Maps codify the miracle of existence.

Nicolas Crane, Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet

One doctor sat at a computer to my left, and one with catheters in my groin on the right. After two plus hours, they worked together to map and zap the places in my heart that caused episodes of supra ventricular tachycardia. Awake during the ablation procedure, I heard the doctors talk to each other in a language I tried–but failed–to understand, felt my heart alternately race and then settle into a normal sinus rhythm as they moved the catheter from spot to spot, and marveled at the technology that allows such mapping and zapping. Though I couldn’t see, I could only imagine the wondrous map of my heart that filled the computer screen. Maps may, indeed, codify the miracle of existence.

Recently, I talked with some friends who recounted their son’s love of maps, how he read them as passionately as one might read a great poem or novel, how he scrutinized them as one studies a classical painting, and how he carried them and collected them as one with treasure. For some, maps  evoke an undeniable passion and devotion.

In Crane’s biography, Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet, he profiles the man who created the first map and literally changed civilization. Gerhard Mercator, a 16th century German-Flemish cartographer, solved a riddle that had perplexed cosmographers for so long: How could a three-dimensional globe be made into a two-dimensional map and still retain true compass bearings?

Mercator’s work and vision revolutionized navigation and resulted in the 1569 world map. This new map represented sailing courses of constant bearing as straight lines, a projection that is still employed in nautical charts today. This was a man whose passion for and devotion to mapping the world led to his own persecution and imprisonment during the Inquisition. Yet, this was a map-driven man who changed the way we navigate and see our world.

In his debut novel, The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, contemporary novelist Reif Larsen chronicles the adventures of T. S., a 12-year-old mapmaker. Larsen writes:

A map does not just chart, it unlocks and formulates meaning; it forms bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we did not know were previously connected.

For T. S. and others who sincerely appreciate the value of maps and those who create them, maps unlock and formulate meaning. The physician at the computer during my ablation was able to unlock the mysteries of the human heart, that blood-pumping life-giver of a muscle. He could pinpoint abnormal cells. He found meaning in the colors, the lines and shapes of my heart map.

Maps can form bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we did not know were previously connected. Think story maps, which begin with a central person, place, thing, or event that takes its spot of prominence in the center. And from this center, bridges burst forth into a spectacle of connections that may have–or may not have–been previously imagined. The map is the thing, indeed. It takes writers and readers from here to there, bringing disparate ideas, disparate people and places together as they should. At the heart of every good tale, there is undoubtedly some type of map. French writer and philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, concurs:

Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.

And what about the largeness of maps, the expansiveness that fills our souls when we look upon boundaries that give way to still more boundaries? For many, a map opens the local to the universal, both literally and figuratively. Its cities and villages, rivers and mountain ranges, its web of fine lines that move with purpose across the page, its scale, its key and compass rose–all proclaim: I can take you there. I can take you anywhere. German writer, Judith Schalansky writes:

Consulting maps can diminish the wanderlust that they awaken, as the act of looking at them can replace the act of travel. But looking at maps is much more than an act of aesthetic replacement. Anyone who opens an atlas wants everything at once, without limits–the whole world. This longing will always be great, far greater than any satisfaction to be had by attaining what is desired. Give me an atlas over a guidebook any day. There is no more poetic book in the world.

An atlas, no more poetic book in the world? Seasoned climber and writer for National Geographic, Mark Jenkins says yes because maps encourage boldness. They’re like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible. 

For others, like John Steinbeck, a map is neither poetic nor particularly wonderful. He writes:

There are map people whose joy is to lavish more attention on the sheets of colored paper than on the colored land rolling by. I have listened to accounts by such travelers in which every road number was remembered, every mileage recalled, and every little countryside discovered. Another kind of traveler requires to know in terms of maps exactly where he is pin-pointed at every moment, as though there were some kind of safety in black and red lines, in dotted indications and squirming blue of lakes and the shadings that indicate mountains. It is not so with me. I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found, nor much identification from shapes which symbolize continents and states. 

As magnificent and practical as maps may be, I admit that there are times, seasons in my life, when being lost and taking no pleasure in being found seems far more appealing than following a map. Mapless, you can go off-road and surprise yourself with new ventures and adventures. You can think and feel those things that you would never think or feel if you stayed on the road until the map announced that you had arrived at your destination. Mapless, you don’t have to declare a destination at all, and your internal GPS can recalculate until the cows come home. You can just go. You can just be. And if you are lucky, you will not be found–at least until you want to be.

For there are places that even the finest maps may not take us. We chart our own courses, unlikely cartographers in search of these places that are uniquely ours to find. Herman Melville writes that these places are not down in any map; true places never are. Perhaps the truth in these places can never be represented on a map but can only be felt and known. I have been to such true places, and they defy mapping.

So I’m all for maps. And then again, I’m not. There is a time and a season for maps, as there is for most things. Knowing when to map and when not to map, that, indeed, may be the real question.

