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.

When my daughter sent me this recent picture of Gracyn and Griffin, I spoke these words into the solitude of my home: This is heaven. These perfect ovals which hold the perfect faces of my love. These cornflower blue eyes fixed on the promise of autumnal splendor. This coupling of brother and sister in such a pure embrace. And these gold, green, and russet leaves that hang onto October for all their worth. This is a little bit of heaven in a a troubled world.

Suffice it to say that we all need a little bit of heaven. Right here, right now, a day or a moment, a glimpse or a good, hard look. We all need a respite from whatever ails us and sends us bedraggled into the shadows of life. In his novel, Let the Great World Spin, Irish writer Colum McCann writes: Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. Even if the light is damaged and bruised, it is a little light all the same. And a little light ushers in a little heaven, a small gift into which a multitude of mysteries and glories are packed.

After five days of rain, this morning I looked out my kitchen window to see my white rabbit grazing on the hillside. She has found her little bit of heaven here, forsaking the freedom of the timber for the familiarity of our yard. And when I call her, kneeling with carrot in hand, and she runs to me with unabashed trust, I can’t help but think that heaven has found earth in this daily ritual. A little white, a little heaven to sustain me in gray world.

In The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis writes:

All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it — tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest — if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself — you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for”. We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

How well C. S. Lewis understands the power of a little bit of heaven, how it offers tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear–all heralding the thing I was made for. This, indeed, is the thing we desired before and after the mind no longer knows wife [or husband] or friend or work. This is heaven, and each small hint of it, each little bit of it is the secret signature of each soul.

At the ripe age of 63, like Lewis, I am more convicted that if we lose our yearning for heaven–on earth and beyond–we lose all. The stuff of our daily lives is literally rubbish in the presence and promise of heaven. We may kid ourselves into believing that a kitchen remodel or a new SUV will fill the deepest longing of our souls, but even as we leave the home improvement store or car lot, we realize that the joke is on us. The sheen of a maple cabinet or the luster of a metallic paint job pales in the brilliance of a little bit of heaven. Still, too often, we cling to our stuff, choosing to believe that it will save us from ourselves and our lives. And tragically when it ages and rusts, we just get new stuff to take its place. In our predilection to purchase, we lose all.

Or we simply work harder and longer. We thrust ourselves into the thick of all things scheduled, planned, and yet-to-be-planned. We believe that we will find heaven amidst files or in the minutes of countless meetings. At some point, we may even believe that work will define us in a way that nothing and no one else can. In rapturous moments, we justify ourselves and our work as important and necessary. And in collegial corners, we congratulate ourselves on accomplishments that pass as quickly and insignificantly as the countless daily memos that we shred or recycle.

A little bit of heaven reminds us of our transience. Although a photograph of my grandchildren can capture much, it simply cannot capture the mystery of all that is Gracyn and Griffin. When I see these faces, I also hear their voices at age 2 and 4 and 9, voices that cry out, “Grandma!” I feel the weight that this single word carries when it rises from the mouths of those I love more than life itself. These earthly moments are transient, but they remind me that there are more glorious moments to come.

And in the meantime? Fred Rogers proposes that the connections we make in the course of a life–maybe that’s what heaven is. Certainly, most of us could testify to the truth in these words, for our own connections lay claim to the presence of heaven throughout our lives. Our connections have ears to listen, mouths and arms to console. They are the living, breathing material of heaven in the here and now.

Theologian and author, N. T. Wright endorses the prospect of heaven on earth when he writes: Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about. [Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church] Colonizing earth with the life of heaven? I’m all for this. We sing about this, pray about this, write and speak about this, but to get down to the business of actual colonization, we will need to get serious about the little bits of heaven we can all acknowledge and create each day.

Lately, I’ve begun to hear my own proverbial clock ticking. If I’m going to get serious about bringing a little bit of heaven to earth, if I’m going to proclaim, Here at last is the thing I was made for, I need to begin. And what better place to begin than visiting the pumpkin patch with my grandchildren? A clear October sky, mounds of hay bales, pumpkins of all colors, sizes, and shapes, and two eager smiles. This is little bit of heaven that I can wrap my arms around.

Photo: Zarah Sagheer by Collyn Ware

Life is a transition from one form to another. The life of this world is the material for a new form.  Leo Tolstoy

Southern Iowa is beginning its transition from late summer to autumn. Eighty-some-degree days give way to 50-some-degree days and to nights cool enough to warrant firing up the furnace. Ditches of tangerine day lilies and periwinkle chicory give way to stands of crimson sumac and burnished heads of goldenrod. Life as we know it is transitioning from one form to another.

