Bethlehem, through your small door
Came the One we’ve waited for
The world was changed forevermore
When love was born.
                   Mark Schultz, “When Love Was Born”

During college, I worked at McDonalds and just missed the super-size-it promotion, which burst upon the scene months later with thousand calorie fries, drinks large enough to hydrate entire villages, and sandwiches that clogged your arteries if you merely looked at them. The McDonalds Corporation was simply capitalizing on prevailing ideas: large is good; large says you’re worth it; large means success; large is always better.

And in keeping with these prevailing notions, the entrances to all the biggest places are often substantial ones, super-sized doors framed in neon and over which signs beckon come in, come in, come in with incandescent glory. For such doors should be as grand as the places and experiences that lie behind them. Shouldn’t they?

How often I’ve wished that God would create super-sized doors for me, clearly marking the passage ways into experiences and relationships I was destined to have. Oh, that He would send a million watts of light to blaze through the murky midst of my doubt and eliminate any error of choosing the wrong door! It only seems fitting that God would make large, conspicuous doors for his wayward, short-sighted sons and daughters.

In Mark Schultz’s “When Love Was Born,” however, he writes that Bethlehem was a “small door” through which the “world was changed forevermore.”The stable in which Christ was born offered no breadth, no width, no neon splendor. Just a small and ordinary doorway into the most extraordinary event the world has known. Super-sized love in a tiny package.

About small doors, I think Shultz has it right. Their size and appearance give little to no indication of the riches that lie beyond. Bethlehem is, perhaps, history’s greatest paradox.

In his Reflections of the Psalms, Christian theologian and writer C.S. Lewis writes: “For the entrance is low: we must stoop till we are no taller than children to get in.” Perhaps this is point. Too often, we search for grand doors that we might enter with bluster and bravado, tossing our coats and hats confidently aside. When instead, we should kneel so that we might see and pass through even the smallest doors, so that we might enter with a child’s wonder and humility.

For the past year, my mother has asked if I might write about my father’s death, that is, the experiences we shared in the days that preceded his death. And I have been reluctant. Not because I don’t revere those experiences or find them worthy of written record but because I found myself unworthy of recording them. And yet in the days before we celebrate Christmas, before we enter that still, small door of Bethlehem once again, I have been thinking about my father.

I once believed that death might offer sizeable portals, monumental corridors through which individuals would shed their aged or diseased bodies, like well-worn coats, for eternal ones. These would be doors of real stature and beauty. Doors with electronic eyes that opened graciously at the last breath. Custom doors whose artistry reflected each unique life and soul. And perhaps, in the days before my father died, I was waiting and watching for such a door through which his remarkable life would pass. For my father seemed so much larger than life, and it seemed altogether right that death’s door be commensurately grand.

How wrong I was. For days, friends, colleagues, students, and family members came to offer what words they had to express their gratitude for the presence my father had been in their lives and for the legacy he would leave behind. With each visit, a small and intimate door opened into the communion of their souls.  These intimate openings would foreshadow another—I like to think a simple door with planks hewn from local cottonwoods—through which my father would quietly enter one night as we slept.

All along, I believe that my father understood how he would enter his death quietly and humbly as a child. Like Lewis, he knew that stooping was required. As I sat by his beside one night when my mother and sister were sleeping, he told me of a vision he had when he was a teen. In this vision, Christ was standing before a group of laborers in a field that had recently been harvested. My father told me that Christ’s arms were open as he beckoned the dirty and worn workers, saying, “Come to me.” This was the humble image he had held in his heart for seventy some years: walking into Christ’s arms with no adornment or fanfare but the final beating of his servant heart.

I had it wrong, you see. It was never the door that was intended to be grand and glorious but rather the life passing through it. Jesus entered the world inauspiciously in a small stable and left it flanked by common criminals. Neither his entrance nor his exit would define his immeasurable impact on the world.

And it would not be my father’s entrance nor exit from this life that would reflect the magnitude of the love, the wisdom, and the life he had shared. Did I feel his small door opening that night as lay in my bed trying to sleep? Did I hear God’s still, small voice urging me to rise and go to him? Did I know, without seeing, that my father’s door had closed?

In the center of our living room, I stood alone at the head of my father’s hospital bed and took his hand one final time. There was no one to see or to mark the time of his passing, but I felt my universe shift as I looked out into the black August night.

I’ve learned much about small doors. So, when my time comes, I’d like to think that I will rely on muscle memory as I bend and duck to clear the transom. I’d like to think that years of stooping will prepare me for this final door. And like a child, I’d like to think that I will pass through it expectantly into the open arms of my Father.

