In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.
― Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs

As most of us face additional weeks of quarantine, we may feel as though we do, indeed, understand our fellows of the cell. Celled in, sheltered-in-place, cloistered–call it whatever you wish. In the 13th century, St. Francis of Assisi, walked the roads of Italy and joyously proclaimed that [the] whole world is our cloister! Today, the world’s cloister is more of a collective reclusiveness and remoteness.

To cloister means to seclude or shut up in or as if in a convent or monastery. In the photo above, the 11th century Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Greece, one of 24 Meteora monasteries, is a stunning example of a cloister. In Greek, meteora means suspended in the air. This type of suspension–above the earth, cut off from others–is precisely what many of us think of when we consider cloistering. We think of a dramatic retreat from normalcy, a sparsely furnished windowless cell and endless hours of solitude. The Monastery of the Holy Trinity looks like just the place for this kind of retreat. And as remote as it is, it may not seem all that different than the homes we now find ourselves sheltered in.

In his book, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Henri Nouwen writes:

We say to each other that we need some solitude in our lives. What we really are thinking of, however, is a time and place for ourselves in which we are not bothered by other people, can think our own thoughts, express our own complaints, and do our own thing, whatever it may be. For us, solitude means privacy . . . We also think of solitude as a staion where we can recharge our batteries, or as the corner of the boxing ring where our wounds are oiled, our muscles messaged, and our courage restored by fitting slogans. In short, we think of solitude as a place where we gather new strength to continue the ongoing competition in life.

As Nouwen suggests, I suspect that many of us regarded our first days of quarantine as welcome–even necessary–recharging. To be cloistered in our homes meant privacy and valued time for ourselves. I remember the first weeks of a summer job I held in college. I cleaned rooms in a small motel and, in the beginning, revelled in the time I had alone in each room. A bottle of Lime Away in hand, I scrubbed and thought, scoured and dreamed. I recall thinking, they’re actually paying me for this? A few weeks into the job, however, I began to dread being alone with my thoughts, for they had run amuk into darker, scarier places, and I couldn’t rein them in. They charged into what ifs that often left me standing on a precipice looking into the worst of my fears. I began to hate being cloistered in those rooms. With each bath tub I scrubbed, I felt as though I was scrubbing away layers of myself, leaving little of worth behind.

Nouwen writes about his own struggles with what he calls transforming solitude, the solitude of the saints. He explains how this type of solitude requires getting rid of scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract me–naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken–nothing. He goes on to explain that it is this nothingness that is so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. Ah yes, I have known–and continue to know–this nothingness.

Our current cloistering doesn’t prohibit us from talking or video-chatting with friends and family, from listening to music, watching television, reading books, and doing whatever we like to do in our homes. Nor does it relieve many from attending meetings (thanks to Zoom). Still, we’re not used to living exclusively at home. And in spite of technology and other means of distraction, we may find ourselves staring into the nothingness that arrives when all else fails to engage us.

Indian writer Amit Kalantri writes that [s]ocial distancing is an opportunity to check if you can tolerate your own company. There are certainly days–like those in my motel-cleaning summer–when I genuinely can’t tolerate my own company. I’d prefer others’ company. I’d prefer to listen to thoughts that are not my own, to immerse myself in the blessed presence of anyone else but me. And yet, I understand that the true nature and value of cloistering is not found in distraction but in contemplation.

In his book, Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton writes:

In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth.

We’re not monks, and we certainly haven’t abandoned the world. Still, we have an unprecedented opportunity to listen more intently to those deepest and most neglected voices. That is, we have this time to temporarily abandon the busy, noisy lives we’ve led. We have this time to probe the inner depths of all our lives could–and should–be.

In the past few weeks, I’ve read some amusing posts and seen some funny memes about everyday sweatpants vs. good sweatpants. Today, dressing up might certainly mean breaking out the good sweatpants or leggings. In The Cloister Walk, author Kathleen Norris writes about her time in a monastery:

I could suddenly grasp that not ever having to think about what to wear was freedom, that a drastic stripping down to essentials in one’s dress might also be a drastic enrichment of one’s ability to focus on more important things.

I think Norris is right: when we strip down to essentials in what we wear, we may also be more likely to strip down to essentials in what truly matters–and what does not. For the foreseeable future, we will be fellows of the cell. As we move about our cells with the glorious freedom that only elastic waistbands can afford, may we cloister well.

If I care to listen, I hear a loud whisper from the gospel that I did not get what I deserved. I deserved punishment and got forgiveness. I deserved wrath and got love. I deserved debtor’s prison and got instead a clean credit history. I deserved stern lectures and crawl-on-your-knees repentance; I got a banquet—Babette’s feast—spread for me.
― Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?

I confess that for much of my life, I didn’t fully understand that there was a banquet, an inconceivable and unprecedented feast, spread before me. I was too busy bellying up to the drive-up windows of what-I-deserved. A little condemnation (extra shame please), a side of paralyzing self-doubt (hold the compassion), and a whole lotta guilt (super-sized). Quite frankly, I didn’t get grace. What was I to make of such a beguiling offer of love and forgiveness? How was I to accept a gift I didn’t deserve? Truly, I deserved crawl-on-your-knees repentance; unmerited favor was surely intended for others.

Recently, I watched the feature film, Just Mercy, which tells the story of Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Stevenson, a public interest lawyer, has dedicated his life and career to helping all those who need and deserve grace: the poor, the imprisoned, and the condemned on death row. The movie–based on Stevenson’s book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption–focuses primarily on one of Stevenson’s first clients, Walter McMillian, a young black man awaiting death for the murder of a young white woman. McMillan didn’t kill this woman, and there was no evidence to prove that he had, except for the sole testimony of a white felon desperate to get himself a better legal deal. Faced with the seemingly insurmountable odds of challenging a southern justice system that had summarily condemned McMillan and countless other black men, Stevenson perseveres through legal battle after legal battle. Ultimately, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals exonerated McMillan, reversing the lower court decisions and freeing him after six years on death row.

