Here’s the thing about earnestness. Our culture discounts it; but the people are yearning for it. Jeffrey Zaslow, author and columnist for The Wall Street Journal

I’m sure that earnest is not a household word for most of us. It’s not the kind of word you casually drop into conversations or dust off for those times when you seek to impress. Earnest seems like it might live in the lexicon of some fussy, old-fashioned matron who sits stolidly on her divan contemplating the state of the world. A matron who might brandish such a word as she lectures her nieces and nephews on the virtue of character. Above all, live your lives earnestly, she might say as she pours tea from her grandmother’s china teapot.

If you look up the definition of earnest, you will find something like this: characterized by or proceeding from an intense and serious state of mind; grave or important. Herein lies the problem. Proceeding from an intense and serious state of mind is not really fashionable today. It’s fashionable to be cool, to act as though you don’t really care, to perfect a respectable state of aloofness. It’s stylish to refrain from excessive displays of emotion, particularly joy and wonder. It’s très chic to live in a world of intense irony.

American novelist Lauren Groff writes:

I feel like in American fiction we’re moving out of a period of intense irony, and I’ve very glad about that. I feel like irony is fine for its own sake but it shouldn’t be the sole reason to write a book. It has been an ironic world view: that the best way I can describe it. I’m a fan of earnestness. I feel like there is a new wave of earnestness and I’d be happy if I’m some small part of that.

I’d like to write Ms. Groff and tell her that I, too, am a fan of earnestness. Actually, I’m a card-carrying member of the earnestness fan club. I’ve long tired of the ironic world view which flattens all that is serious and intense, all that purports to feel.

Writers Matt Ashby and Brendon Carol argue that Lazy cynicism has replaced thoughtful conviction as the mark of an educated worldview. They lament that fact that this cynicism has permeated our culture and has influenced contemporary literature and art through post-modernism. Jeffrey Laslow agrees that our culture discounts earnestness, but he claims that the people are yearning for it.

I’m yearning for it. Which is why I have developed a keen eye and ear for it. And I didn’t have to look far to find a lovely example. The photo above of my grandson, Griffin, is a typical photo. When asked to smile for the camera, he routinely looks away or looks directly into the camera with serious intensity. Griff is an earnest kid. I’ve watched him in his kindergarten classroom as he goes about his business. What some may perceive as indifference or reluctance to engage is really a serious intensity that often prompts him to watch from the edge of the rug. While others are eager to share, he frequently looks on, considering how he will proceed. Earnestness in a five-year old is unexpected and often misunderstood. In a classroom of kids who have clearly learned to do school, Griff’s earnestness distinguishes him, and I’d like him to know that there are those who value its virtue.

Novelist Gillian Flynn writes: Ironic people always dissolve when confronted with earnestness, it’s their kryptonite. As a fan of earnestness, I can attest that I have seen it bring ironic people to their proverbial knees. In a graduate poetry class, my classmates and I were asked to bring a poem we admired and be prepared to share it with the class. The first student to share read a poem I will never forget: Outside my window, a sparrow chirps. That was it. Short and sweet. And what? When asked to comment on his choice, the student ventured that it was so short that it was deep, wasn’t it? Here was the ironic worldview at its best–or worst. There was really nothing in this poem, and therefore it was deep? When my father, the professor, asked him earnestly how the poem was deep, it was this confrontation that dissolved him. There was nothing much in this poem, and the emperor had no clothes. For the remainder of the class, he sat silently as others read poems that were unabashedly earnest.

Poet, playwright, and religious writer, English woman Hannah Moore writes: Prayer is no eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech but earnestness of soul. As one who has felt herself prayer-disabled for years, I, too, have come to know prayer as earnestness and not necessarily eloquence. Earnestness cuts to the chase, to the heart. It doesn’t bother with figures of speech or fancy words. It is the language of God’s heart, and it is with this serious intensity that we pour out our fears, our sins, and deepest longings.

I say let’s dust off our old-fashioned notions of earnestness. Let’s make it fashionable and preferred. Let’s speak, act, and pray in earnest. And if we do, perhaps we can send the ironic worldview packing.

From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew; that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

I remember the first time I read Randall Jarrell’s poem, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” I was struck with the fact that the ball turret which hung underneath a WWII B-17 was an awful reminder that people are material things, easily torn, not easily mended. The gunner, by necessity a short and small man, crouched in the fetal position inside a retractable, spherical glass and metal bubble equipped with two fifty caliber machine guns that pivoted 360 degrees, so that he might defend the vulnerable belly of the B-17. An incredibly small sphere, the ball turret made it impossible for gunners to wear full parachutes. As the gunners hung below the plane, they frequently had to endure temperatures that dropped to 50 below zero. In spite of their heated and insulated flight suit (which often came unplugged and left the gunner to make his own heat), many gunners suffered frost bite in their extremities and faces. The mortality rate for B-17 crews was a staggering 30%, but for ball turret gunners, an agonizing 60%. Ball turret gunners submitted themselves to a potentially deadly vulnerability, one from which both man and machine were all too easily torn. Still, we marveled at and even encouraged such vulnerability as heroic.

There are those who may regard vulnerability as a cross to bear, something to endure if they are to mature, overcome, and triumph. Like ball turret gunners, they may cautiously lower themselves into glass spheres from which they become wholly visible to those who are eager to attack the soft underbelly of their brokenness. They may even argue that vulnerability is a season (singular) to get through–a kind of rite of passage. Show the world who you really are. Embrace the initiation. Spend three days and nights in the wilderness with only a compass and canteen, and earn your life badge.

