line. As long as we can keep the bad guys solidly on their side of the line, we can rally the troops, most of whom really want a well-defined common enemy. Threatened by ambiguity, we argue that we must be clear-headed and single-purposed if we’re to do the good we intend.

English Nobel Prize Winner Sir Ralph Norman Angell writes:

Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right.

We go to war with so many enemies, real and abstract. And, as Angell writes, we do it paradoxically in the name of peace and righteousness. If our intentions are miscarried or frustrated, we want it to be known that we acted for good. I’ve been reading Dr. Kristian Niemietz’s book Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies. Dr. Niemietz is the Head of Political Economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs and formerly taught economics at King’s College London. Whether you advocate for or against socialism, it’s hard to argue with his claim that intellectuals have historically praised each of the world’s socialist experiments at their conception and throughout their infancy (the Soviet Union under Stalin, China under Mao Tse-Tung, Cuba under Castro, East Germany under the SED, to name a few). Later, after each failed–some more tragically than others–these same intellectuals claimed that this was because these socialist leaders had gotten it wrong. That is, they weren’t doing socialism right. Even though they may have begun with good intentions, ultimately they miscarried and botched the real ideology.

I wonder if generations to come will look back at our current political, economic, and social battles through the same lens: that we just weren’t doing it right. And this goes for advocates and activists on both sides of the political aisle, for those who hold very different views on how to make the world a better, safer, more sustainable place. Most speak and act with passion for the greater good, but in the end, many of their good intentions are still miscarried. By whom? Too often by themselves.

Hindsight is 20/20, and it’s certainly easier to look back on any battle with clearer heads. But consider those who have remarkably clear heads during the battle. When I think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leading civil rights’ advocates through the streets of Birmingham and other southern cities, I am amazed at his clear head in the midst of a terribly complex moral situation. How do you fuel the fire of your cause without these fires burning uncontrollably and damaging everything? That is, how do you keep your righteous passion from erupting into violence? While your eyes are fixed on the final prize, how do you also keep your eyes fixed on the means by which you win it?

King, a minister as well as civil rights’ activist, adopted the model of Christ’s civil disobedience. In doing so, he worked tirelessly to temper passion with humility. If police arrested you, King modeled that you were not to resist but go willingly to jail. If someone spit at you, cursed you, struck you, you were not to respond in kind. He instructed his followers to treat others, especially those who intended to hurt them, as they would like to be treated. To gauge King’s success using the model he’d adopted, I’d argue that King worked with good intentions for a good end, which was realized through good means.

Professor and novelist Shanti Sekaran writes of good intentions in her novel, Lucky Boy:

And good intentions? These scared him the most: people with good intentions tended not to question themselves. And people who didn’t question themselves, in the scientific world and beyond, were the ones to watch out for.

Our world moves fast. We can send our well-intended views digitally to a global audience in the blink of an eye. We can do this so quickly and so automatically that we often don’t question ourselves. To ask ourselves for restraint, for more time to consider, for greater understanding–particularly of our opponents–seems so counter cultural. Still, if we don’t ask these things of ourselves, what will keep us from clothing ourselves with unchecked power?

If I could write my own epitaph, I’d like it to be something like this: She was one who lived her good intentions with humility. Considering I’m not dead yet, I’m hoping to have some time to work on this.

photo by Greg Rosenke

  
 
 
There is nothing to save, now all is lost,
 but a tiny core of stillness in the heart
 like the eye of a violet.
 ― D.H. Lawrence       

                      

Google stillness, and you will find a multitude of sites dedicated to the practice and benefits of stillness. Stillness is cool now. It’s the thing to do–or more aptly, to be–the stuff in which yoga masters, gurus, meditators, counselors, and wellness entrepreneurs find their bread and butter, their strong foundation, their core (choose your favorite metaphor).

Most people define stillness by negation. It’s not movement, it’s not doing something, it’s not noisy. But ask others, and they’ll tell you that stillness is our most intense mode of action (Leonard Bernstein), the still small voice of God (Annie Dillard), the most beautiful of all trees in the garden (Thomas Merton), the dancing (T. S. Eliot), the eye of the violet (D. H. Lawrence), the most profound activity (Rainer Maria Rilke). Where some see what stillness is not, others see what it is and what it can be.