Lovely though the autumn sumac may be, its crimson beauty pales in the presence of a young woman who wears it even more elegantly, a young woman who will soon transition from the smaller world of home and high school to the larger world of university and new possibilities. These moments of transition, writes novelist Jhumpi Lahiri, constitute the backbone of all of us. Whether they are a salvation or a loss, they are moments that we tend to remember.

We do remember these backbone moments, indeed. The moments when sons and daughters reach out to take diplomas in hand and walk confidently forward with eyes fixed on the future. The moments when fathers place their daughters’ hands into their soon-to-be husbands’ and when mothers see beyond lace veils into the shining faces of little girls-turned-brides. The moments when children leave for new homes, the remaining remnants of their childhoods packed neatly into boxes and stored in basements. The moments when minds are renewed, souls are revived, and lives are refined.

Director, screenwriter, and producer Steven Sonderbergh claims that the key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between the scenes. Truthfully, I think it’s safe to say that we tend to focus on what comes before and after such transitions. We fixate on the scenes. This is the good stuff, we think. But the transitions between scenes? Not so much. Yet, such possibility and such tension lives in these transitions. And though we take them for granted or tend to ignore them altogether, they are the key to making good movies and, more importantly, the key to making good lives.

Transition may lead to transformation, which is often more about unlearning than learning, writes Father Richard Rohr, spiritual adviser and writer. I admit that any transformation I’ve experienced has involved a fair amount of unlearning. For any significant and lasting change to occur, I’ve often had to unlearn some safer but potentially stifling processes: sticking with what has worked, seeing with old eyes, embracing the same perspectives, and listening solely to voices of agreement. Paradoxically, unlearning can open the door to genuine learning, and this learning is the crown jewel of transformation.

And the best thing about transition and transformation? These are not singular experiences. Instead, they offer plural promises that span lifetimes. French-American writer Anais Nin writes: I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me. As I think of my niece, Zarah, I can’t help but smile at the many women she will undoubtedly have in her throughout her lifetime. This is the magnificent power of transition: it is the means to new women and men who live as unsprouted seeds, waiting in the fertile soil of former selves.

And let it be said that transitions are often not sudden, but rather, as writer C. S. Lewis explains, like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight. When you first notice them they have already been going on for some time. Zarah’s transition into womanhood and the larger world of the university experience has been going on for some time. Ask those who know who best, and they will tell you how resourceful, how financially responsible, how goal-oriented, and how generally wonderful she is. They will tell you that she will transition gracefully into the next phase of her life. And, most certainly, they will be right.

My daughter, Zarah’s photographer, is a master at capturing the light in any scene and using it to bring the essence of her subjects into every photograph. Journalist and writer Teresa Tsalaky writes that light precedes every transition. Whether at the end of a tunnel, through a crack in the door or the flash of an idea, it is always there, heralding a new beginning. In this photo, Zarah stands at the threshold of this light that precedes every transition. And if we have eyes to see, this light is always there, heralding a new beginning.

For Zarah and for all of us who stand at this precipice and who will stand at many more: we can take heart in the promise of so many fellow transitioners who will encourage and sustain us through all of our changes.

Sunrise, late September

The rosy underbelly of the clouds

descends in a watercolor wash upon the hills

sending pink light into the fields.

Here is the sweet spot.

Here time, in all its translucence,

turns the present into memory and vision,

each palpable and almost visible.

Here, the imperceptible floats in the breeze

just beyond your reach.

In late September when colors run at dawn,

you hold what has been and what will be

upon your outstretched palm.

And there, with wings spun silver,

they quiver and take flight.

For my friends, Kearney High School, class of 1973

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.                                                                                                                       Guy de Maupasssant

My granddaughter, Gracyn, has been determined to learn how to do a cartwheel. Standing in her yard this summer, she asked, “Can you do a cartwheel, Grandma? Maybe it would help me if I could see how you do it.”

Can I do a cartwheel? You are talking to a former Kearney High School cheerleader! How about I cartwheel into a stag jump and then down into the splits? This is what I thought. For one brief moment, that is, until I remembered that my 63-year-old muscles would hardly move and stretch in this way and that I truly value what muscle tone (or lack thereof) I still have. Before I could respond, I turned to see that, blessedly, her dad was demonstrating in the corner of the yard.