Stevenson writes:

We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it’s necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and—perhaps—we all need some measure of unmerited grace.

Just Mercy specifically addresses serious flaws in our justice, prison, and social systems. Still, I believe that Stevenson’s admonishment that we all need some measure of unmerited grace is relevant and fitting for everyone. We may neither deserve nor understand it, but most of us yearn for a banquet of love and forgiveness, acceptance and affirmation. We’ve tired of fast food that arrives cold and tasteless. We desperately want something better.

As we celebrate Easter, the feast is before us–year after year. The table of unmerited grace is set, our places reserved. Often, however, we join the ranks of so many throughout history who have struggled with this reality. We’re wage-earners who like to pay our own way. We’re self-made men and women who don’t like to be beholden to anyone. We’re hard workers who want to deserve the gifts we receive. For too many Easters, I didn’t accept my invitation to the banquet. When unmerited grace was offered, I passed, thinking that I’d done so out of humility and a keen sense of justice. How could I stuff my face with forgiveness I didn’t deserve? How could I accept an entrée of love? How could I possibly take even one hors d’oeurve of compassion?

I’m guessing that many of Bryan Stevenson’s clients felt similarly. Faced with years of imprisonment and/or execution, they, too, may have felt as though the banquet invitations they’d received were surely meant for other, more deserving folk. But the strange and glorious news of Easter is simply this: no one deserves a place at the banquet table, and yet all are invited. It is the wonderfully irrational promise of Easter that gives us clean credit histories.

In his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Philip Yancey writes:

How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible’s astounding words about God’s love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?

Yancey understands the potential power of unmerited grace, how it may truly transform those who accept it and come to see themselves as God does. As we sit down to eat our own Easter banquets, I pray that we might see ourselves as the undeserving but much-loved children of God. And above all, that we might graciously accept the standing invitation to the greatest banquet of all.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Ephesians 2:8

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
― Winston S. Churchill

Have you ever heard of the Lancastria, a British ocean liner whose sinking resulted in the greatest losses in British maritime history? I’m guessing that most haven’t. I hadn’t until recently as I was reading Erik Larson’s biography of Winston Churchill and family, The Splendid and the Vile.

On June 17, 1940, the RMS Lancastria, requisitioned during Operation Ariel to evacuate British nationals and soldiers two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation, sank. Bombed by the Germans near the French port of Saint-Nazaire, the Lancastria’s sinking resulted in the British military’s largest loss of life from a single conflict in World War II. More people died from the Lancastria sinking than from the Titanic and Lusitania combined. No one knows exactly how many people died, but death estimates range between 3,500 and 6,500. Some have speculated that the the death toll was even greater. The Lancastria’s occupancy was generally limited to 2,200 with an additional 375 crew members, but 9,000 were crammed on board during Operation Ariel. There were approximately 2,500 survivors.

And yet for five weeks, the British press–under Winston Churchill’s orders of a media blackout–offered no news of this disaster. Only when the late edition of The Scotman published a story featuring claims from the New York Sun newspaper regarding the Lancastria’s sinking did the British government admit that the ship had, indeed, sunk after being bombed by the Germans. In his memoirs, Churchill wrote that he told his staff: The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today at least. He later admitted that he’d planned to release the news of Lancastria’s sinking a few days later, but that this was Britain’s darkest hour, and the news of France’s surrender crowded upon us so black and so quickly that I forgot to lift the ban.

Churchill’s Minister of Information, Mr. Alfred Duff Cooper, was asked why the Lancastria’s sinking, as well as stories of heroism from British troops on board, were not published in England until weeks after this had been published in the American press. He said:

The reasons for holding the news of the bombing and sinking of the steamship “Lancastria” were the following. This ship was engaged on a military operation, and it was evident from the German wireless announcement that the enemy were totally unaware of the identity of the ship which had been sunk. Further, it is contrary to the general policy of His Majesty’s Government to announce the loss of individual merchant ships. The number and the total tonnage of merchant ships lost is given in a weekly statement. The tonnage of the steamship “Lancastria” was included in the statement issued on 2nd July. This policy is well known, and I cannot, therefore, understand why on this occasion bewilderment should have been caused in Liverpool and shipping circles.

The Lancastria was considered a merchant ship?The total tonnage was reported weekly? In this case, the ship carried people–not merchandise–and the total tonnage was largely made up of human lives. And Cooper couldn’t understand the bewilderment regarding this loss? He undoubtedly did understand the tragic proportions of the Lancastria’s sinking, but as a good soldier whose commander in chief had ordered him to silence–and later to damage control–he spun the story as only those in such positions can. And do.

Mark Hirst, grandson of Walter Hirst, a Lancastria survivor, writes:

The trouble with the story of the Lancastria is it doesn’t fit with the grand narrative of that period – the miraculous evacuation of Dunkirk, and the Battle of Britain.

Like so many stories which have been hidden in the cavernous recesses of history, the Lancastria’s story was largely overlooked and forgotten. And there have been many of those who have commissioned the hiding, who–in the words of Churchill–believed that It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required. Indeed, history is peopled with so many whose justifications have been birthed from and taken refuge in what is required.

I’m not writing to pass judgment but rather to question. In war time–or any crisis–is the truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies? Do we require a bodyguard of lies to protect us from truths so brutal, so colossal that most of us would instantly collapse and be buried under their weight? Do most individuals in power insist, as Colonel Jessup did in the movie A Few Good Men: You can’t handle the truth!?

I’ve written recently about the challenges in identifying the truth. There are just as many challenges, I suspect, in determining if–and when–the whole truth is warranted. Always? Sometimes? Rarely? Just as our worldview determines our definition of truth, it also determines how and when we use it. Did Churchill truly believe that the British people should be protected–at least temporarily–from yet another crushing blow in their darkest hour? Was his decision to hide this from the press more an act of compassion than deceit? Did he fully intend to make this news public but found himself so overwhelmed by the fall of France and its implications for Britain that he simply forgot to lift the media blackout? I’m guessing that the answer to all of these questions is yes.