There’s something romantic and spiritual about stillness. It conjures up images of Henry David Thoreau tucked away in his cabin at Walden Pond, communing with nature–and only occasionally with people. Or William Wordsworth tramping through the Lake District of England, lonely as a cloud. Or St. Therese of Lisoux, the little flower, who lived her short life as a cloistered Carmelite nun. It seems almost other-worldly, a practice reserved for special people, perhaps reserved for those upon whose unique genetic code has been written all the secrets of stillness.

It goes without saying that for most of us regular folk, stillness seems exotic, exceptional, and exclusive. Even as we sit at our desks or kitchen tables, as we wait in line or in the car, our thumbs and eyes move rapidly as we text, scroll, and search. And our brains? It often seems that they can’t–or won’t–land. They’re swallows without roosts, stringless kites being whipped about in the March wind. And so it’s no wonder that stillness has become a business. Too often, we’ll buy what we can’t do for ourselves (or what we won’t do for ourselves). We’ll order the stillness how-to books from Amazon. We’ll attend weekend seminars. We’ll listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos. We’ll download apps. Because we can’t turn off the noise in our heads, we turn to those who’ve made stillness look possible.

In The Angle of Repose, Amercian novelist Wallace Stegner writes:

[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead.

Here’s the rub: our age knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. If to be still means that we must be isolated and silent–at least for a time–then we’re up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Many of us work actively to never be alone and to fill any silence we encounter. And we have such easy access to information and entertainment right at our fingertips. We can stream it all 24/7. So, to intentionally isolate ourselves from others and to turn off all of our devices seems so counterintuitive. And downright tough.

Once again, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to attend an artist’s residency for several weeks. With the exception of an introductory meeting with the other two resident artists, I’m alone with my books and computer. And because there have been near gale-force winds the past couple of days, I’ve been relatively still (as in physically inactive because it’s too challenging even to walk). The only sound in my apartment is the furnace going on and off, as well as the persistent wind in the trees. I’d like to say that this isolated, quiet environment has made it much easier to still my thoughts and my fingers that continually search for something to hold or to do. But that would be a real stretch.

Still (pardon the obvious and horrible pun!), there have been moments. In his Letters on Life, German poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes:

I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.

In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.

I’ve realized that my moments of authentic stillness have come from a confidence in, a devotion to, and a joy in being idle. Away from my real life, I find it easier to be rather than to do. After all, that’s the point of a residency like this. It’s my job to be still, to set myself apart from all that might interfere with creating. Like Rilke, I have found that the most profound activity has come in these moments of stillness. And I don’t take these moments for granted.

Author, activist, and spiritual leader Marianne Williamson cautions us to slow down, to learn how to go deep. She writes:

The world we want for ourselves and our children will not emerge from electronic speed but rather from a spiritual stillness that takes root in our souls. Then, and only then, will we create a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it.

I don’t believe that many of us would argue with Williamson’s claim that the world we want won’t emerge from electronic speed. Some of us will agree that this world must come from a spiritual stillness that takes root in our souls. And most of us hope for a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it. But how do we cultivate a spiritual stillness in our souls? How do we carve out the solitude in which this stillness can take root? And how do we teach our children?

Good questions, all. Perhaps we can start with the recognition that stillness gives more than it takes, that it’s profoundly active, and that it matters deeply. I’m sure that I’ll leave this residency with a greater appreciation of and deeper devotion to stillness. But I realize that this isn’t enough. It’s the continued commitment to the practice that will truly make the difference between paying lip service to stillness and living it. I hope to live it.