As he cartwheeled across the grass, his thirty-something muscles limbered and toned, I looked on and remembered. The memory of turning the world on its head, of leaping into the air, bending and stretching myself into shapes and positions that defied gravity was momentarily intoxicating. Oh, but to be a cheerleader again on a crisp autumn night with a pep band and a stadium-full of fans before me! Oh, but to leap into that Friday night splendor, suspended for a few glorious moments above the earth! As Guy de Maupassant writes, my memory of these nights gives back life to those who no longer exist. As much as I hate to admit it–to my granddaughter and myself–the cartwheeling, jumping, cheering me no longer exists. Except in my memories, which sustain me more and more with each passing year.

Recently, I attended my 45th high school reunion in Kearney, Nebraska. As a part of the weekend’s events, I had the opportunity to tour the newly built Kearney High School with a group of my former classmates. As we walked from one part of the campus to the next, I could see our high school selves, standing around our lockers in the concourse. I could remember changing into my gym outfit (in all its royal blue polyester splendor) as Gloria Mitchell urged us to hurry up before the boys’ PE teacher, Mr. Greeno, burst into the locker room as he did most days. I could remember bending over my copy of Lord of the Flies in an English classroom decorated with styrofoam student projects and lined with shelves of well-worn novels. I could remember pouring over yearbook layouts, the table a collage of photos and copy, text books and promise. Yes, I could remember it all. Too well, in fact.

These memories came to the surface quickly and solidly, as if I were panning for the gold nuggets of them, swirling thousands of events as I held the pan from which the sediment of my life sifted back into the dark waters, leaving the shinier moments in my hands. It is like this sometimes. There are moments when sights or sounds, smells or feelings call forth the good stuff. And, in obedience, it radiates just as brightly as it did in your past. Perhaps more brightly, having stood the test of time.

In these moments, you truly believe that you would like to return to childhood or adolescence or young adulthood. You can imagine a younger, but wiser self who navigates more successfully through trials and challenges, who relishes celebrations with mature appreciation, and who is keenly aware that all of this will pass too quickly. With hindsight, memories may take on lives that are new-and-improved versions of the real deal.

In his novel, Light in August, William Faulkner writes:

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. 

Sometimes in those moments when we get into bed at night, we dress up our memories. Tied and tuxedoed, we march them forward in splendid stories of love and conquest, stories that carry us joyously into sleep. In these stories, we are never wallflowers. We never fade into the ordinary din. We flourish, we triumph, we transform the kernel of memory into epic tales. This is the memory that believes before knowing remembers, that believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. This is the memory that sustains us as the stars of feature films that are, in reality, universally ordinary.

And the painful memories, the cringe-worthy, long-living ones? Even these eventually become paler cousins to the real events that lacerated or rubbed the skins of our lives into agonizing blisters. Time may not heal all, but it can, by degrees, dull.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was, writes novelist Toni Morrison. Like water, I find that–in many ways–I am forever trying to get back to where I was. Not the fifteen-year-old with braces who was wracked by insecurity and self-doubt. Not her, never her! But the girl who leapt into the Friday night lights, hands flung to the sky, and promise at her fingertips. I’d like to get back to her when I feel age creeping into my bones and my dreams.

Following the Platte River back to my home and to my KHS classmates brought me back to where I was. And until we meet again, these are the perfect memories I will carry into my days and my dreams.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.   –C. S. Lewis

Children all over the country have gone back to school. Parents, caretakers, and grandparents hand them off to bus drivers and teachers, who take them in all new-clothes-shiny and weighted down with gargantuan backpacks stuffed with a year’s supply of crayons, tissues boxes, and hope.

But oh the vulnerability on the faces of all! Children entering new classrooms with new teachers, new classmates, new routines. And those left behind in the parking lots who watch until they can’t see the backs of those they’ve so lovingly offered.

Just yesterday, I entered the office of an elementary school I’m working with and saw a second grade boy, his hand to his ear, crying that he didn’t feel good and wanted to go home. Alone, without his mother or teacher, he stood before the school secretary, wholly vulnerable to whatever would come next. I cringed. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. If I could have scooped him and taken him home, I would have, for in that moment, I saw all of us–the boy, my children, my grandchildren, myself–breakable, penetrable, and vulnerable.

In his novel, Atonement, Ian McEwan writes:

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.

Here was a child, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended. This awareness is both buoying and terrifying. For some, such fragility prompts tender responses; for others, nothing but meanness. Vulnerability is that space where possibilities of tenderness and meanness hang in the balance.