But is vulnerability really a just stage you pass through, just another life badge that you earn? Not so, according to author Madeline L’Engle who writes: When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable. If vulnerability is a season (singular), it is a very long one that spans a lifetime. Accepting vulnerability, as L’Engle suggests, is the business of children and adults alike. It is an element of the human condition. And it comes with a guarantee of an infinite number of life badges to be earned.

A season of vulnerability, however, is not only a public airing of one’s victimhood (e.g. the Olympic backstories of athletes who choose to compete in the midst of, or just after, personal loss or the candid confessions of reality talk show guests who have survived incredible pain.) This kind of vulnerability has unfortunately grown into no vulnerability at all. It’s become standard fare–expected and even sought after–as if this status alone might gain one entry into a preferred and protected class. No doubt, there are occasions during which this may be authentic vulnerability, but too often it takes a more plastic, cultivated form. And thus, it may be boutique vulnerability at best.

The real stuff is the stuff of life. Writer and research professor Brene Brown continues to champion the role of vulnerability in our lives. In her best-selling book, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, she writes:

Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.

She is not the first, nor will she be the last, to embrace authentic vulnerability as the path to better life and love. Poet Theodore Roethke claims that Love is not love until love’s vulnerable. Christian writer and theologian C. S. Lewis writes that To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal . He continues by warning that you can lock love up, and it will not break. It will, however, become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. Researchers, poets, and theologians seem to agree that vulnerability is, indeed, the birthplace and best incubator for love.

In his book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, English poet David Whyte writes:

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.

And if we were to truly inhabit our vulnerability, to walk fully through its door, what would that look like? Certainly, being transparent about personal loss can be cathartic and necessary. We live in a fallen world, and the consequences of this are apparent in its generous citizens of loss. The fact that these consequences don’t prevent the work of generous citizens of comfort is nothing short of a miracle.

But what about those who dance around the edges of vulnerability, who risk revealing other things? While it may be socially acceptable to comfort and accept our brothers and sisters who share their losses, it is not so kosher to comfort and accept others who struggle with anger, shame, guilt, doubt, pride, judgment and fear. We tend to tell these individuals–directly or indirectly–to keep these things to themselves or to share them only with licensed professionals. Rather than risk authenticity, we often counsel deceit. Undoubtedly, you could benefit from opening up about your anger or shame or fear, but this vulnerability will just alienate and/or condemn you. Better you just keep this to yourself. This is the uglier side of vulnerability: that for some, vulnerability should not be a legitimate choice.

American psychiatrist M. Scott Peck writes:

There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.

There can be no community without vulnerability. This, I agree, can be the redeeming power of vulnerability. If we invite real vulnerability–warts and all–into our relationships, we have the potential to build real community, the kind which takes shape as we embrace our common, messy and occasionally ugly humanity. Clearly, there is much risk involved as we lower ourselves, like ball turret gunners, into glass spheres which will expose us as merely human, easily torn and often not easily mended. But, together, I think we might inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss. And this generosity might just save us.

I don’t exactly recall the circumstances or the date, but I do recall the feeling. I was going to spend a day away from my life as a teacher, wife, and mother, and it struck me: no one would know who I was or who I had been. On this day, I could reinvent myself entirely. A new name, maybe something trendy or perhaps something traditional and old-fashioned? A new profession, as let’s say a ghost writer or a former intelligence agent? A new residence, perhaps Canada, or–in the likely scenario that my Midwestern drawl may give me away–North Dakota or Kansas? Why not? Anonymity was an unexpected gift, if only I dared unwrap it.

A few weeks ago, my granddaughter, Gracyn, was chosen as a class representative to attend an area young writer’s conference. She had submitted her original story and waited for weeks in hopes that she would have the opportunity to board a school bus which would take her from her local school to the university campus where the conference would be held. When her teacher gave her the good news that she would attend, she could hardly contain her joy. A day away from school! A day away from her family and friends, from her community! As frightening as the prospect may be for a fourth-grader, it was also exhilarating. I could see the possibilities flash across her eyes: a day away as a real writer!

In her novel, Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold writes:

She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except when she was at work, no one knew where she was at any time of day and no one waited for her. It was immaculate anonymity.

A day away may afford this bliss, this immaculate anonymity for those whose schedules demand that others know where they are at any time of the day, those who have others waiting for them, and those who, like poet T. S Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, measure out their lives with coffee spoons. Just a single day during which to walk with purpose. Or without purpose. To try on a gregarious new persona–or a solitary, contemplative one. To know that you will return to your life, that you must return to your life, but that for that day, you are the potter before the shapeless lump of clay that can become any magnificent life you’d like it to be. Pretty heady stuff, indeed!

Even for those who find reinventions of this sort foolish and dangerous, a day away may still be an unexpected gift. As a young mother, I remember too many days (and nights) during which I drooled over the possibility of a day away from crushed Cheerios in the folds of my clothing, the persistent and pervasive smell of Lysol mingling with baby formula, and countless squabbles over who got the green Tupperware sippy cup for lunch. And then when I was away, I remember watching other mothers and children in shopping malls or in restaurants and, to my dismay, tearing up. It was then that I began to count the hours until I could return and gather their sticky selves into my arms. Days away were poignant and acute reminders that I cherished the life I had, mismatched Tupperware and all.