A canon is a list. That’s all. We need it because we have to read Shakespeare; we have to study Dante; we have to read Chaucer, Cervantes, the Bible; … we have to read Proust, Tolstoy, Dickens, George Eliot and Jane Austen. It is inescapable that we have to read Joyce and Samuel Beckett. These are absolutely crucial writers. They provide an intellectual — dare I say a spiritual — value which has nothing to do with organized religion or the history of institutional belief. They remind us in every sense of re-minding us. They not only tell us things that we have forgotten but they tell us things we couldn’t possibly know without them. And they reform our minds. They make our minds stronger; they make us more vital. They make us alive! —Harold Bloom [interview with Eleanor Wachtel, host of CBS Radio’s Original Minds]

As a literature student and teacher, I know a bit about the Western canon, those books that scholars have identified as the works most influential in shaping Western culture. I say a bit because I’m humbled and awed enough by the likes of such authors as William Butler Yeats, Fydor Dostoevsky, and Nathaniel Hawthorne to know that I’m still a novice in the literary land of the canon.

But this literary land is peopled by many DWEMs (dead white European males), and many have argued that this is a problem. They contend that their works don’t represent modern perspectives and, as such, are no longer relevant. They insist that the very fact that these works are written by white men is enough to question their literary value and authority. After all, they argue, the white men of the Western world are colonialists who have dominated by might and by pen. For decades, the traditional Western canon has been questioned, criticized, and denounced.

Although I’ve been awed by traditional Western writers, I’ve also been awed by many other writers who represent a variety of cultures and viewpoints: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Richard Wright’s Native Son, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, Louise Erdrich’s The Master Butchers Singing Club, Amy Tan’s The Valley of Amazement, as well as the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Leslie Marmon Silko, Li Bai–the list goes on and on. I added these writers and their works to the literary canon in my classrooms. And if I were still teaching, I would continually expand and modify my reading list, hoping to expose my students to a variety of the best works.

It goes without saying that there will be continued debate over the value and relevance of the traditional Western canon, but that’s not what really concerns me today. I wholeheartedly agree that the canon should include a variety of authors from a variety of cultures, races, and persectives. What concerns me is that many (most?) of the books in the traditional canon may be removed from high school and university courses, taken from library shelves, and perhaps canceled altogether. I mentally ran down the list of works I’ve taught in American Literature courses and found that many wouldn’t pass muster using the current standards for what is offensive and harmful, what is acceptable and what is not.

For example, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men would probably have to go because of Curly, the stable hand who, as a black man, must live apart from the white ranch hands (there is also mild profanity as well as some use of the “n” word). Kate Chopin’s The Awakening has a host of black maids and nannies who serve wealthy white folk, and the female protagonist who can find no way to fufillment as a woman ultimately takes her own life (her story is a far cry from I am woman, hear me roar). Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” centers on a husband who finds his wife’s birthmark repulsive and kills her while trying to remove it (think about the American With Disabilities Act and all those with physical scars, marks, and defects who might be deeply offended–and terrified–by this story). Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” includes African natives whose job it is to risk their lives by literally beating the bush for the wealthy white hunters as they hunt wild game (not to mention that Hemingway is considered a “man’s man” and has been accused of being sexist). Tennesse William’s play, The Glass Menagerie, has two female protagonists: a melodramatic mother and mentally fragile daughter. Neither represents an empowered female role model. And Mark Twain’s The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn? The controversy around this novel persists. Many schools have removed it from their curricula because one of the primary characters is a black slave and because Twain uses the “n” word throughout the novel.

British psychiatrist, prison physician, and author Theodore Dalyrmple shares my concern:

This posture of skepticism towards the classics displays a profound misjudgment. For the great works of Western culture are remarkable for the distance that they maintained from the norms and orthodoxies that gave birth to them. Only a very shallow reading of Chaucer or Shakespeare would see those writers as endorsing the societies in which they lived, or would overlook the far more important fact that their works hold mankind to the light of moral judgment, and examine, with all the love and all the pity that it calls for, the frailty of human nature. It is precisely the aspiration towards universal truth, towards a God’s-eye perspective on the human condition, that is the hallmark of Western culture.