There are many photos of my grandson, Griffin, that unsettle me. Often he is unwilling to be photographed, hiding behind his sister, pets, costumes, and available furniture or trees. Two years ago when I asked my daughter to take a picture of my husband, me, Gracyn, and Griffin for our family Christmas card, she could never get a single shot of Griffin looking directly at the camera and smiling. Ultimately, she resorted to photoshop, artfully piecing together his torso and head from other more successful photos. The fact that Griff lacked an arm in the final photo (hidden, blessedly by my jean jacket) was yet another casualty of photographing one who often regards the camera as something that might penetrate and break his very soul.

Dr. Brené Brown, researcher professor at the University of Houston, has spent the last ten years studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. Her TED talks are some of the most viewed, and her visits to popular talk shows are widely anticipated. Brown has much to say about vulnerability. As a result of her research, she claims that the greatest barrier I see is our low tolerance for vulnerability. We’re almost afraid to be happy. We feel like it’s like inviting disaster.

This is the look I often see on my grandson’s face when he is in the presence of others who wait for his joyous reaction to something. He turns away or scowls. He defies joy to flood his face. He refuses to be happy–at least while others are watching. I have seen this response from countless others who, too, fear inviting disaster. Truthfully, I have responded in a similar, albeit more adult, way. I recall sitting on the back of a convertible that was slowly making its way around the football field during the halftime of the my college homecoming game. As queen, I was crowned and cloaked, taking my celebratory ride. But not even half way around the track, I remember thinking, I’d better not get too excited about this because tomorrow will be just another day. Tomorrow, I will just be me. Brown’s claims ring true for me: there have been many times when I have personally suffered from a low tolerance for vulnerability, preferring instead to cocoon myself in self-talk designed to ward off disaster.

Brown’s work with vulnerability has struck a nerve with many. Her TED talks are some of the most watched, and her books are best-selling. When she speaks about our collective issues with vulnerability, people are listening:

Society has taught us that vulnerability is synonymous with weakness—but it’s just the opposite. Vulnerability is the willingness to show up and be seen by others in the face of uncertain outcomes. There’s not a single act of courage that doesn’t involve vulnerability.

Like Griffin, I have feared uncertain outcomes. But being seen by others? This is often just too much. I wouldn’t go bowling with friends in high school and college because I would be seen at something I wasn’t good at and the outcome was, indeed, uncertain. Bowling in public would have been an act of vulnerability. And courage.

Author Madeleine L’Engle writes that children often think that when they grow up, they will no longer be vulnerable. She concludes, however, that to grow up is to accept vulnerability. . .To be alive is to be vulnerable. As I consider the little boy who cried in his school office on the first day of school, I can imagine well-meaning adults who might confidently assure him that he would grow out of this vulnerability, that he would grow up and leave these feelings of helplessness and fear behind him. And herein lies the real truth of vulnerability: we simply don’t have the stomach for it. We can’t bear to see or feel it, to relive it through our children, to own it.

As daunting as the challenges of vulnerability are, though, Brown offers positive words:

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.

Most of us would argue that we would never give up on love, belonging, and joy, and yet, at times, most of us have. We have run from people and situations that expose and threaten to undo us. Like T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, we slip behind our selves to prepare faces to meet the faces we will meet.

Still, when I see the sweet vulnerability of my grandchildren–of children in general–like Brown, I feel the urgency to help them embrace it. For it is in this very embrace that their courage will grow an abundant life marked with love, acceptance, and joy.

If you’d like to listen to Brown, check out her TED talk below.

Late July

A sea of periwinkle moves

across the south pasture towards the timber.

The wild chicory has spread triumphantly

with taut stems which hold fast to the baked clay

of late July.

In a season of drought,

here is water of a different sort:

a quench of blue stars

undulating wildly in the brown breeze.

Spring-fed from a deeper source

it is that thing you call upon

when dust dulls you

and you sleep, dreamless, in small corners.

That place you go

when you must gather your children behind sod walls

and sing the songs of spring

your voices, lovely specters, rising

from the stubble around you.

This is water with no volume,

no hydrogen or oxygen.

But it flows just as surely,

cascading in ancient pools

from which we all drink

and through which the sun shatters

into prisms of life.

Seasons of Angst                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   for Collyn and Gracyn (and other fellow angsters)

Worry grows along the banks of the furrows

which run decidedly along your brow.

Darkness is not your friend,

and it often comes

in a single, suffocating rush—

a hothouse of angst.