When I discovered Audible books, I really believed that I had died and gone to literary heaven! Before my day away would begin–that is, before I would literally arrive and open my car door to do whatever it was I was going to do–I could live vicariously through characters and places that took me away from my life in southeast Iowa. Without even leaving my car, I took on the lives of WWII resistance fighters in the French countryside and lighthouse keepers who lived in isolation for months. I could get away within the compact frame of my Hyundai Santa Fe. Audible presents me with fictional days (or years) away before the real days away begin. A twofer! What could be better than that?

In his poem, “Birches,” Robert Frost writes of a boy who likes to climb birch trees and ride them Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That, according to Frost, would be good both going and coming back. In the Sanctuary of a Day Away, it is good both going and coming back. A day of respite, reinvention, rejuvenation and then a return to the ordinary but extraordinary wonders of home.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my next day away. I might be a motivational speaker from Maine. Well, I will have grown up and lived most of my life in the Midwest, but I will have moved to Maine to further my career. My name will be Philomena (this is a name that will turn some heads!) I’ll be assuredly optimistic and artfully witty as I espouse my motivational advice. Free, of course. And then I’ll return to my life as a retiree who generally goes by the name of Grandma. That will be good both going and coming back.

The chickens are eating the cat food, the deer are eating the chicken food, and the rabbit is eating the sunflower seeds that have fallen from the bird feeder. Our backyard is a literal frozen tundra, and even the hardiest creatures are finding it difficult–if not impossible–to paw or peck through the icy crust. Winter persists.

Arctic vortex? Snow quakes? You realize that these have become household words, and then you begin remembering scenes from Stephen King’s The Shining. You recall images of Jack Nicholson’s character, a writer, who has retreated to a Colorado resort–closed for the season–for quiet time to write. You remember how, after weeks of snowy isolation, he slowly lost his mind. Sitting alone before a typewriter on a small table in a grand room, he composed page after page of All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, as sheet after repetitive sheet fell in piles at his feet. King describes Nicholson’s character as a microbe trapped in the intestine of a monster. Frigid temperatures, record snowfall, microbes trapped in the intestine of winter monsters–spring cannot come too soon!

It’s the sheer length and breadth of it, the gray skies that that doggedly spit and spew ice and snow, the way we drag it, like a shroud, through our days. Winter persists. Poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes:

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive. [The Sonnets to Orpheus: Book 2: Xiii]

This is it exactly: a winter so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive. It all began so cozily with nights before a crackling fire, and now it simply will not end. And wintering through it has much to do with tapping into the invincible summer that Albert Camus claims that he found in the depth of winter.

For me–as I suspect for many–it’s not so much the incessant cold and snow but the isolation that winter often brings. I used to walk along the old highway near my home as much for the sense of being a part of something larger than myself than for exercise. Now, I retreat to a far room in the basement, mount my elliptical machine, and move my feet for 30 minutes. Alone. With only my own thoughts to keep me company.

This solitude is not always the good, contemplative kind. It’s often the inward-turning, self-doubting type of prolonged isolation. I remember the summer during my college years when I got a job cleaning motel rooms. Initially, I recall how much I enjoyed my own quiet company. In contrast to working fast food and life-guarding–both positions in which I was never alone, crushed in activity and noise–I relished the independence of it all. Until one day, I did not. Day after day of isolation had taken its toll. I no longer wanted to be alone with my own thoughts and feelings. I tried desperately to turn them off and often resorted to turning on the television (a clear violation of work rules) to drown out the rising fear and doubt. What if I couldn’t get the last class I needed to graduate? What if I couldn’t get into grad school? What if I simply wasn’t cut out to be a teacher? Or a serious student of anything? What if–heaven forbid–I was destined to wield a mop and a spray bottle of Lime-Away for the rest of my life?

Having taken a course in pioneer literature, I was acutely aware of the devastating effects of prairie fever. Isolated and often left alone for months while their husbands or fathers looked for work or conducted business, some prairie women succumbed to debilitating depression, to delusions and even to suicide. Author Willa Cather once described the Nebraska plains as the dark country and the end of the earth. These were women who were well acquainted with the night to borrow a phrase from poet Robert Frost. They understood that winter only added insult to injury. In 1893, E. V. Smalley wrote:

When the snow covers the ground the prospect is bleak and dispiriting. No brooks babble under icy armor. There is no bird life after the wild geese and ducks have passed on their way south. The silence of death rests on the vast landscape, save when it is swept by cruel winds… [The Isolation of Life on Prairie Farms]

I have noticed, however, that collective isolation (is this a term I can use?) tends to elicit a kind of unique camaraderie. Standing in the grocery line checkout, strangers often talk to each other, joking–or lamenting–about the latest weather forecast or commenting on the large displays of ice-melt at the store’s entrance. Weather isolation breeds unlikely, albeit temporary friendships. This has made me sincerely grateful for my weekly grocery shopping trips. A loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, a new friend? Why not?

And my new mantra is one borrowed from English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley: If winter comes, can spring be far behind? Ah yes, the passing of isolation and ice and the emergence of all things green and fragrant and an outdoor world peopled with, well, people! This world is right around the proverbial corner, and most of us can see its lilac face shining in the distance.