Dalrymple contends that only a shallow reading of these classic authors would reveal them as endorsing the societies in which they lived. Many of these dead white men actually held their societies up for scrutiny, exposing the flaws and sins of their systems and cultures. For example, Twain’s primary character, Jim, may have been an uneducated black slave, but he is also the best man in the entire book. Twain portrays him as a compassionate, loyal, courageous man who truly cares for others, including Huck, a foolish white boy. He doesn’t endorse slavery but rather criticizes it. His use of the “n” word is is an attribute of literary realism, a writing style that authentically portrays the speech, actions, and thoughts of a particular time period. Twain isn’t cavalier in his use of this word but intentional. The very white folk he criticizes are those–including Huck–who carelessly use this word. Again and again, Twain exposes the frailty of human nature, and in this novel, the white characters are the frailest of them all.

Will shallow readings of these works be the primary means by which they are judged? Will works of literary realism be summarily banned because of their authentic portrayals of the past? Will the traditional canon be canceled as a whole because of its authorship?

In a PBS radio program, host Ben Wattenberg interviewed Stanley Fish, English professor at Duke University, Andrew Delbanco, humanities professor at Columbia University, and Andrew Flaumenhaft, dean of St. Johns College, which places a special emphasis on the Western canon. He asked these academics whether or not we need the Western canon today. Mr. Flaumenhaft defended it:

Because good books make people think. They make — they shake you out of your complacent assumption that what you know or what you believe or what you think is the only thing to know, or believe or think.

It’s true that the traditional Western canon isn’t exclusively responsible for works that make people think and shake them out of their complacent assumptions. As I’ve mentioned earlier, there are many excellent works outside the canon that do this well. But we’re often a throw-the-baby-out-with-the bath-water people. That is, charged with new principles and perspectives, we tend to trash the old and celebrate the new. We do this with great conviction and the best intentions. And sometimes, we realize too late what we’ve given up and regret our losses. This, I fear, may be the fate of the Western literary canon.

At the very least, I think there is much to be studied and discussed. I think there are important questions that should be answered: How should we view works of literary realism? Should we remove works from curricula and libraries on the sole basis of an offensive word(s)? What do we really mean when we identify a work as relevant or irrelevant? What is the end game here and who should be responsible for it?

In his interview concerning the Western canon, Ben Wattenberg asked Stanley Fish about how he viewed his work as an English professor at Duke University. Fish responded:

I’m a literary person, mostly. My job is to present the materials that make up the content of my discipline. And to introduce students to those materials in as forceful a way as possible. What they then do with that material, and my teaching, when they go into the ballot box, or go into the marketplace is, of course, something I cannot predict, and over which I shouldn’t want to have any control.

Fish’s claim that he shouldn’t want to have any control over what his students do with the ideas from the works they’ve read in his courses is particularly important, I think. Removing works from the Western canon–or the entire canon itself–would be an attempt to control by omission. I’d like to think that capable teachers could create the appropriate context in which these works might be taught. I’d like to think that students have the right to be exposed to these classic works and the right to think about them as they choose. I’d like to think that this isn’t–and shouldn’t be–an either/or venture. Above all, I’d like to think that we won’t make these decisions emotionally from shallow readings.

Only time will tell what will happen to the Western canon. I’m hoping that we won’t lose literary works that hold mankind to the light of moral judgment even if they are written by DWEMs.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.
 --Ellen Key 

Many of us may be closet abstract-lovers. I mean, who wouldn’t choose a grand abstraction over a puny particular? In Charles Schultz’s 1959 comic strip, Peanuts, Linus said: I love mankind. . . It’s people I can’t stand. Both Albert Einstein and Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote something similar when they claimed to love humanity but hate people. Publicly, we may scoff at these admissions, but if we were to invite others into our own closets, they’d see that we’ve generally been a whole lot better at loving mankind than loving people (especially those people we neither like nor understand).

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamozov, a lady admits to Father Zosima, a wise elder, that she fears she may not be able to actively love. She confesses:

The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.

Here, she admits that she has great plans to serve humanity but that she becomes hostile to actual humans as soon as they get close to her. To love humans abstractly means that she can keep them at arm’s length. That is, she can love the idea of them without actually having to break bread with them or–God forbid–befriend them. Her advisor, Father Zosima, tells her he regrets that he can’t say anything more comforting, [but] active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Active, individual love is labor and perseverance, he explains. In short, active love is so much more demanding than abstract love.