And yet, the hiding, covering, or spinning of the truth rubs us wrong. Even when we know and trust others, believing their motives to be good, we falter when we discover they’ve lied or concealed something from us. Our trust in them begins to erode, if only through pin pricks in their armor. We feel betrayed, at first, and later frightened. A question grows and gnaws at us: what else don’t we know?

Today, as we shelter in place and watch/listen to/read the emerging news about Covid19, most of us have become weary–and wary. News reports and social media posts circle around us as sharks eyeing chum in the water. And as chum, many of us find ourselves bobbing helplessly in threatening waters, eager to be washed up on some sunnier, safer shore. But the reports, the data, the images keep coming. Government officials, medical and public health experts, scientists and all those with mouthpieces keep talking. Day after quarantined day, we wonder if we’re being told the whole truth or if it’s being spun, modified, or withheld by those, like Churchill and so many others, who may contend that in our darkest hours, the truth may undo us.

Churchill once quipped that [a] lie gets halfway around the world before truth has a chance to get its pants on. Maybe this is our fear: that truth won’t have a fighting chance to get its pants on before lies have changed our lives and written our history. And the reality that those who lie to us may genuinely care for us only confuses and saddens us.

One of my greatest blessings is that I live 50 yards from my grandchildren. We’ve spent many wonderful hours on the swings that hang from the big oak tree in their yard. And even–perhaps especially–in this time of quarantine, there’s nothing like taking to the air in a swing where you can momentarily leave the earth and all its troubles below you.

Swinging
for Griffin

These are feet I know well.
Ten button toes stuffed,
too often, into unnecessary shoes.
 
They’ve walked the path from
your house to mine so many times
that even the creeping charlie has given up
and left a red clay artery to harden
in the sun.
 
Shoeless today, they take to the air,
dangling dreamily from the swing in the big oak,
their bottoms coated with dirt
even before noon.
 
Again, you say.
And I push again with all that I have
because I remember how the swing’s chains would squeak--
then catch--
when I’d gone as high as I could;
when, with each pass,
I took to the sky as a swallow;
when my hair would find the breeze
and I’d close my eyes because it was better this way,
the rising and falling taking my gut
by surprise.
 
I push hard, running beneath you,
hoping to tease the air into taking you further
into the oak boughs,
 
hoping to catch your feet so that I can release you
again.

 
 
 
 

But as horrific as the disease [Spanish flu] itself was, public officials and the media helped create that terror—not only by exaggerating the disease but by minimizing it, by trying to reassure. A specialty among public relations consultants has evolved in recent decades called “risk communication.” I don’t care much for the term. For if there is a single dominant lesson from 1918, it’s that governments need to tell the truth in a crisis. Risk communication implies managing the truth. You don’t manage the truth. You tell the truth.
― John Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History 

American author and historian John Barry has written books on the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and the development of the modern form of the concepts of separation of church and state, as well as individual liberty. Today, perhaps more than ever, he’s been interviewed by many news organizations and journals as a historical authority on flu pandemics. Having recently read his book, The Great Influenza, I was struck with the dominant theme of his work: tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We shouldn’t distort, pervert, or manage it, Barry argues, for this only creates fear and distrust. It did in 1918, and it will again today and tomorrow.

President Woodrow Wilson was convicted that the country must prepare for and support the war. To this end, Barry writes that Wilson created the Committee for Public Information. This agency’s work was to control all information the American public received. Just one year earlier, Wilson had pushed the Sedition Act through Congress, which made it a crime to say or publish anything that would negatively influence America’s war efforts. Barry cites the architect of the Committee for Public Information who stated:

Truth and falsehood are arbitrary terms. The force of an idea lies in its inspirational value. It matters very little if it is true or false.

The truth–or manipulation of the truth–lies at the heart of Barry’s convictions, as well as Wilson’s and those government officials who’d been designated as information czars wholly in charge of everything that American citizens should know and believe. And at this time when a flu pandemic was sweeping the nation, when many described bodies being piled up as cords of wood, when the country’s best scientists were feverishly working to identify the cause of and develop a potential treatment for this influenza, when military bases were decimated with death, when some towns, like Gunnison, Colorado, set up armed perimeters around their counties to keep the contagion out, and when death was a likely visitor to most families–at this time, the Committee for Public Information was pumping out pro-war advertisements and news articles, encouraging citizens to buy war bonds, employing a host of Four Minute Men to make rousing patriotic speeches in city gatherings and movie theaters, and prosecuting those who dared do or say anything “unpatriotic” .

On the subject of the flu pandemic, they were either silent or responded with patronizing assurance that this was just the ordinary grippe and citizens should take normal precautions: wash your hands, don’t spit in public, keep your feet warm, stay rested. They chose not to report the truth of the pandemic’s strength and its cataclysmic consequences. Perhaps they weren’t nearly as inspired by this truth as other truths that they believed were necessary to sustaining our war efforts. Or perhaps they believed this truth was one that they could conveniently shelve as WWI raged on in Europe. Regardless of their reasons, the truth about the pandemic was either downplayed or not reported at all.

Until the truth could no longer be denied. This grim reaper kept knocking and knocking through horrific stories of pain and death the likes of which most had never experienced. Real people with real stories–and photographs of the unimaginable consequences of pandemic. By then, tragically, the influenza had not only taken the country but the world. When Spanish King Alfonso XIII was stricken, the Spanish press covered the pandemic which was now ravaging Europe. Ironically, a virus which hadn’t originated in Spain earned the name Spanish flu only because the uncensored Spanish press were the first to write about it openly.