I am the door. If any one enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.  John 10:9 ESV

                                              The honeysuckle bush has not lost its berries,

                                               and their round, red selves punctuate the timber

                                               like crimson ellipses.

                                               Oh, let us not forget the lovely omission

                                               that breathes here!

                                               Bright and expectant, it sings Emmanuel

                                              through the dark rooms of December.

His retreat into himself is not a final renunciation of the world, but a search for quietude, where alone it is possible for him to make his contribution to the life of the community.
― Carl Jung

In her New York Times bestselling book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain exposes herself as an introvert and reveals the reality of introversion as something quite different from common perceptions. As I turned each page of her book, I found myself thinking yes, this is it exactly. I have had a public presence for most of my life. Each day for 41 years, I stood in front of classrooms and spoke about the wisest things I could. I spoke about all sorts of moral truths that manifested themselves in the greatest literary works. I spoke about differing perspectives and our obligation to understand them fully before we took our respective sides. And I spoke about the beauty of language that continues to move us with profound assurance. In short, I put myself out there hourly, baring my soul in hopes of reaching largely indifferent audiences. I played the role of an extrovert, and I played it as well as I possibly could—regardless of the personal cost, regardless of the reception.

There are so many others who, like me, have played this role. They may have even convinced themselves that they could grow into more extroverted selves whom the world would more eagerly embrace. Susan Cain writes that introverts:

. . . may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

Cain understands that what the world often sees as a wallflower who cowers in insecurity and lonely corners may be a contemplative who revels in a solitude that is anything but lonely. I think about many of the students and colleagues I have known. I remember the eyes that locked onto mine, the bodies that leaned ever-so-slightly forward as I spoke or read, the ears that listened, and the mouths that did not speak. And I remember the written words that spilled from them, words that burst gloriously forth from inner wells that were never made public but that lived nonetheless. Here was no shyness or weakness; here was the quiet strength of those who listened well and thought even better.

In her book, Introverts in Love: The Quiet Way to Happily Ever After, Sophia Dembling identifies a common misconception about introversion as a negative space:

Historically, psychologists have looked at introversion as the absence of extroversion. They measure extroversion, and if you are low in it, then you are considered an introvert. This perpetuates the perception of introversion as negative space, and introverted activities as not really doing anything. We need to train ourselves, and others, out of this idea. We need to start seeing doing nothing (or reading, or working alone on projects, or whatever it is we do to recharge) as activities that are as valid as any social event.

I find much truth in Dembling’s claims that we perceive introversion as a negative space in which those who occupy it are not really doing anything. Extroversion, she maintains, is the measuring stick for our times. How many times have I been guilty of measuring audience engagement by their verbal responses or lack thereof? How many times have I failed to see in others what I recognize as true of myself? How many times have I feared the silences in my classrooms and, in foolish desperation, tried to fill them with my own talk? And how many times have I left school and walked to the parking lot thinking I sicken myself with all this talking?

And yet. The world loves an extrovert, a real talker. These are the individuals whom we promote and honor, whom we seek out as means to our social ends. We use such words as bold, confident, brave, and capable to describe them. We recruit them, hire them, and watch them shine (and watch others—perhaps even ourselves—as they hitch themselves to these shining stars.)

And yet. Like Cain, I tend to worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they’re good talkers, but they don’t have good ideas. We are drowning in good talking, I fear. But good ideas? I suspect that we just dip our toes into these waters, wading along the edges of what might be. There are introverts out there who would plunge in, preferring the potential dangers of the deep to the shallow safety of good talk.

Lately, as I been working in schools as a consultant, I’ve come to rethink many of the philosophies, frameworks, and strategies that have pervaded the educational world. One of these has been—and continues to be—the emphasis on student collaboration. Collaboration, educational experts claim, is valuable and necessary for real learning to occur. As students collaborate, they consolidate and corroborate their thinking. They learn from each other in the safety of a student group. They practice the necessary job skill of working with others. And they are more actively engaged than when the teacher (the dreaded sage on the stage) is lecturing. In truth, many (most?) experts agree that collaboration is the gold ticket, the magic bullet, the secret weapon.

I’ve promoted student collaboration, implemented it in my own classrooms, and witnessed others who, too, have implemented it. Indeed, there have been students who have flourished in group work, making their voices heard, testing their ideas against others, and generally talking their ways into better ideas and solutions. And there have been students who have withered in group work, sitting silently as others flounder or do nothing, retreating to their own thoughts and being reluctant to venture into such  atmospheres of seeming futility. They may have recognized the ignorance or foolishness of their peers and simply decided not to participate or (heaven forbid!) lead. Sadly, we may have considered these introverts to be failures—at best—and insubordinate—at worst. Tragically, we may have gotten it all wrong.