Our struggle to love particular individuals with all their warts and gifts isn’t new. This is an age-old struggle. Thirty years ago, I stood in a college classroom teaching Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, “The Lovers of the Poor.” In this poem, Brooks describes the ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment League who magnanimously offer to give money to the poor, the very, very worthy and beautiful poor. And they agree to deliver the money in person, traveling from their wealthy Chicago neighborhoods to the projects. When they arrive, however, they find the sights and smells, the make-do-ness of newspaper rugs entirely too much for them. They decide it would be best to post the money and leave. These ladies have romanticized poverty and can only love the poor they’ve created in their minds, the worthy and beautiful poor. In contrast, these particular poor people don’t look, smell, speak, or act anything like they’ve imagined.

From a distance, we can love abstractly, legislate abstractly, create and reform abstractly. We do it all with good intentions, sometimes the best intentions. And we believe that when we generalize, we’re acting for the common good. Too often, we defend our broad strokes, rarely stopping to consider that we’ve lost sight of our intended subjects. Swedish writer Ellen Key argues that when our world becomes more terrible, our art becomes more abstract. When life becomes especially cruel, too many of us aim to soften its rough edges with abstraction.

The fact that we leap to abstraction–that we’ve always leaped to it–is no surprise. But once we recognize this, what do we do about it? I suggest that we start by asking our elected leaders to leave the sanctuaries of abstraction for the real relationships and experiences of the particular.

If we want to eliminate poverty, then why don’t we ask our leaders to move from their own communities into impoverished neighborhoods? Why shouldn’t they live in and among the very people they intend to help? Before they legislate programs for the poor, why shouldn’t we insist that they ask their new neighbors what these programs could and should be?

If we want to eliminate inequities and problems in public education, then why don’t we expect our leaders to enroll their own children in struggling schools? Why shouldn’t we demand that they see the challenges in these schools firsthand? Before they suggest sweeping reform, why don’t we ask that they start with their children’s schools by learning what it takes to create a better school, one classroom at a time?

If we want to address immigration, then why don’t we ask our leaders to move their families to border communities, so that they can experience the real challenges for both immigrants and natives? Why shouldn’t we refuse to accept the practice of legislating from afar and instead insist that our leaders learn from their neighbors, crafting policy and legislation based on their experiences with real people?

Some will argue that all this sounds good, but it’s not realistic. They will insist that our lobbyists and legislators must live in Washington, D. C. But I would contend that if teachers can teach remotely, why can’t legislators debate and legislate remotely? I would argue that millions have effectively relied upon platforms like Zoom for over a year, so this isn’t impossible. And finally, I would propose that it’s more unrealistic (and potentially more dangerous) to make policies and laws without basing them on real relationships and experiences. It’s more unrealistic to live in the world of abstractions than to join the world of the particular.

I’m proposing a kind of servant leadership that we’re sorely lacking. Our affinity with abstracting, with generalizing and romanticizing may seem naive and benign, but it is presumptuous and condescending at best. I’m not questioning good intentions but rather consequences. And these consequences suggest that we shouldn’t accept the type of leadership we currently have.

During my lifetime, I’ve only had the privilege to work under a handful of genuine servant leaders. For example, I worked under a high school principal who pushed a big rolling garbage can around during every lunch period, stopping to pick up trash and, more importantly, to talk with students, all 1,500 of whom he knew by name. Here was a leader who knew and understood the real world of those young adults in his charge, a leader who ultimately changed the culture of an entire school. He could have stayed in his office and eaten his own lunch in relative peace. He could have stationed himself there each day, making school-wide decisions from a comfortable desk chair. He could have, but he didn’t. Instead, he walked the hallways, visited classrooms, and greeted students coming and going from school. Each day, his actions revealed that he loved humans more than he loved humanity.

In her journals, poet Sylvia Plath wrote that [the] abstract kills, the concrete saves. As harsh as these words sound, I think she’s right. We’re killing the very people, institutions, and ideas we long to save by abstracting them. We’re the ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment League come to call on a whole host of social, economic, political, environmental, and educational problems that affect real people. And all too often, we don’t show up–or we get of whiff of something unpleasant, and we run. We decide it would be better to send our policies, laws, proposals, guidelines, and regulations from the sanctuary of our abstractions.