As I read through Barry’s book, I kept thinking about his central message to tell the truth. But the more I read, the more I was plagued with these questions: What is the truth? How do we know it’s the truth? Why does one individual’s truth differ from another’s? For years, I taught a high school unit on worldviews. I wanted my students to investigate the concept of worldview, to understand how worldviews differ, and ultimately, to determine their own worldview based on what they’d learned. As we began our unit, we used James W. Sire’s definition of worldview from his book The Universe Next Door:

a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic make-up of the world.

We studied the “big questions” whose answers help determine one’s worldview: What is real? What is good? What is right? What is true? What does it mean to be human? What happens to humans at death? How do we know anything? What is the meaning of human history?

Our discussions regarding truth were often the most interesting and contentious. In short, we disagreed about what constitutes truth. Countless students offered statements like this: Well, you have your truth, and I have mine. Others countered with arguments like this: Something is either true or it’s not. There can’t be one truth for you and one truth for me. At the heart of these debates was the issue of whether or not truth was relative or absolute, whether or not truth could/should be determined individually and by circumstance OR whether it should be universal and immutable, for everyone for all time. It goes without saying that we never reached consensus on this issue. We did, however, identify major differences in how we defined and used the concept of truth.

Just yesterday, my daughter and I were discussing recent news reports on the Covid19 pandemic and asking these same types of questions: How do we determine the truth about this disease and its implications for us–as a world, a nation, a state, a community? What data, what evidence is true? What interpretations of this data/evidence are true? Who is speaking the truth? Why does one source’s truth appear to differ radically from another’s?

Unlike the government’s deliberate suppression of information regarding the Spanish flu pandemic, our government officials–as well as medical, scientific, economic, and public health experts–are providing us with ongoing information, an ocean of information that relentlessly crashes against the shores of our consciousness. We have a lot of information at our finger tips, at the touch of a button, the flip of a switch. And I think it’s safe to say that this information is filtered through each source’s worldview. That is, we all see the world and our place in it from the lens of our particular worldviews. Because these worldviews differ–some subtly and some drastically–we should expect that arriving at the truth will be challenging, at best. We should expect that we’ll have to read, listen, and view widely and from a variety of sources. We should expect that we will have to critically weigh all that we learn if we are to determine what we think best defines the truth.

Some may argue that, in an ideal world, we would all share the same worldview; hence, we would all define and arrive at truth in the same way. But we don’t. And we won’t. This is, perhaps, the truest thing I can write today. We can bash those whose worldviews (and truths) differ from ours, or we can learn from them. We can ignore sources that we’ve generally deemed untrustworthy, or we can regard them with cautious skepticism, entertaining the possibility that they may provide us with kernels of truth. We can quickly fix labels of good guys and bad guys, or we can withhold judgment until–and unless–a preponderance of evidence justifies such labeling. In the end, the pursuit of truth will be, as it has always been, a laborious and ongoing individual endeavor.

Certainly, Barry’s admonition about telling the truth is one that we shouldn’t take lightly–not during a pandemic or ever. Who and what determines the truth, however, will continue to challenge us. As it should, for these questions will always be the crucial questions. And the answers to these questions will continue to shape our lives and our world, as they have decidedly shaped the past.

I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not see.
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

A few days ago, I read through the book of Lamentations. How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! [Lamentations 1:1] It seemed a fitting book, for the sky was gray with cloud cover so opaque that the sun had little chance of breaking through. Much of the world was widowed, sheltering in their homes, confined within four walls previously regarded as sanctuaries. Leaden with regular news reports of the pandemic sweeping across the world, the days stretch on, and our hearts and souls are heavier than hearts and souls should be.

Or perhaps not. In his book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Father Richard Rohr writes:

In much of urban and Western civilization today, with no proper tragic sense of life, we try to believe that it is all upward and onward–and by ourselves. It works for so few, and it cannot serve us well in the long run–because it is not true.

Rohr has a point here: we really don’t have a proper tragic sense of life. It is all upward and onward for most of us, most of the time. If our hearts and souls become heavy, we push on. If we feel as though we may be drown in the miry pits of our circumstances, we literally pull ourselves out by our own bootstraps. And we do it all independently, refusing to ask for or accept help. We are not a lamenting people.

At least not publicly. In private, we lament much more like the prophet Jeremiah who cried out:

My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within; my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city. [Lamentations 2:11]

In private, we are tormented by loss, by fear, by doubt and insecurity. In private, we often pour out our hearts, and our eyes fail from weeping. In private, we can sometimes be first class lamenters.

Perhaps both Richard Rohr and Nicolas Wolterstorff are right: collectively and publicly, we need a proper tragic sense of life and a teary worldview that allows us to see what dry-eyed we could not. In short, perhaps we should be a people of lamentation. Not a hand-wringing, self-pitying, complaining kind of people but a genuinely lamenting people. In his book, Movies are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings, Josh Larsen writes:

Christian lament is not simply complaint. Yes, it stares clear-eyed at awfulness and even wonders if God has gone…Yet at its fullest, biblical lament expresses sorrow over losing a world that was once good alongside a belief that it can be made good again. Lament isn’t giving up, it’s giving over. When we lift up our sorrow and our pain, we turn it over to the only one who can meet it: our God.

If we’re not particularly good at genuine lamenting, we’re even worse at accepting and understanding paradoxes like the one Larsen presents here: expressing sorrow over losing a world that was once good alongside a belief that it can be made good again. Today as more people die from Covid19 and quarantine measures persist, many may fear that with each passing day and each new positive test, the world that they once knew as good is being lost, bit by precious bit. To grieve and yet still believe that this world can be made good again? This is a paradox that challenges us. It’s generally either we’re going to hell in a hand basket OR don’t worry, be happy. It’s the rare public (or private) individual who can hold both of these realities in their minds and souls.

Yet, this is the foundational paradox of lamentation. And we need to both understand and practice it. We need to cry out in desperation for our world, for our communities, for our families, and for ourselves. And not just for pandemic reasons–for all sorts of loss and pain, collective and private. I take great solace in all those biblical figures who cried out to God, who laid their pain, anger, and despair at his feet in unabashed lamenation. These are the pillars of our faith, and they openly and regularly lamented.