You are the exquisite recipient of genes that rise,

eager to leave their fermented husks,

destined to torment.

But what a lovely façade!

Freckles which spread like constellations

across a sky of milk-white skin,

wisps of ash blonde hair which fall

in single strands across one azure eye

and then another.

Who would see the shards of doubt that threaten—

even in the glow of a bedside lamp,

even in the happily-ever-after of a favorite book?

Who would feel the prick of night

ever present, ever eager to fracture

all that is innocent and good?

Oh that I could take them back,

these genes that have passed too assuredly

from generation to generation.

But failing to–like those before me–

I can only offer trembling hands

which hold the glittering pieces

of love.

Let it be said that I am a master of angst. And lately, the prospect that I have been an unwilling genetic donor of this brokenness has put my angst into overdrive. Angst is that feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world in general. 

Oh, there are those with acutely focused anxiety and dread about the state of the world today. All you have to do is tune into any talk radio program or turn on the television, and you will get an earful of this sort of dread. But the unfocused type often lies just below the surface of all that appears to be lovely and innocent, all that seems to float heedlessly like a brilliant buoy across the turbulent sea of life. This sort may appear tightly and individually focused, but in truth, these worries are but metaphors which have razor-like edges that cut more deeply into the general grain of our humanness.

One of my sisters recently lamented the fact that our mom was often unavailable to her for the hour (hours?) after bedtime because she was consoling me for yet another worry or transgression. I once worried for nights about my fear that I may have given my fifth grade teacher an “unpleasant look” as she walked through the aisles during silent reading time. And there was my mom sitting at the foot of my bed, reassuring me for the hundredth time that this act was undoubtedly imagined, not real, and that I had nothing to fret over. This may appear like an eleven-year-old worry, something fleeting and altogether insignificant, but it was not. It was the awkward beginning of a lifetime of brooding over my position–and then the human position–in the universe.

Angst of my sort often morphs into something uniquely terrible. Without boundaries, my angst can suffer from attention deficit hyperactive disorder. Dread scatters like water drops into a skillet of hot oil. Here to there to there to here. . . ad nauseam. This is angst on amphetamines. When I forgot my dentist appointment last year, did I call immediately and beg forgiveness? Or did I wait for them to call me and act duly penitent then? Will Home Depot still mix paint colors that they haven’t had in stock for a decade? And what if they don’t, what then? Why can’t I remember the new science teacher’s name? Why don’t I really listen when I’m introduced? This is the real me, isn’t it? And this is the nature of humans–that we default to self-consciousness when we should be looking outward? I should’ve been paying closer attention, but I was looking at how white her teeth were, and–and I really need to check to see when my dentist’s appointment is. Have I missed it already?

Tragically, angst is a pervasive cancer which finds fertile ground in sensitive souls. So it was no accident that I found kinship years later with confessional poet Sylvia Plath. Plath was–and is–perhaps the truest poster child for angst. From her novel The Bell Jar, she develops and emerges raw in all her splendid self-consciousness and angst. She describes this condition:

because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

And later, she reveals her fears that she would never grow out of this condition and into something less angst-ridden:

But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure at all. How did I know that someday―at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere―the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?

Stewing in my own sour air–this is some good (and really bad) stuff, Sylvia! You nailed it, hit the soft target of angst squarely. And as if all this stewing weren’t awful enough, the prospect that it could, and probably would, descend again? This is surely doubt worthy of an even thicker stew.

In her book, Ariel, Plath writes:

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

As I watch those I love, those who have unwittingly inherited my angst-genes, I find myself living vicariously as they wrestle with this dark thing, its soft feathery turnings, its malignity. Indeed, there is room for two or three in such bell jars. And once there, the sour air grows denser and more poisonous from generational worry.

Still, I take incredible solace in the words of Ernest Hemingway who wrote:

We are all broken. That’s how the light gets in.

It is ironic and sad that both Plath and Hemingway took their own lives, ultimately being unable to bear their brokenness and to tame the dark thing. Blessedly, light did seep through the cracks of their broken lives at times. And when it did, they lived and loved, they wrote stories and poems of enduring beauty and wisdom. They brought light to others even as it waned and was finally extinguished in their own lives.

If our brokenness lets the light in and if that light is wondrous yet sporadic, so be it. In that splendid light, its rays refracted exquisitely through the glass of the bell jar, there is respite from angst.