That’s the bad news. But the good news is that we can learn from those servant leaders who understand that power is a privilege, a privilege that must be grounded in reality. Regardless of how horrifying the world is, they accept the challenge of climbing down the abstraction ladder into the mire. And to effectively lead, they know that they must first understand and love humans before they can ever understand and love humanity.

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.
Mahatma Gandhi 

Disclaimer: If I had the answers to the questions I’m about to pose, I’d undoubtedly have my own TED talk. I’d have written best-selling books, I’d be sought after as a guest speaker and globally regarded among the “truly wise.” But sadly (and understandably), I don’t. I do, however, think the questions are worth posing.

Chilean writer Isabel Allende echoes Gandhi’s words when she writes: Peace requires everyone to be in the circle—wholeness, inclusion. At face value, I suspect that many people would agree that inclusion is the remedy to most of what ails us today. They may agree with Gandhi that we threaten cultural extinction if we continue down the path of exclusion that we’ve been on. They may applaud Allende for her rallying cry to open up the metaphorical circle so that everyone stands in the center. But if pressed for the truth, they may sympathize more with the frank words of Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber:

If the quality of my Christianity lies in my ability to be more inclusive than the next pastor, things get tricky because I will always, always encounter people—intersex people, Republicans, criminals, Ann Coulter, etc.—whom I don’t want in the tent with me. Always. I only really want to be inclusive of some kinds of people and not of others. [Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Life of a Sinner Saint]

Ideally, we should always want everyone in the tent with us, right? And shouldn’t we be ashamed of the possibility that we really only want to be inclusive of some kinds of people? This is the question of the day–heck, this is the question of the ages. Beyond metaphor, beyond the ideal image of one tribe, one circle of humanity, how does this work? That is, how do we want to be inclusive of those we’d prefer to exclude, particularly–and perhaps most importantly–those whose attitudes and ideologies are so repugnant to us?

Consider this hypothetical scenario: A group of cake lovers and a group of pie lovers have been in conflict for decades. At best, they’ve coexisted in the shared industrial kitchen they call home. At worst, they’ve shunned, shamed, and even persecuted each other. Even after years of bake-offs, new laws, reconciliation efforts and educational campaigns, they’ve become increasingly intolerant of the other’s ideas, and many fear that civil war is brewing:

Cakes can’t sit beside pies on the dessert table, the pie lovers cry. Cake, as everyone knows, is an inferior food choice–at best less tasty, and at worst, seriously unhealthy. Anyone who advocates for their cause is woefully ignorant and potentially dangerous. If cakes are ever to join the dessert table at all, they must first reform the way they think and act (and they must learn to love, not merely accept, crust).

Are you serious? the cake lovers reply. Pie lovers have a history of discriminating against and persecuting cakes. They’ve built a culinary heritage on their refusal to give cake lovers their due rights. If anyone should be excluded from the dessert table, it’s pies. If they ever want a chance at the table, they’ll have to change their ideas and attitudes (and they must learn to love, not merely accept, frosting).

Although there are some cake lovers and some pie lovers who’ve come to accept and understand each other, others in each group argue that some is not enough, some will never be enough. It must be all. All must be welcomed to the dessert table. So how do you get all to agree to a bigger dessert table that includes a diverse smorgasbord of cakes and pies? Consider the following factions in each group:

• those who’ve come to truly understand and embrace the value and cultural necessity of a diverse dessert table
• those who like the idea of a diverse dessert table but who never actually venture down to the opposite end where the “other” desserts are housed
• those who tirelessly campaign for a diverse dessert table, but who ultimately can’t accept the opposing faction who refuses to reform (and conform)
• those who refuse to sample even a taste of the other’s fare, insisting on dessert purity (only cakes OR only pies)
• those who believe the culinary end justifies the means (cake lovers and pie lovers who devote their lives to destroying the opposition through any means available, including organized food fights)

How would you go about unifying all cake and pie factions, so that the dessert table was wholly inclusive? Consider the fact that dessert education has been moderately, but not wholly, successful in bringing more cakes and pies to the table. Culinary campaigns and new laws have had moderate success, too. As have the children and grandchildren of cake and pie lovers who’ve befriended and loved each other and who’ve risen to leadership positions in the dessert world. But nothing has been totally successful. In spite of all efforts, pockets of resistance have grown. And to make matters worse, some cake and pie lovers now confess that they really don’t want the vocal, ignorant faction of the other group on the table at all. Ever.