Michael D. Guinan, a professor of Old Testament, Semitic languages and biblical spirituality at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, California, believes that we have lost a healthy sense of lament in our personal prayer life and in our communal, liturgical life. He argues that even in the funeral rite–the only real context in which lament is generally practiced–we may short shrift it. He explains:

Some years back, after the changes in the rite of funerals, a family I knew lost a child in a boating accident. A lot of pressure was brought to bear to “celebrate the Mass of the Resurrection, to rejoice in his birth to new life.” About a year later, their suppressed grief almost tore the family apart. Again, we must not deny honest pain, nor jump too quickly from loss to acceptance and skip over the lamenting process. Christian faith does proclaim a message of hope, but death and grief are still real.

We have always lived in a world in which hope, grief, and death live as necessary neighbors. Today, our personal and pandemic worlds are no different. And this is why lamentation is not only an appropriate response to our circumstances, it is truly the only response. We can’t deny fear and pain and skip the lamenting process. Not now–not ever.

In the end, as difficult as it is, we must learn to regard lamentation as a means of both crying out in despair and as a means of proclaiming hope. Just the other day, I saw a look of real fear pass over my granddaughter’s face as her mother and I were talking about the recent pandemic reports. As an eleven-year-old, her only real fears should be whether she passes a math test or plays her flute solo without error. To see the fear of pandemic cloud her worldview–even for a moment–was heartbreaking. Still, I wish for her the same thing that I wish for myself, that I wish for the entire world: that we will be people of lamentation who support and pray for our fellow lamenters, that we will look at the world through tears and see those things that, dry-eyed, we could not see before.

…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
― George Eliot,  Middlemarch

This is the quote that appears at the end of the feature film, A Hidden Life (2019), the story of Austrian farmer, husband, father, and devout Catholic Franz Jgersttter who was executed in 1943 because he refused to serve in the Nazi army. The other night, I watched this film, artistically and insightfully directed by Terrence Mallick. It goes without saying that the cinematography is spectacular with exquisite scenes of the Austrian Alps. But the story—

In 2016, the film Hacksaw Ridge featured the life of Desmond Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist conscientious objector. Doss refused to take up arms, but he willingly pledged his loyalty and services as a medic to the United States Army. Although initially criticized and harrassed by his peers and commanding officers, Doss ultimately not only earned their respect and gratitude but that of the world after he saved 75 GIs in the Battle of Okinawa. The recipient of a Medal of Honor, Doss humbly asked that his heroism not be publicized. Still, his heroism and story became public, and the world honored–and continues to honor–his piety and courage.

Jgersttter’s story is different, though. He refused to take the oath dedicating his service and loyalty to Hitler, even when others suggested that he might serve as an orderly in a field hospital. They argued that he could help others this way, that he wouldn’t have to be a combat soldier. It was the oath, however, that prevented him from serving at all. His own parish priest, as well as the local bishop, urged him to swear allegiance to Hitler, to do his duty to the fatherland and to spare his family from persecution and suffering. His neighbors and villagers quickly turned against him and his family, shunning them publicly and refusing to help with their harvest. His decision cost him dearly even before he was imprisoned by the Nazis. And this decision continued to cost his wife, children, and mother.

When he was in a Berlin prison awaiting his execution, he wrote:

Again and again people stress the obligations of conscience as they concern my wife and children. Yet I cannot believe that just because one has a wife and children, he is free to offend God by lying (not to mention all the other things he would be called upon to do). Did not Christ Himself say, “He who loves father, mother, or children more than Me is not deserving of My love?”

A Hidden Life is nearly 3 hours long. Unlike Hacksaw Ridge, there are no battle scenes. Truthfully, there is little physical action at all. What Terrence Mallick does provide, however, is an exceptional view of the psychological, emotional, and spiritual struggles of not only Jgersttter but his family members. For me, the minutes ticked by agonizingly, and yet I couldn’t look away. There were times, I admit, that I couldn’t really see the screen because tears had so filled my eyes, and the sobs that had gathered in my throat threatened to undo me. Here was beautiful agony, the sort that takes you to the foot of the cross and leaves you there, spent and awed. Here were a man and his wife who lived hidden lives of devotion and courage amidst a world gone mad.

Jgersttter’s life may have remained entirely hidden were it not for the research and 1964 publication of In Solitary Witness by Catholic sociologist Gordan Zahn. Zahn writes that Jgersttter’s story was nothing less than a repetition of an old story, the ever-recurring confrontation between Christ and Caesar. Even hours before his death, a visiting priest, Father Jochmann, directed his attention to the document that had lain for days on his prison table, the document that contained the oath that, if signed, would save his life. But Jgersttter persisted, saying: I cannot and may not take an oath in favor of a government that is fighting an unjust war.

Jgersttter was beheaded on August 9, 1943. He died believing that his was, indeed, a solitary witness, one that would go unnoticed by all but his family. In several film scenes, he is asked the same questions by Nazi officials, priests, bishops, his attorneys and neighbors: Do you think that your refusal to pledge your allegiance to Hitler will benefit anyone? Do you think this will change the course of the war, that anyone will even know of your actions? Do you think your decision will matter at all? Jgersttter never waivered from his conviction that he could make no other decision as a Christian and that he need only worry about his loyalty to and love for God. He suffered no illusions that the world would notice or understand. He wrote:

Although people have accused me of criminal behavior and condemned me to death, be consoled knowing that in God’s eyes not everything is criminal which the world perceives to be criminal.

In 1984, the Austrian government issued Jgersttter a special posthumous Award of Honor, and in 2007, the Catholic Church beatified him. His once hidden life has now been revealed as the extraordinary life of devotion, courage, and sacrifice that it was.