Months from now, there may be a time when I look fondly back on this winter of the arctic vortex, record snow, and seemingly permanent ice-fields. But probably not. Like comedian Carl Reiner, I will look back on all this snow as an unnecessary freezing of water. I’ll take my frozen water in ice cubes floating joyously in freshly-squeezed lemonade, thank you very much. And I’ll forget all about these isolating winter months when I walk the violet-laden path to my grandkids’ house.

Anna Coleman Ladd in her studio, Studio for Portrait Masks

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
― Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask”

Masks hide, masks deceive, masks beguile, masks suppress. We’ve all heard the well-meaning advice before: Take off your mask! Reveal your real self to the world! And, at times and in many cases, this is sage, compassionate advice given by those who genuinely want to see, know, and love people as they are.

But for soldiers who suffered severe facial wounds during WWI, this advice may be little more than a cruel platitude. These were men whose deformities were so profound that even their loved ones turned away unable to look such reality in the face.

Dr. Fred Albee, an American surgeon working in France, said that trench warfare proved diabolically conducive to facial injuries. He lamented the fact that many soldiers failed to understand the menace of the machine gun. In Sidcup, England, there were actually park benches that had been painted blue as a special way of alerting townspeople that the deformities of those sitting there would cause distress.

Enter Anna Coleman Ladd, an American sculptor, with a radical remedy: copper masks designed to restore a man’s dignity and appearance. She used galvanized copper that was 1/30 of an inch thick, so that depending on how much of the face the mask covered, it weighed between 4 and 9 ounces. Masks were generally held on by eye glasses and painted to match the individual’s own skin coloring. Mask-making was a painstaking process that began with acquiring a photograph of the soldier before his injury. Then Ladd and her assistants made a plaster cast of the wounded man’s face from which they made clay or plasticine copies, or squeezes. These provided the foundation for Ladd’s portrait recreation work. Eyebrows, eyelashes, and mustaches were fashioned from real hair and added later.

Ladd corresponded with Francis Derwent Wood, the founder of the Tin Noses Shop in London, who was doing similar work in England. At a time when plastic surgery had just entered the medical scene (and surgeries were limited to correcting small facial deformities), Ladd and Wood provided a non-surgical remedy. Ladd operated her French studio for a year and, with the help of four assistants, made 185 masks. Though the masks were fragile and became worn and battered with time and use, they provided hope to those like the soldier who said: “Thanks to you, I will have a home…The woman I love no longer finds me repulsive, as she had a right to do.”

Oscar Wilde wrote that a mask tells us more than a face. When I think of the unspeakable horror of trench warfare and the unspeakable price that soldiers with facial wounds had to pay, I agree with Wilde’s assessment that there are masks that may tell us more than a face. Ladd’s masks offered these men a means of showing the world the physical faces of their pre-war selves. They gave them opportunities to interact with others instead of hiding in shame. These masks told more about who these men had been and wanted to be.

At times, masks can be sanctuaries through which some can project the faces they want to meet the world. Although these masks may conceal what lies behind them, this concealing is not always bad. We’ve all worn these types of masks at times when we desperately wanted to be happier, surer, and more eager to live among others. We put our best face forward. We soldier on. We fake it until we make it. And this can be, at least temporarily, life-saving.

I have watched my grandson put on his mask of resolve. His nostrils flare, his eyes flash as he mounts the steps to the slide. His fear is palpable. But his mask gives him a braver part to play, and he plays it as well as a five-year old can play.

I have watched those in grief put on masks that put well-wishers at remarkable ease. These masks say You can approach me. I won’t break. I won’t fall apart. And for a few blessed moments, the grieved find themselves participants in the ordinary conversation and communion of a life before loss. Clearly, there is time and need for those who will suffer with them in more intimate ways. But there is much to be said for moments that offer something less intimate but valuable. Masks that offer respite from the alienating force of grief may be saving graces, indeed.

I, too, have worn masks that allowed me to enter classrooms on days during which I felt anything but paralyzing self-doubt. A student once asked me if I ever had bad days because, as he continued, I always seemed so happy. There was a trembling mess-of-a person behind my mask, but at this moment, I was truly grateful for the positive person my student saw. Thankfully, I have always had family and friends who allowed me to air my doubts, who sat with me and simply listened to my fears, and who helped me find my purpose and worth again. But I am just as thankful for the masks that allowed me to push forward rather than to retreat.

And then there are parenting masks. Those smiling-eyed masks that assure children that they are loved and all is right with the world. I don’t know a parent who doesn’t have one. When in sickness, worry, or sadness, they wake to find their bed-headed children’s faces inches from their own–faces that are uncannily cheerful and insistent at the crack of dawn–they don their parent-masks as quickly and naturally as their robes and slippers. And sometimes, miraculously, in the middle of Cheerios and cinnamon toast, they find joy that outshines their happy mask. For their masks are means to more genuine ends.

Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar writes passionately of the masks that blacks were (and often are) forced to wear in the company of whites. Masks like these are no sanctuaries. There are masks that conceal colossal and seemingly endless pain. Unquestionably, this pain must be unmasked in the name of love and human dignity.

Still, to write off masks as wholly negative things is short-sighted. Anna Coleman Ladd’s work is evidence that, at times and under certain circumstances, masks help us move beyond our pain to join the human race.