Another equally prominent educational initiative is differentiation—the purposeful planning and implementation of strategies, assignments, and assessments designed to meet unique student abilities and interests. In theory, differentiation has the individual at heart, and what could be better than this? In practice, however, it verges on the impossible. Ask any teacher about differentiation, and you will invariably see them come unhinged. They will tell you that they understand the value of it, but they honestly don’t know how to realistically make this happen. They will throw up their hands and lament that they would have to create hundreds of different assignments and tests and that, even if they were willing, there simply wouldn’t be enough hours in the day. Some would snort in disgust; others would tear up and lower their eyes in failure.

I once had an educational specialist advise me to differentiate a Macbeth assessment by giving students the option of writing a literary research essay, creating a collage (magazine pictures and lots of glue?), or even performing a puppet show (a sock puppet reenactment of Macbeth killing the king?) If students struggled to read Macbeth, she suggested that I rewrite it in language they could understand. Rewrite Shakespeare? I asked incredulously. Yes, if that’s what it takes, she said.

That being said, if differentiation is a goal (albeit an increasingly challenging one), why wouldn’t we recognize the differences between extroverted and introverted students? Why wouldn’t we want to honor the strength and value of introversion? Why wouldn’t we consider the potential damage we do to introverted students, demanding that they become more like their extroverted peers and, consequently, become better? Why wouldn’t we acknowledge that listening to a good teacher is just as—if not more—worthwhile as student collaboration? And why wouldn’t we foster more genuine contemplation, more thinking and writing in solitude before speaking?

In her book, Cain writes that the “pain of independence” has grave implications. She continues:

Most of our most important civic institutions, from elections to jury trials to the very idea of majority rule, depend on dissenting voices. But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think. 

I fear that many introverts experience the pain of independence too often. Those whose very lives depend upon  solitude, the seedbed from which dissenting voices are often born, may come to feel the primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection. They may pay far too much attention to remarks and looks which classify them as awkward, withdrawn, and even reclusive. In the end, some may convince themselves that they have no real place in a world of extroverts who appear to thrive among their fellow humans. The more, the merrier and all that jazz.

 French philosopher Gaston Bachelard explains:

A creature that hides and “withdraws into its shell,” is preparing a “way out.” This is true of the entire scale of metaphors, from the resurrection of a man in his grave, to the sudden outburst of one who has long been silent. If we remain at the heart of the image under consideration, we have the impression that, by staying in the motionlessness of its shell, the creature is preparing temporal explosions, not to say whirlwinds, of being. [The Poetics of Space]

Perhaps, as Bachelard proposes, one who withdraws is actually preparing a a way out. I have been witness to the miracle of sudden outbursts from those who have been sheltered in contemplation. From experience, I know that silence is not absence of feeling or thought. Neither is it necessarily evidence of trouble. Call such an outburst a resurrection. Call it a temporal explosion or whirlwind of being. But call it something of value, something to affirm and even cherish.

Cain believes that withdrawing to the shelter of oneself is akin to those animals that carry their shelter wherever they go. In spite of their preference for solitude, introverts are rarely lonely. In fact, Cain says introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward. American writer Zora Neale Hurston concurs:

Being under my own roof, and my personality not invaded by others makes a lot of difference in my outlook on life and everything. Oh, to be once more alone in a house!

If it were not for introverts, we would not have much of the world’s best art, literature, science, philosophy, theology and thinking in general. Solitude is often the hotbed for creativity and introspection. Oh, to be once more alone in a house!

For most of my life, I tried to convince myself that I could be, that I should be more like the extroverts in my life. I worked on putting myself out there. But even after years of practice, I still find it intimidating to walk into a crowded room or gym. I’ve perfected a certain strain of small talk, but I prefer more intimate talk between a person or two. I’ve told myself that my desire for solitude is selfish and/or cowardly. And I’ve struggled to balance my public life with my private life.

Now, as I consider my grandchildren, who are also introverts, I am even more convicted that the world needs introverts, particularly those with such sweet faces and tender hearts. I want their world to be one that doesn’t gauge their worth with the measuring stick of extroversion, one that doesn’t quickly think absence in the face of silence. I pray that they will grow into their introversion as contemplatives who retreat to read, think, and listen to God. As their peers perform and compete on public stages and arenas, I want them to know that they are o.k. just as they are. And when they prefer to sit beside me in silence and look out at the goldfinches who cling to the bird feeder, I will honor their silence and know that their presence is more than enough.