I suspect that there will be many who live such hidden lives in these times of worldwide pandemic. There will be those who quietly and privately do the right things, the morally and physically courageous things. We won’t hear or read about them. Undoubtedly, these are the folks who won’t take to social media with posts regaling their actions. Still, inside their homes and neighborhoods, they will tend to those in their care. They will encourage others and affirm the gifts they have been given. They will literally keep the faith. Like Jgersttter, they will believe that their actions and decisions will go unnoticed by all but God, their families and, perhaps, their neighbors–and they will know that this is more than enough.

For much of my life, I’ve struggled with the compulsion to do more, to be more than who I am. For who I am and what I’ve done seem so small and petty. I’ve looked to others whose lives and works seem so large by comparison, their contributions so noteworthy. And I’ve found myself striving to walk in their footsteps, ones that I’ve discovered are clearly much too big for me to follow. Just the other day, my church issued an invitation for volunteers to deliver groceries in our community. As a retired person with the benefit of time, I was happy to volunteer until I read the qualifications for volunteers: between the ages of 18 and 59. I’m simply too old to help. I’m relegated to the age group whose job is to self-quarantine. To best serve others, I can’t literally serve many of them at all.

Years ago, I remember reading a devotional by Oswald Chambers in which he addressed those like me who lamented their seeming helplessness in the face of the world’s needs. He wrote that he often heard people say things like I can’t really do anything. All I can do is pray. And then he admonished us by claiming that prayer is the real work. Largely hidden work, I’ve come to understand that prayer is–as Chambers insists–the real work.

This is good news for those in the 60+ age group who, like me, currently find they can’t serve on the front lines. Hidden in my rural Iowa home, I can pray. For the growing good of the world, I can, like Jgersttter, turn my eyes to the only One whose allegiance ultimately matters. And I can find solace and solidarity in the knowledge that there are so, so many others who are praying, too.

In 1971, David Vetter was born with severe immunodeficiency. Known as the Bubble Boy, he lived his entire life of 12 years in a plastic bubble.

Imagine, if you will, the life of David Vetter, Bubble Boy. As I write today, some may argue that it’s all too easy to imagine this under the quarantine conditions of our coronavirus pandemic. It’s like living in a bubble, some say, cut off from life as we’ve known it. No socializing in groups larger than ten, no concerts, sporting events, school, etc. Bubbled in our homes, our worlds are shrinking before our very eyes. Like David Vetter, we’re dependent upon those with whom we live for whatever socializing and human contact we can get. Unlike David Vetter, however, our worlds are not so small that we can’t touch each other–or walk outside to touch a tree or stand, unencumbered, under the sun or stars. Our worlds are small, but not that small.

For his eleventh birthday, David Vetter wanted nothing more than to see the stars. And so his family wheeled his bubble and all its accompanying life-saving equipment into their yard where for twenty minutes, he gazed into the night sky. The following year, he would die at the ripe age of twelve. His world and his lifespan were, indeed, small.

Even before the pandemic and quarantining, I’d been thinking about the size of my own world, how it has shrunken as I’ve retired. Once, I stood in front of as many as 150 students a day and interacted with faculty and staff in my schools. My world seemed relatively large and my influence upon this world equally large. There were more days than I can count after which I worried about my influence on so many people. Was I teaching the right things in the right ways? Had I said anything that wasn’t right, wasn’t true, wasn’t relevant? What legacy–if any–was I leaving my students and colleagues? To be sure, this was heavy baggage, and like Sisyphus, I pushed this boulder up the hill of my days (and nights).

There is something thrilling and daunting about such large worlds. They spread out before us in continents of opportunities. They dazzle treasures yet to be found. They tease and cajole us with pastures that are greener. In these worlds, bubbles have blessedly burst into more glittering panoramas!

And yet, small worlds have much to teach us. Inside our bubbles, we can examine our own pastures with new eyes. Mine is pretty green, I must admit. Give me a good book, a walk in the countryside, a good Netflix series, a pan of cookies in the oven, a phone call with a friend or family member, and an afternoon with my grandchildren (who live 50 yards away!), and I’m happy enough to live bubbled in with these riches.

I’m not, however, diminishing the real seriousness of the pandemic and its implications for those who aren’t as fortunate as I am. And I’m not romanticizing this time. I am, however, taking the time to personally consider my life as it is today and as it may be going forward. Could I really live in a smaller world? And, perhaps, should I live in one?

For years, I’ve read much historical fiction and nonfiction regarding WWII. Clearly, the themes of oppression and genocide drive most of these works. Still, the overwhelming themes of hunger and isolation are right there as well. The lives of many Jews who went into hiding were exceptionally small. They lived in attics, crawl spaces, haylofts, cellars–places so small and so uninhabitable that most of us could never imagine them. They lived on turnips and acorns and scraps we wouldn’t give our animals. And their benefactors, those who risked their lives to hide their Jewish brothers and sisters? Their lives were necessarily small, too. They may have lived in their own homes and had some occasions to leave, but they lived painfully close to home–out of fear and necessity. For both the benefactors and the hidden, their worlds and lives were smaller than they’d ever been before.

As I’ve read about their lives and struggles, I’ve often asked myself if I could have survived under such conditions. Could I live on a half turnip a day? Could I survive lying in a crawl space without the ability to even sit up–for months? Could I handle the isolation of not being able to talk with or be with anyone? Could I handle the fear of putting myself and my family at risk by hiding someone or an entire family? I would like to think that, given these extreme circumstances, I would rise to the occasion and do things that I couldn’t normally do. I would hope that I could be a person who lives small so that others might live at all.

Today, my pantry is full enough, and I’m blessed to have my daughter, son-in-law, grandchildren and a couple neighbors nearby. I don’t have to get in my car to be with them. I can literally walk out my door and within yards, be at their door steps. Ours is a small rural world in southeastern Iowa, but what a wonderful small world it is! And how genuinely grateful I am to live in it.