If you are interested in reading more about Ladd and the masks of WWI, read:

“Faces of War” Caroline Alexander Smithsonian Magazine
February 2007 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/faces-of-war-145799854/#siHKd0GeVOSVjlPw.99

A frozen female cardinal lies in the snow on the deck outside our dining room windows, another casualty of collision. Sadly, we have had several hits per day. Some are simply stunned and spend a few groggy moments before they fly away; others lose their lives to concussive blows that rival those in the NFL.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that we’ve gone through a couple hundred pounds of black sunflower seeds. Our deck is bird central. Finches, nuthatches, cardinals, blue jays, tufted titmice (is this the plural of tufted titmouse?), juncos, sparrows, and woodpeckers buzz in and out from the surrounding trees. And most are successful in eating their fill and retreating to the woods behind our house. Except for the collision casualties, that is.

My daugther, Collyn, recently alerted me to the fact that Chicago has an organization created expressly for this problem. According to their website, Chicago Bird Collision Monitors is an all-volunteer conservation project dedicated to the protection of migratory birds through rescue, advocacy and outreach. Their members rise early and hit the streets of downtown Chicago, rescuing birds that have survived collision and documenting deaths of those that have not. They promote bird-safe glass and bird-friendly building design. And they have special vans with their CBCM logo on the side! And special CBCM equipment! This is a well-organized, well-funded effort, indeed.

Jokingly, my daughter suggested that I sign up for the bird collision monitoring training identified on their website. Seriously, though, I think the world might be a better place if there were more collision monitors. Not so much for birds, but for humans.

So many human victims of collision stagger about us, wounded, disoriented, and forlorn. These are individuals who believed they could move easily through encounters with co-workers, bosses, friends, family, or strangers. Only to be met with resistance–degradation, disapproval, alienation, or shame–that stops them in their tracks. And, like their feathered friends, some recover, and some do not.

To borrow the words of author Philip Yancey, perhaps the truest resistance is ungrace. Yancey writes:

Ungrace does its work quietly and lethally, like a poisonous, undetectable gas. A father dies unforgiven. A mother who once carried a child in her own body does not speak to that child for half its life. The toxin steals on, from generation to generation.

We all know individuals who have suffered from collisions with ungrace. In truth, most of us know this suffering personally, for we have cracked our souls on impenetrable words, acts, and attitudes. There is no disputing the fact that collisions like this occur every second of every day, perhaps even generation after generation. But where are the collision monitors?

American author Flannery O’Connor understands that what falls must be redeemed. In Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, she writes:

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration.

So I ask again: where are the collision monitors who redeem the fallen? Where are those who understand the price of restoration? Clearly, God’s eye–and that of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors–is on the sparrow. But what about us?

In Matthew 10:29-31, Jesus says:
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

You are worth more than sparrows. We sing the hymn, we quote the verse, but where are the collision monitors, the grace-givers who act as God’s hands, recovering those who have collided with ungrace? I’m confident that they’re out there working just as diligently, just as compassionately as those who rise early to rescue wounded birds. They may not have fancy vans or agency t-shirts. But like the bird collision monitors, they do have amazing equipment. Armed with grace and the conviction of the Beatitudes, they are ever on the lookout for collision victims.

Don’t get me wrong. Bird collision monitors are obviously caring, committed people. What bothers me is the reality that we often go to incredible lengths to rescue creatures of the air, land, and sea (heck, even the air, land, and sea!), while ignoring the wounded humans around us. I know there are wonderful agencies and organizations filled with selfless people who focus their efforts on wounded people of all sorts. And I realize that there are good individuals who quietly do recovery work because it’s the right thing to do, because they are loving their neighbors as themselves. Perhaps because there are these agencies and individuals, we may take their efforts for granted, choosing instead to celebrate the work of bird collision monitors and the like.

In his book, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News? Yancey writes:

Herein lies the most solemn challenge facing Christians who want to communicate their faith: if we do not live in a way that draws others to the faith rather than repels them, none of our words will matter. 

It goes without saying that there is a whole lot of repelling around us. A window and a word of condemnation are both powerful repellents. And a collision with either leaves the wounded stunned, at best, or destroyed, at worst. Yancey encourages Christians to redeem rather than repel. This is the real work of human collision monitors.

I confess that I have a difficult time watching the news these days, for collision carnage is piling up. Hateful words, quick judgments, and searing sarcasm all prove to be as destructive as my dining room windows. I dream of tuning in one day to see a collision monitor rushing onto the scene to restore a wounded individual, a victim of those who oppose his or her convictions . Now that would be newsworthy, indeed.

Lali Eisenberg Sokolov and Gita Fuhrmannova Sokolov

Valentine’s Day is almost upon us, and those in the flower, chocolate, and greeting card businesses are licking their lips in anticipation.

But for those short on cash and long on genuine sentiment, the love letter is always a good choice. I’m not talking about a love text, heaven forbid! But an honest to goodness, pen-to-paper love letter. This is the kind of letter that remains in its original envelope safely nestled in a place among keepsakes, a letter that may physically yellow and fade over the years, but that never loses its impact on the heart. In this type of letter, writers bare their souls in unabashed prose or poetry intended for a precious audience of one.

A would-be love letter writer could take note from Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov’s words to his wife, Vera:

I need you, my fairy tale. Because you are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud, about the song of a thought–and about how, when I went out to work today and looked a tall sunflower in the face, it smile at me with all its seeds.

Or English poet John Keats to fiancee and muse, Fanny Brawne:

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days–three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

If you’re a man or woman of few words, you might look for mentors in New Zealand short story writer, Katherine Mansfield who wrote You might drop your heart into me and you’d never hear it touch bottom or Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote I don’t want to live–I want to love first, and live incidentally.