Walking through the architectural splendors of Italy and France, I turned to my friend and repeated the same words, over and over again. I just don’t understand. I sincerely don’t understand how men could envision and design such structures: the Coliseum, the Vatican, the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore, St. Mark’s Basilica, Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur. For one who is blown away by a stand of Queen Anne’s Lace or an aging Iowa barn, standing in the presence of such splendor was almost more than I could take.

After returning from my European trip, so many people have asked me what my favorite site was. Hard-pressed as I have been to identify a single site, I have to admit that Florence holds a special place in my heart. This city, the birthplace of the Renaissance, is home to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (Saint Mary of the Flower), which has been nicknamed the Duomo because of its impressive octagonal dome. Impressive is a pathetic understatement, indeed. This is the largest church in Italy and the third largest in the world.

Construction on the Duomo began in 1386, but it remained domeless until 1436. For more than a century, the east end of the cathedral remained open or was covered with a flat, temporary roof. The problem? No architect or engineer could figure out how to design and build an octagonal dome of that size. Italian architects understood the design of a round dome, like that of the Pantheon in Rome, but such domes were constructed of concrete, and the recipe for concrete had been lost in the Middle Ages. The Parisian Notre Dame–and other Medieval gothic cathdrals–relied upon flying buttresses to support their weight. But Florence had banned the use of buttresses, and the Italian Renaissance architects wanted to return to the clean lines of their Roman past.

And so for a century, one could only imagine the magnificent dome–one destined to be bigger than that of the Pantheon–a dome that was intended to be the crown jewel of the Basilica. That is, until the genius of  Flippo Brunelleschi. 

There are times when genius, a flash in the pan, bursts upon the scene electrifying all in its midst. Other times, however, I believe it is more of an overwhelming, persistent passion to fill a vacuum. A passion that belongs to a man or woman who fails forward, shelving all that is incomplete, inadequate, and ill-conceived. One who wakes each day bent to the task–no to the love that drives and fills each moment.

Imagine Brunelleschi standing before the span of Florentine air that was to be the greatest brick dome the world had ever seen. In Marginalia, Edgar Allan Poe wrote:

The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.

A true genius, Brunelleschi would have abhorred the incompleteness before him. It would have gnawed at his soul. It would have threatened to unravel the core of a deep yearning to complete, a yearning which had come to define him. His genius was multifold: artistic, technical, mathematical, and practical. What his eye could see, his brain could calculate. What his brain could calculate, his understanding of available materials and the human body could compensate. To lift the 4 million bricks needed to complete the dome? Brunelleschi invented a new machine that was capable of hoisting the necessary masonry. To advance and ensure the physical labor of hundreds of masonry workers? He reimagined former labor practices by keeping the workers on the job during breaks, bringing food and drink to them, and keeping them from the exhaustion of going down and up the hundreds of stairs constructed for the project.

Completing the Basilica’s dome, the apse, and the cupola would be the majority of Brunelleschi’s life work. Because a modern understanding of the physical laws and mathematical tools needed for calculating stresses were hundreds of years in the future, Brunelleschi relied primarily on his intuition and what he could learn from building large-scale models. He left behind a single model of his dome–intentionally incomplete to ensure his complete control over the project–and no formal plans or diagrams. There is something inherently genius about a design and construction which remained a mystery for centuries.

American writer and novelist Pearl S. Buck writes:

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

I imagine Brunelleschi to have been most alive when he was creating and overseeing his creation come to life. The fact that this took the majority of his life makes me think he lived fully and deeply, relishing the placement of each row of bricks as his dome reached ever skyward. Some might say that it doesn’t get much better than this.

Others might look at the magnitude of such a project that spanned a lifetime and question if this was genius as much as it was persistence. Michelangelo–a genius in his own right–claimed that genius is eternal patience. The genius behind the Pantheon, the Coliseum, and the great cathedrals of Europe give testament to the role that patience has played. In a world of fast food, quick news, information and entertainment at the touch of a button, it is difficult–if not impossible–to conceive of those who devoted most of their lives to single, magnificent endeavors. But how these geniuses and their creations continue to bless us!

In his essay, On Liberty, English philosopher John Stuart Mill writes:

Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow.  

How do we preserve this precious soil? When utility and profit rule the day, what can we do to carve out those necessary plots for geniuses? Clearly, I don’t have the answers. Still, I am convicted that we must encourage this small minority to continue to grace the world with their unimaginable gifts. There must be infinite seasons of genius. Of this, I am certain.

St. Mark’s Square, Venice

The Coliseum, Rome