As our worlds become smaller for the foreseeable future, we might all take the opportunity to think about what this can mean for us personally and for our world collectively. We tend to discount anything small as being less than desireable. But for centuries, the greatest writers, artists, theologians, and leaders have shown us the treasures that await those who embrace the smallest things. For generations, our grandparents and great grandparents have lived much smaller than we have, and their lives continue to bless us in surprising and lasting ways. All of these individuals are far above my pay-grade, so I feel complete assurance in making the claim that small worlds may be paradoxically large, indeed.

I’m hoping that I can be one who lives small, so that others may live at all. Like many, I’m staying home, refusing to hoard groceries and supplies, and praying. And I’m hoping that we can all take solace in the fact that when our worlds become larger again, we will look upon them with fresh eyes, with newfound wonder and gratitude. This alone is no small thing–pun intended.

Bubble Boy
for Griffin

 Decades ago before you were born,
 a boy spent his entire life in a plastic bubble
 because the world threatened to take him out
 with an arsenal of parasites and plagues.
 From his bubble, he could see children, like you, 
 who ran barefoot in the sun, 
 their fingers slicked with dirt,
 their tongues testing the wind. 
  
 Today, you dip your wand into a bucket of solution
 and a bubble big as a porpoise takes the air.
 It floats several exuberant feet off the grass,
 an Aurora borealis here in our own yard.
 You step to meet it, 
 but from the driveway where I stand, 
 it looks as if you’ve stepped into it—
 or perhaps it’s caught you.
 And once inside, your face opens in wonder 
 at a world glazed with color. 
  
 Soon you’ll poke it and it will burst, 
 coating your hair with soapy film.
 And then you’ll come running
 through the grass, you’ll laugh 
 and throw yourself, soapy and sweaty, 
 into your mother’s arms.
  
 At six years, suited up like an astronaut,
 the Bubble Boy stepped out of his plastic world 
 into his mother’s arms for the first time,
 arms that had pined for flesh—skin-to-skin love,
 one eager heart pressed to another.
 On his eleventh birthday, he asked to see the stars
 and they wheeled him into the yard 
 where—for twenty miraculous minutes—he gazed at the sky.
 At twelve, even the bubble couldn’t save him.
  
 Tonight, you’ll sit under the stars
 by the fire where we’ve roasted marshmallows.
 And later when you fall sleep, your sticky face against your mother’s shoulder,
 you’ll dream of all the things you want to see
 and touch. 

A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. John Ciardi

There’s something particularly satisfying and reassuring about tightening a bolt into place. The mere act–at the very least–gives the illusion of security: everything is locked down, everything has its rightful place, everything that needs fastening has been fastened. Although I admit that I’m not handy with a wrench, I’ve watched enough home improvement shows to know that there are those who wield wrenches with confidence and ease. These are the men and women who tighten bolts with a few definitive turns of the wrist, the folks who strengthen and secure.

Poet John Ciardi claims that a good question is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted. If Ciardi were alive today, I fear that he’d be pretty discouraged about all the bolt-tightening that we do in response to the big questions regarding the human condition and the state of the world today. We appear to use our wrenches too automatically, battening down answers quickly. I fear that we’ve come to regard such speed and strength with certainty. Those who answer promptly and forcefully are those who command respect. Those who respond post haste are those who often teach, lead, and inspire confidence. Regardless of the question, they have the answer.

Every era has faced its share of serious questions, and ours is no different. The increasing threat of the coronavirus comes with a host of its own big questions: How will we contain it, treat it, prevent it? How will it affect our economies, our governments, our educational and other systems, our very lives as we know them? We scour the news daily for answers to our questions. We argue that we just don’t have time for seeds to be planted; in the face of growing fear–and in many cases, panic–we need some competent bolt-tightening.

In his Holocaust memoir Night, Elie Wiesel writes about a conversation he had with Moshe the Beadle, a poor scholar of the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism who lives in his town. Moshe asks the young Elie why he prays. After Elie claims that he doesn’t know why he prays, he and Moshe meet often to discuss man’s relationship with God. Wiesel writes:

He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. “Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him,” he was fond of repeating.

Perhaps this is why we often cower in the presence of the big questions: they possess a particular power that doesn’t lie in their answers. Even when we arrive at reasonable, researched answers, this power persists. It plagues us–as it should, Moshe the Beadle argues. This is the power of the seed bed that Ciardi speaks of. The power of questions that continue to germinate long after they are answered, the power of questions whose answers refuse to be tightened with a few turns of the wrench.

Do we raise ourselves towards God by the questions we ask? Moshe the Beadle repeatedly claims that this is so, and I suspect that many will agree with him. It’s our persistance and willingness to see quick bolt-tightening for its limitations that propels us towards God and towards better, more refined questions. And these questions, in turn, lead us towards better, more refined answers. This is not a quick or definitive process, though. It takes time; it requires doubt and speculation. Sadly, we’re not a people who are especially good at either patience or uncertainty. Give us handymen and women with strong grips and big wrenches, and we sleep much better each night.

In his New York Times best-selling book, Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in the form of a letter to a his fifteen-year old son, an African American boy who is trying to make sense of the racial injustice he faces in his world. Coates writes:

My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers—even the answers they themselves believed. I don’t know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But every time I ask it, the question is refined. That is the best of what the old heads meant when they spoke of being “politically conscious”—as much a series of actions as a state of being, a constant questioning, questioning as ritual, questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty.

Like John Ciardi and Moshe the Beadle, Ta-Nehisi Coates understands that questioning is a necessary state of being, a ritual, an exploration rather than the search for certainty. He is painfully aware of how we are tempted to accept secondhand answers, even the answers we ourselves have believed and may continue to believe. As a beginning teacher, I recall how I was often tempted to give immediate answers to student questions even when I was genuinely uncertain of their validity. To falter–or worse yet, to offer nothing–seemed like blood in the water to adolescent sharks who seemed poised for a feeding frenzy. Trip up the new teacher, ask her something she can’t answer, and watch her die a slow, agonizing death of shame. Mine was the legitimate fear of every new teacher, and much as I hate to admit it now, I may have offered answers that were, at best, incomplete, and at worst, simply wrong. Gratefully, I learned quickly that being certain was a luxury I could seldom afford. Better to live unabashedly with the knowledge that all questions possess power not generally found in their answers. Better to live humbly in exploration rather than a search for certainty.