I grew up in a house of words. My father, a teacher and poet, genetically instilled in me a reverence for the spoken and written word. At the supper table, I listened as he spoke. As a child, I took in the rhythms and sounds of a language that seemed other-worldly and infinitely more beautiful than anything I’d ever heard. As a young woman, I became his student, eager to read the words he’d written on the essays I submitted for his classes. Later, as I began to teach and write, I read my father’s poetry–often attached to the bottom of a letter or email. I have known my father as a writer for most of my life.

But it wasn’t until recently, however, that I came to know my father as love letter-writer. I remember the day the manila envelope stuffed with a bundle of letters–rubber-banded and in their original envelopes–arrived at my home. My mother had sent them to me, graciously granting me a look at a father I had sensed but had never truly seen.

The sheer quantity of letters astounded me. Each was written in his distinctive hand, the signature loops and angles, the way one word leaned eagerly into the next. This was my father before he was my father. This was a man who loved a woman with every pen stroke, every word. The most expensive box of chocolates, bouquet of flowers, or greeting card are no match for a single line of a single letter written by my father to my mother.

As I read through my father’s love letters, I was also reading Heather Morris’s novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Although criticized by some for historical inaccuracies, the novel shines as a love story between Lali (Ludwig) Eisenberg and Gita (Gisela) Fuhrmann. Lali, the Tätovierer, first meets Gita when he tattoos her number. As he recounted his story to Morris, he said: As I tattooed her number on her left arm, she tattooed her number in my heart.

Budding love in one of the worst concentration camps the world has known may seem unlikely. But Lale’s and Gita’s love story began and continued through love letters delivered, astonishingly, through Lale’s SS guard. Lale’s desire to meet and know Gita was so strong that he dared to bargain with his SS guard to ensure that Gita received his letters. Initially, he simply wanted to know her name, for he didn’t want to know her as the four-digit number he tattooed on her arm. Their correspondence progressed from simple requests for information and plans for when and where to meet to declarations of love.

Lale and Gita survived unimaginable horror in the camp, only to be separated as the Russians approached, and the Nazis began their retreat. But the love that had sustained them in Auschwitz-Birkenau drove them both to wake each morning, in hopes that this day would be the day they would find each other. After weeks of searching passengers from every train that stopped in Bratislava, Lale was headed to the Red Cross when a woman literally stepped in front of his horse-drawn cart. This was Gita, the love of his life.

Lale and Gita were married and changed their names to Sokolov, a safer name in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia. When life there became too dangerous, they escaped and moved to Melbourne, Australia where they lived out the rest of their lives. There, Gita gave birth to Gary, their only child. Gita died in 2003, and only after her death did Lale share their incredible story with author Heather Morris. Lale died in 2006.

Lale’s risk-taking not only included sending love letters to Gita; he also took tremendous risks to buy food from locals who worked inside the camps. The women who sorted clothing and personal items taken from incoming prisoners would smuggle money and jewels to him, so that he could buy food to distribute to those most in need. Lale even changed a prisoner’s tattoo so that he might escape the gas chambers and helped another prisoner escape. Although much of his life he feared he might be regarded as a Nazi collaborator because his role as tattooist had garnered him some special privileges, this same role afforded him opportunities to move about the camp more freely and to make connections with villagers who worked inside the camps. Certainly, the countless prisoners whom Lale helped would consider him a hero. Lale, himself, denied this label and told Morris that he just did the right thing.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda:

I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside of me there will always be the person I am tonight.

This is the enduring essence of the greatest love letters. In them, we write words that capture the extraordinary love of single moments, single days and nights. Through them, we remember the people we were when we wrote and received them. And when we are separated from the one we love? We can read them. Again and again. We can live and love again through words that have only grown more lovely over the years.

There are 7 days before Valentine’s Day. This is more than enough time to pen a great love letter: one from your true heart, one that will remain its original envelope safely stowed with other treasures, one to be taken out and read. Again and again.

Read Lale’s and Gita’s love story:

Morris, Heather. The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Harper, 2018.

What do you want your students to understand today in this lesson? It was a simple enough question. Wasn’t it? And yet, having asked it many times to many teachers, I realized that it wasn’t simple at all. It was daunting. It was humbling. It produced deer-in-the-headlights’ responses.

Like most teachers, I was clear on the types of skills that I was expected to teach; I understood what my students should be able to do. But to understand? Now, this was the million dollar question.

Before educational specialists and publishers coined the term learning targets (statements designed to clarify daily learning), I was using them to guide my lesson planning because my teaching mentors had used them. In the 1970s, my best teachers were clear about what they expected their students to know and to do. They didn’t post these targets on the board (chalk, not white board). They didn’t have fancy wall charts with special boxes to showcase them. But each day, they taught purposefully with these targets in mind. Early on, I saw the difference that such clear-headed lesson design made in my own learning. And I wanted to emulate this in my own classrooms.

Years later, as I attempted to help other teachers identify both what they wanted their students to know and to do, I became painfully aware that I was asking many to enter foreign territory. What do you mean “to know”? I want them to answer the questions at the end of the chapter. or I want them to takes notes today. Sadly, our skill-driven era had blinded many to the reality that doing alone was not enough.