If you are interested in Susan Cain’s research and book on introversion, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, here is an excerpt you might enjoy:

A Manifesto for Introverts

1. There’s a word for ‘people who are in their heads too much’: thinkers.

2. Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.

3. The next generation of quiet kids can and must be raised to know their own strengths.

4. Sometimes it helps to be a pretend extrovert. There will always be time to be quiet later.

5. But in the long run, staying true to your temperament is key to finding work you love and work that matters.

6. One genuine new relationship is worth a fistful of business cards.

7. It’s OK to cross the street to avoid making small talk.

8. ‘Quiet leadership’ is not an oxymoron.

9. Love is essential; gregariousness is optional.

10. ‘In a gentle way, you can shake the world.’ -Mahatma Gandhi”

As we gather for Thanksgiving, we enter the paradise of family and friends, the sacred and unique place we hold–physically and spiritually–for all those with whom we are most grateful. We remember those who are no longer with us, feeling blessed for their presence. And in spite of a landscape of leafless trees and frozen ground, we remember greener days and the world as it was intended. 

Paradise

At dawn, frost sheaths the milkweed

and shells of wild parsnip that edge the road.

It shrouds the hay fields,

graying the glory and bright treble notes

of summer.

A lovelier garden winters beyond me.

Its iron gate has closed upon

the Columbine and poppies,

the bluebells and lilies.

In the silence, I listen for familiar songs,

but they are cloistered among the growing,

garden things.

They weave themselves into staffs of grace,

their major and minor souls lilting

sempre dolce.

This is the way it was intended:

Mayapple and melody;

the persistent descant of willow and yarrow;

clear notes of freesia, fuchsia, and phlox;

a profusion of green with rich, red fruit

at the center.

But here, the trees quiver in the wind,

their bones dark and exposed.

In the sky, the sun kneels

in pale submission, and my breath erupts

frozen and freed into the morning air.

Still, I place my hands on the iron rungs

and push.

There, my heart steps—trembling—

into paradise.

Epiphany

The sun burns through the barren branches of the ash.

It has pierced the heavens

and emerged through a single pin-hole

into a cloudless, cobalt sky.

For a moment, I cannot see to move.

In this instant, I am held fast in light

which spreads concentrically in golden spheres

on the gravel beneath me.

I am the axis of something I feel

but cannot yet name.

Call it epiphany,

for I am soul-bolted, blinded,

transfixed beyond reason.

I close my eyes, but the center holds.

Call it epiphany,

this bird of light whose wings split

the silence of unknowing

sending an illumined shaft,

a manifestation of something greater.

Finally I walk,

my feet moving east,

my trembling hands teasing the air

with sure incandescence.

And here I move upon this blessed, bright plane

where all dry bones are girded

and gilded.

Hygge (pronounced hue-guh) is a Danish word used when acknowledging a feeling or moment, whether alone or with friends, at home or out, ordinary or extraordinary as cozy, charming or special.

The first snow of the season is falling. Settled in my cabin with a cup of tea, I look out on the branches that had just recently held such spectacular fall colors but are now barren except for a faint dusting of white. Inside these ordinary pine walls and surrounded by ash, hickory, and cottonwood, I feel the extraordinary assurance of home wash over me. This is hygge.

In The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Living Well, author Louisa Thomsen Brits writes:

We all hygger: gathered around a table for a shared meal or beside a fire on a dark night, when we sit in the corner of our local café or wrap ourselves in a blanket at the end of a day on the beach. . . baking in a warm kitchen, bathing by candlelight, being alone in bed with a hot water bottle and a good book–these are all ways to hygge.

Hygge draws meaning from the fabric of ordinary living. It’s a way of acknowledging the sacred in the secular, of giving something ordinary a special context, spirit and warmth and taking time to make it extraordinary.

Decades before I had ever heard the word hygge, I lived it. Both my mother and father framed my world, so that I learned to see the sacred in the secular, to give the ordinary a special context, to make it extraordinary. As a child, I spent hours transforming the ordinary stuff of my life into new worlds with marvelous possibilities. I combed the alley behind our house for treasure: unusual rocks, pieces of colored glass, violets that grew among the weeds around the garbage cans. And on Friday evenings with TV trays of hamburgers and chips, I felt our home was particularly cozy and special.

When I was in third grade and my father was finishing his PhD work, my family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska for a year. I attended the laboratory school on the University of Nebraska campus, a school with a small fenced gravel playground behind it. Each recess, a group of girls and I worked in the corner of the playground as others played kickball and jumped rope. With the edges of our shoes, we scraped the gravel bare in places, making piles of crushed rock to outline the houses we were creating. We made rooms with aquariums that we populated with rock fish. We made lamps from sticks. We piled and formed gravel into sofas and beds and chairs. Day after day, we didn’t know that we were making do; we only counted the minutes until recess, until our ordinary corner of the playground would become magical once again.