German physicist Albert Einstein writes:

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.     

The father of the theory of relativity, one of the two cornerstones of modern physics, Einstein was a brilliant man who successfully answered some seemingly impossible theoretical questions. And yet even a man who offered such incredible answers understood the greater value of constant questioning. And even more importantly, he understood that it is enough to merely comprehend a little of this mystery [of the world, eternity, life] each day.

We live in a universe of big questions, and I often find myself dwarfed by the sheer size and ferocity of questions which keep blasting through my personal force field like eager meteors. If I focus too long on their strength and number, I begin to drown in the futility of my predicament. If, however, I pledge to comprehend just a little more of this mystery each day, I find that I am willing and capable enough for the task. As are those who work daily to ask better, more refined questions about diseases and environmental hazards, as well as economic, political, social, educational, and philosophical issues. I find solace in their unwavering patience and persistance and take heart that their seed beds will ultimately bear more seed towards the hope of greening the landscape of idea.

Faced with difficult questions, as a teacher I learned to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll see what I can find out.” It was a good response then, and today, it seems like an even better one.

There is only one art of which people should be masters—the art of reflection.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I have nothing to write about. My life is ordinary, without event. This is just a story (or poem, essay, article). What do you want me to say? I’ve got nothing. Really. So argued countless students over my 40 year teaching career. And they spoke with sincere conviction: they couldn’t write because there was nothing of any relevance or significance to say. Nada. I did have students who practiced–and may have even mastered–the art of reflection, who were unwilling to shut the door on a life event or literary work before they reflected upon it, giving it time to percolate and resonate. As you might guess, however, these students were rare birds, their colors and plumage too bright for much of the world.

Reflection is more than drive-by consideration. You don’t look out of your window and, finding nothing initially interesting, drive on without even checking your rearview mirror. You don’t stay in your car at all. Instead, you get out, pocket your phone, take your shoes off and walk through the grass. Reflection really loves those who are willing to feel the earth beneath their feet and walk without regard to time.

Many of my students were drive-by readers and thinkers. They raced through literary works, only to find that at the end, they could offer little more than a plot summary. This happened, then this happened, and then this happened. And when asked to do more, some sheepishly shrugged their shoulders as if to say: What you see is what you get. Others were more direct and defensive: This is boring, irrelevant, a total waste of my time. And still others–the ones who were reluctant to make eye contact–fearfully confessed that I guess that I don’t really know what you want.

In his collected essays, English philosopher Francis Bacon writes:

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

Those prone to drive-bys, however, are unfamiliar with weighing and considering. If they read at all, they spend their time on the surface of the work, reluctant or unable to push into the deeper reaches. The same is true of viewing and experiencing, all of which makes for empty writing, speaking, and–saddest of all–living.

Students aren’t alone, however, for adults from all walks of life are also prone to drive-by reading, viewing, and living. We blame our reluctance to weigh and consider on our busy lives. No time for even a whole cup of coffee, we say, as we rush to the next person, place, or event. And regrettably, busyness trumps reflection almost every time. Because busyness is a surface activity where others can see what and how much we’re doing. Reflection is a subterranean endeavor, which may be mistaken for lollygagging or wasting time. Its yields are not immediate, and, as we’ve been told, time is money.

Classrooms with helpless, uninvested students, political debates during which questions are never answered and statements never directly addressed, entertainment designed primarily for shock and titillation–all are products of a world without reflection. Of course, there are many more examples, and this is the real tragedy. We’ve come to expect the shallows and, as such, have forgotten how to swim in deeper waters.

Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful, writes author and management consultant Margaret Wheatley. Going blindly on our way seems to be the way of it now. Because we claim to have no time and demonstrate no inclination to reflect, we press on without seeing ourselves and our world. And the consequences? At best, they result in passable essays and trashy television that we can take or leave; at worst, they take us all hostage through ill thought policies and practices.

In The Dubliners, Irish writer James Joyce writes:

He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense.

Lest reflection become self-indulgence, we might consider stepping outside of ourselves, so that we can objectively think about ourselves and so that we might consider our lives as if they’ve already been lived. If we did this, if we lived at a little distance from ourselves, regarding our own thoughts, words, and actions with doubtful side-glances, we might have a shot at real reflection. For in doing so, we would have to look at ourselves and our lives as though they belonged to someone else. And then we might be more likely to ask the tough questions: Why did you do that? What did you think might happen? How did you think this might affect others? What do you truly want to do and say? How do you really want to live?

I recently worked with a group of middle and high school students. During my time with them, I admitted that I’d heard the same lament for years: I have nothing to write about, nothing to say. I confessed that I may have felt similarly when I was younger, believing my life to be altogether uneventful and ordinary. Still, I grew to see the small moments of my life as treasures. I grew to realize how significant their yields were. Through these moments and my subsequent reflection on them, I learned about what it means to be human and live in this world. These were small moments that mattered. But, I cautioned, it’s all in how you look at and reflect upon these things, people, and experiences. You recall them–months, years later–for some reason. What is it? Why do you continue to hold these moments as keepsakes? If you can reflect upon these questions, you may come to new realizations about yourself and your world. And, I told them, developing this kind of reflective practice may be the biggest treasure of all, for it will equip you to look upon your ordinary, uneventful lives, as well as upon literary works, news articles, social media posts, and more, with fresh eyes. What you see through these new lenses will astonish, trouble, comfort and perplex you. You won’t be the same. You’ll be a reflecter, someone no longer content to drive-by.

I can’t help but think that most of us may need a shot to our reflective souls. Some of us may even need a transplant. Whatever it takes, though, reviving a reflective spirit is essential if we are to flourish. We have to do better than be a drive-by people. Our world depends upon it in more ways than we can imagine.