Sadder still was the reality that teachers and administrators were eagerly checking off skills on lists created to ensure that they were meeting state and/or federal regulations. Identifying main idea? Check. Citing evidence? Check. With horror, I witnessed how such check-lists gave educators the false assurance that all was well.

As a consultant, I once visited with a group of teachers who were explaining how they measured their students’ mastery of the skills identified in our state standards. I asked how they determined proficiency in students who cited evidence to support a main idea, one of many Iowa educational standards. They explained that if their students cited evidence from a text, they met this standard. I smiled politely. Here was living proof that the check-list was alive and well. It didn’t seem to matter if their students cited the wrong or weak evidence. They just had to cite something, and they were proficient. These students didn’t need to deeply understand the idea they were supporting or that there were passages in the text that supported it much better than others. They didn’t need to know this because their teachers measured success by doing rather than by knowing.

In all good conscience, I can’t really condemn such efforts, for I know that they were well-intended, at best, and compliant, at least. Most teachers in the educational trenches are simply good foot soldiers. Even if they are confused or disgusted by what initiatives and guidelines come their way, in the end, they dutifully give their best.

I can, however, condemn those who all too willingly push the educational pendulum from one side to the other, leaving time-tested practices and philosophies in their wake. These are the folk who literally throw the baby out with the bathwater. Skills are in, everything else is out. Forget what you learned professionally last year–or ever! If you care about your students, you will change!

Certainly, change can be necessary and good. But change for the sake of change hurts us all. I have lived too long in the educational world not to notice that about every 7-8 years, text book companies roll out new editions. Which schools are persuaded to buy because they are new and different, because they are much better than the previous editions, because they are more closely aligned with current guidelines and include the latest educational research, etc. In this world, change is often about money and little more. And companies who have embraced the skills’ market are cashing in.

The majority of the professional work I’ve done in the past 10 years is to help teachers create concept-based units that intentionally marry skills with ideas. In a nutshell, I’m in the forest and the trees business these days. When teachers are lost in the undergrowth of discrete skills, I throw them lifelines. Together, we work to identify the ideas worth learning. Then, and only then, do we work to achieve this end by choosing the best and most relevant skills. And we do all of this in hopes that students will be able to see the forest for the trees, that they will come to see how skills are a means to an end: to learn the kinds of ideas that have lived–and continue to live–beyond a single lesson, text, or unit.

This is the legacy I hope to have left for my students: that they will remember the big, enduring ideas from the best thinkers. Like those from Nathaniel Hawthorne, who taught me that one’s intellect must always be balanced with one’s heart. Or from Ernest Hemingway who helped me see the heroism in grace under pressure. I want them to remember lessons learned from history rather than to recall specific dates and names of battles. I want them to have drawn well-considered conclusions after they have considered opposing views rather than to proudly admit they’ve mastered a particular skill.

And this is the legacy that I hope I can help other teachers leave to their students. Undoubtedly the educational pendulum will swing again for the next generation of students. But for this generation, we have an obligation to do much more than teach skills.

Martial artist Bruce Lee claims that training is one of the most neglected phases of athletics. Too much time is given to the development of skill and too little to the development of the individual . . . We would do well to take these words to heart in our schools, as well. When we spend too much time on developing skills, we have too little, if any, time to spend on developing individuals, which has always required a strong foundation of ideas.

And so, I’ll continue my forest and trees work. It’s a good fight, perhaps one of the only fights worth fighting these days, and I’m in it for the long haul.

for all teachers, past, present, and future

The book itself–a teacher’s manual that accompanies a middle school reading series–weighed more than the collective weight of all of the paperback novels I read during my undergraduate and graduate English work. Too large for my computer bag, I had packed it under one arm and walked, lop-sided to my car. At home now, I cracked the crisp spine (no easy task itself) and opened it to survey the contents.

The heft alone could not have prepared me for the real weight before me. Each page was gleefully packed with as many notes, strategies, and general teacher-stuff as was logistically possible. I say gleefully because I can just imagine the contributors and editors pouring over each page spread, saying There’s space here for one more assessment recommendation! And look–if we edit this differentiation suggestion, we could add a multiple-intelligence note here! If you’re tempted to laugh at this point, most teachers who are required to use these manuals and texts won’t join you.

Educational, like political, pendulums swing wide. When an idea or practice falls out of favor, the pendulum swoops decisively to the other side. And those along for the ride are often directed not to look back. I remember visiting with a teacher during the whole language era. Her principal had sent a directive to box up all of the current reading texts and set them aside for the janitor, who would take them away. To the district storage unit? To the burn barrel? She said that she didn’t know. With fire in her eyes, though, she turned to me and whispered, But I hid one copy in the back of my file cabinet! Phonics out, whole language in. The violent swing of the reading pendulum left desperate teachers conspiring to save resources that had fueled the last decades of their professional lives.

When No Child Left Behind marched upon the educational scene, it presented lofty, but unrealistic, expectations that no child would be left behind their peers and below the standards by which we measure what is grade-level proficiency. Gone were the warm, fuzzy days of inventive spelling and if you think it, it must be so. There were new sheriffs in town, and they rode in on the backs of common assessments, wielding measuring sticks that were more formidable than any six-shooter.