This is a silly, hypothetical conflict, but I fear that it’s all too reflective of conflict in general. The history of the world reads like a continuous series of conflicts: between nations and regions, tribes and sects, cultures and religions, races and ethnicities, social/economic classes and sexes–the list goes on and on.

According to ACLED ( Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project), there are ten serious conflicts to watch in 2020-21: the Sahel (Chad, Niger, Mauritania, Mali, and Burkina Faso), Yemen, Mexico, India, Somalia, Iran, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and the United States. To see our own nation included in this list is sobering. And this list is by no means exhaustive. There’s the Rohingya crisis and recent military coup in Myanmar, the ongoing oppression in North Korea, the Azerbaijani-Armenian war over Nagorno-Karabakh, the conflict between Turkey and armed Kurdish groups, the Somalian Civil War, the Israeli-Palistinian conflict, the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, the conflict in Ukraine, instability in Egypt and Venezuela, tensions in the East China Sea–just to name a few more. And these are the violent conflicts. When we consider other ideological, social, environmental, and economic conflicts that aren’t generally violent but are contentious nonetheless, we could fill pages.

So, back to the burning question: How do we achieve unity in a world which has been, and continues to be, in serious conflict? For example, how do staunch pro life and pro choice advocates come together in the same metaphorical tent? Pro life advocates defend life, but does this really include all lives, even those of pro choice advocates? Pro choice advocates defend choice, but does this really include all choices, even the choices of pro life advocates?

When individuals and groups are so ideologically different, when they oppose each other so vigorously, when acceptance seems so wrong because the opposing views are so wrong (or perhaps so evil as some have argued), how is unity, even unity in diversity, possible?

Ideologically, could it ever be possible? Could we ever reach consensus on all moral, political, social, economic, educational, spiritual, environmental, and cultural views? Could everyone–and I mean all–be snuggly included in the unity circle?

As I hear calls for unity, I can’t help but wonder what this really means. If I were a cynic, I could easily dismiss any vision of unity as impossibly naive. If I were a zealot, I could summarily condemn a vision of unity that includes any views other than my own. If I were a romantic, I could speak passionately about unity, optimistically choosing to ignore the real world. I’m neither cynic, nor zealot, nor romantic, though. To be honest, I’m not sure what I’d call myself. Maybe I’d call myself a seeker, one who has a whole lot of questions that I leave you with today.

Final disclaimer: For the record, I’d have a hard time excluding either cake or pie from my dessert table. A mile-high lemon meringue pie can certainly live in harmony beside a two-layer chocolate cake with buttercream frosting, right?

photo by Jim Fenster

                                                                
 Outlier

 The white-faced cardinal sits at the edge
 of a gathering of native birds
 who’ve come for black-oiled sunflower seeds.
  
 She’s a stunner, a real beauty among 
 the john and jane does,
 the house finches and dark-eyed juncos. 
  
 That she keeps to herself—
 teetering on the railing, waiting
 as shells litter the deck—
 that her detachment is a rare geography 
 pleases me.
  
 I’ve always loved the outliers:
        the ones who wear their deviations
        like crown jewels,
        whose otherness
        is fine plumage.
  
 While most of us shuffle forward in sensible shoes
 and hold our tongues,
 in the skies above,
 an outlier wings its way towards
 other galaxies.
  
 Can you imagine it,
 streaking across a nameless universe
 where gravity is but a distant memory?
  
 And can you imagine it,
 coming home to all that space undone
 an outlier, a constellation of one? 

Note: I borrowed the photo from another photographer/bird watcher because I couldn’t get close enough to get a good photo of the white-faced female cardinal who visits our bird feeder daily. Her white face is an effect of leucism, a wide variety of conditions that causes a partial loss of pigmentation in birds and animals.