Louis Thomsen Brits claims that an essential ingredient to hygge is the boundary that marks a place or delineates a moment—a fence, a circle of cushions or a stolen half hour. My friends and I created boundaries of gravel that, even today, mark those 8-year-old moments as hygge.

Sir Thomas Moore, saint, philosopher, and statesman writes: Things sing when they reach a certain degree of presence. Hygge demands presence, insists upon being rather than doing. For regardless of their beauty or worth, things are simply things when we are not wholly present. They whisper but do not sing. They line the periphery of our hours, silhouettes of what might be. But when we are truly present, when we carve out moments of conscious being, things sing the glorious hymns of hygge.

Perhaps there is something especially suitable for hygge in this season of blankets, hot chocolate, firelight, and the winter world shining outside a frosted window. But hygge is not dependent upon warm houses. In her letters to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a minister, essayist and eminent Bostonian, Emily Dickinson writes: I felt it shelter to speak to you. Hygge may live in the intimate words you share with another, words that feel, indeed, like shelter in a world of noise. It may reside in lines of verse that live in the pockets of your soul. And it may take shape in a single word: your name spoken knowingly by another.

Rainer Maria Rilke understood that hygge finds its greatest truth in the presence of God. So, I’ll let him have the final words.

I’m too alone in the world, yet not alone enough

to make each hour holy.

I’m too small in the world, yet not small enough

to be simply in your presence, like a thing–

just as it is.

I want to know my own will

and to move with it.

And I want, in the hushed moments

when the nameless draws near,

to be among the wise ones–

or alone.

I want to mirror your intensity.

I want never to be too weak or too old

to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.

I want to unfold.

Let no place in me hold itself closed,

for where I am closed, I am false.

I want to stay clear in your sight.

                                            Rainer Maria Rilke, Books of Hours 

Photo by Florin Catalin

The Passion of November

Here is a green that is gold,

a sacrifice of leaf to limb.

I kneel at the foot of ash and elm

and my tears seed the earth

with longing.

I look up

into arms outstretched, their palms open

in the midday sun.

Below me,

the fecund matter of the saints

lies in burnished piles.

In the ditches,

I rub shoulders with grasses

and milkweed grown tall.

And into the chill,

vaporous at first, but surer then

as limbs speak:

Woman, behold your son.

       Son, behold your mother.

Here in the absence of green

I take bronze to my breast,

a melancholy but necessary embrace.

This is the passion of November.

Round Bales

The round bales sit in frosted fields,

relics of summer, now dried and cylindrical

under a slate sky.

From the road, some think straw.

They miss the mystery at the center,

still green, still germinating,

a glorious nucleus,

a promise of pastures with hair thrown

heedlessly to the breeze.

So it is with all ordinary mysteries,

their burlap coats buttoned over tender miracles

which take refuge in the dark.

Until one with nimble fingers

unravels each layer,

picks a way through the chaff and chill.

Then the center exhales

its warm breath escaping across the earth,

its timbre taking shape in song:

What was buried is raised.

Love is lifted, death is robed.

The round bales sit as tombs.

Yet even now, their stones are being rolled away,

their life source redeemed.

Late October Blessing

Jet trails mark the heavens

with straight, white lines that intersect

in the late October sky.

Such cruel geometry that cuts

the blue, stamping out a triangle here

and a rhombus there.

For a sky resists such partitioning,

holds fast to expanse,

and lays claim to a presence

both shapeless and endless.

It is true that within minutes

these shapes will disappear,

absorbed into the organic nature of sky

and all things without borders

that refuse to be contained.

But for a moment, there will be pieces–

acute and obtuse–

and they will strain against their walls.

Bless them,

and bear witness to the sacred transformation

from finite to infinite.

At 63

The sunflowers are spent,

and the milkweed pods have burst.

There is a leeching and loosening

where all that held its hue and form

is settling into the twilight of autumn.

And I, too, fold my wings

into the hollows of this season.

My marrow slows.

My bones, now barren branches, cry

If I had but one green leaf,

one verdant banner to fly,

I might weather this undoing.

But we are slackening to brown,

these trees and I.

An inevitable sepia washes across our pages.

This is the way of it,

the browning of our lives.

We submit to it as we must,

and its reflective richness wraps itself

around our scarcity in surprising ways.

So we stand erect, leafless,

but warm in the assurance

of sable and umber and walnut.