I admit that the aims of NCLB were commendable. As a nation, we had become educationally flabby, resting on the laurels of past eras while the rest of the world–developed and developing–caught up. This law was a wake-up call that caught many schools unprepared. And just as schools were reeling in their attempts to meet new federal guidelines, along came the Common Core State Standards in 2010, the work of the National Governors Association for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. These standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics identified grade-level skills and practices. Many states adopted these or modified forms of these standards, and assessment companies rushed to create new tests that aligned to them.

Again, I applauded–and continue to applaud–these standards’ design and intent. I have used them, have helped others use them, and still believe that for many (not all) students, they define the right work. They were never intended, however, to be the curriculum. Instead, they were intended to provide students with the skills and practices to learn a particular curriculum. The standards do not dictate what content I must teach or even how to teach it. They do identify the types of language and mathematical skills that students should use as a means of learning the essential ideas in a lesson or unit of study. That is, the standards were not intended to be ends in themselves, but rather a means to these ends.

But in an attempt to sell more books and to keep up with the times, text book companies have often been short-sighted. They have packed their texts with skill work, so much so that even for a veteran teacher like me, it’s difficult–if not downright impossible–to see the forest for the trees. Visiting a high school classroom, I once asked a student what she was learning in her lesson that day. She responded, We’re interpreting symbolism.

In another classroom, I asked the same question. A student pointed to his paper and said: We’re filling out this graphic organizer. When I followed up by conceding that I could see what they were doing but that I was interested in what they were learning (what they were to understand that day), I got sheepish looks and shoulder shrugs. They were clear on the means they were using but had absolutely no idea as to what end. They could name the skills but not the ideas they were to uncover.

So when I opened the hulking teacher’s manual I was given as a resource for my consulting work, I immediately felt sick, dizzied with all the text and text-boxes before me. I didn’t know where to look first. I couldn’t determine what was a priority. Or was everything a priority? Was I supposed to do it all in one lesson? Was this humanly possible, even if I put my nose to the grindstone?

When I could finally focus, I saw that each page was peppered with skill work. In this paragraph, students should draw this inference, while in this section, they should make predictions. Later, they should be able to identify point of view, and even later, interpret metaphor. After doing all these things, what were they supposed to understand about this short story? Sadly, there were no notes about this. Had these notes been edited out under the weight of so many skills or simply forgotten in this new age of skills?

Like most, I learn equations to solve problems, and I learn how to make inferences to uncover what authors want me to understand. Solving quadratic equations and making inferences are two of many, many tools in my learning tool belt. The tool is not the thing, though; what I create with it is the thing. But how are today’s students supposed to see that their work is not just to amass more tools? And how are teachers today supposed to help their students understand that it’s not either skills or ideas, but both? 

I once asked my father, an English professor, why he decided to become a literature teacher. He said this: Because teaching the greatest ideas from the greatest writers is the most moral thing I could ever do. My father taught me how to read closely and write critically so that I could understand, reflect upon, and challenge great ideas from great writers. He didn’t teach thesis writing in isolation; he taught it in the context of understanding great works. In his classrooms and around our supper table, I learned the lessons of both/and. From my father and through my own reading and reflection, I have learned how crucial it is to see the forest for the trees.

And so while I value the importance of skill work, I lament its current reality. In many classrooms, students are doing, but they are not understanding. And when legislators, educational specialists, text book companies, and well-meaning but misguided others champion such skill work, those of us who value understanding as well are often dismissed as old school.

World renown cellist, Yo Yo Ma, writes: Mastering music is more than learning technical skills. How right he is–about music and about much more. Learning technical skills is clearly important, but it is not, and never should be, everything. I’ve heard musicians play technically and fail to make me feel and understand a piece of music. And tragically, I’ve heard many students read, perfectly decoding each word, and fail to understand or appreciate what they’re reading. Learning, like mastering music, is so much more than learning technical skills.

I fear that schooling with skills will result in neither the type of students nor citizens we desire. And worse yet, when we put all of our eggs in the skills’ basket, we risk producing an entire generation of students who don’t aspire to more than mastering the skills required for passing grades. An African proverb warns: Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.  Will our students wish to know? Or will they sleep well enough with their tool belts hanging from their bedposts?

for my mom on her birthday

My Mother's Raincoat

was nothing but a 2-ply, black 
plastic garbage bag
with a single hole punched through
for her head.

And huddled in the McCook High School bleachers,
beside another mother
who, too, had grown into such a poncho,
she watched the Girl's District Trackmeet
below.

It was spring in Nebraska,
and the northwest wind blew in sleet from Wyoming,
pelted the garbage bags
and the cotton sweatsuits of runners
in the infield.

Beneath green sun visors
keeping drizzle from their eyes,
my mother and her friend looked on
and waved.

And standing alone 
at the start of the 440 yard run,
I fumbled to undo the string of my sweatpants.
The lucky beads I always wore around my neck
were not there, and there was nothing
but cold to hold me up.

Until I saw my mother's garbage bag
and remembered that tucked beneath it,
she kept graham crackers and Hershey bars,
chapstick and peppermints.
Underneath all that wind-whipped plastic
were hands that would rub out the cold
and drive me home.

Underneath it all--
and in spite of the sneers from other runners
who laughed long at the sight of two women in bags--
was the mother who, years later, would stand on the front terrace,
curbside, who would wave at me as I drove away
to newer homes.
The mother who would wave until
I turned the corner, and she could see me
no more.

Will she ever know the times I circled the block,
hoping that she hadn't yet gone inside,
remembering hands and cold
and that blessed slant of light 
through her visor?

Shan