To a Horse, Dozing in the Sun

for Quinn

A cocoon of September sun

has settled over you.

Late summer’s pale amber

tucks itself around your haunches,

seals your sleep and burnishes the edges

of your eyes.

You do not hear my footsteps on the road,

do not see me standing at the fence, waiting for an opening,

a single spot into which I might slip

but for a moment.

Hay has loosed itself from a round bale and lays at your feet.

Still, you sleep.

Do you dream of ranges,

greener and deeper than this small place?

Have your eyes found the great frontiers that sprawl surely

across a stallion’s soul?

Tomorrow, my son will turn 25.

Soon the fragile surface of our cocoon will burst,

its intimate corners revealed, and memories that were cached

released.

Unleashed for a season, all will be large and possible,

an arena of grand prospects and new light.

And for a time, my son will travel the world

singularly, searching.

But know this:

I will be standing at the fence in the late summer sun,

waiting for that single spot—once closed around mother and son—

into which I might enter again.

With love,  Mom                                                                                                                                                                  

The cinnamon roll with my name on it wanders the world incognito these days. She sports dark glasses, an assortment of fake moustaches, and a heavy spirit. Shunned and shamed for her contributions to artery-clogging and glucose-spiking, she dreams of better days, the golden past of grandma’s kitchens and church potlucks. The days when she reigned supreme, gooey and oozing with caramel and cream cheese, packed with sugar, cinnamon, and butter. Those were the days.

But alas! Her gluten-free and paleo contemporaries have taken center stage. Their understudies are sugar-free, fat-free, preservative-free, and artificial coloring-free young things. They wait in the wings, chanting, “Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty, we are free at last.” (Many, many apologies to Martin Luther King Jr.) Packed with free radicals, antioxidants, and who-knows-what, they strut their stuff and bask in their newfound glory. Raw almonds and coconut flour are in, sugar and butter are out. Humiliated and dismissed, the cinnamon roll has gone into hiding.

My grandma made the absolute best cinnamon rolls for which there is no recipe. She said she just added a pinch of this, a handful of that. But oh how her pinching performed! Piping hot from her oven, they slid decadently from the pan onto a serving plate, and from the serving plate right into our mouths. We didn’t wait for them to cool; we risked burning the tops of our mouths. They were just as good frozen and popped into the microwave. Heck, they were just good period.

And in the day, we ate shamelessly, reveling in goo. Our only fear was that there wouldn’t be enough for seconds. Or thirds.

But today, no self-respecting man or woman would be seen reveling in goo (unless you host a program on the Food Network that features an episode on comfort foods of the past). The food pendulum has swung decisively to the left–or right. I’m not really sure which side cinnamon rolls, chicken fried steak, and homemade noodles are on. Let’s just say that the pendulum has swung to the other side. And what a swing this is!

Every restaurant publishes nutritional information on its website and/or menu. The day I scanned the McDonalds’ menu and read that a medium chocolate shake had 800 some calories was one of the worst food days of my life. One shake contains 1/3 of a woman’s daily suggested calories? Say it ain’t so.

The testimonies of those who are eating healthy are certainly meant to inspire and encourage. But couldn’t one eat relatively healthy and still enjoy an occasional cinnamon roll without shame? Couldn’t one rest on the 7th day, refusing to count calories and study nutritional information? Couldn’t one scrape the remaining caramel from the bottom of the pan and lick the spoon before returning to greens and lean meats on Monday? Would the pendulum allow just a small adjustment for cinnamon roll lovers?

It’s not just cinnamon roll lovers who have felt the shame. What about soap opera and romance novel lovers? They don’t dare show their faces in classy crowds. Feigning disdain for such formulaic programs and stories, they smile through their teeth and join in the public shaming of soap opera and romance novel fans. Until they are behind closed doors in their homes where they escape through characters, exotic places, and incredible stories that they know are not realistic, not universally enlightening, and not respectable. Still, they offer momentary escape from all that is real–and often all too painfully enlightening.

Couldn’t one who loves a respectable film or novel also occasionally partake in a popular one? Would the social pendulum allow just a small adjustment for soap opera/romance novel lovers? (And lest we become too smug, we shouldn’t kid ourselves. What are Game of Thrones and House of Cards but  dressed-up soap operas?)

Truthfully, I think we like pendulum swings. Decisive swings make things neater. What once was good is now not-so-good. What once was true and right is now not-so-true-and-right. It’s that simple. When we subscribe to the swing, we abdicate choice in favor of giving ourselves to new and better things and causes. Whether it’s love of cinnamon rolls, soap operas, dead white European male authors, or laminate counter tops, when the pendulum swings, it’s out with old loves and in with new ones.

American blues singer Robert Johnson said that History has always been a series of pendulum swings, but the individual doesn’t have to get caught in that. Writer and philosopher G.K. Chesterton wrote:

The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of mankind. When Man is alive, he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings. 

These are serious words for the likes of a cinnamon roll blog. Still, the greater issue of the Swing of the Pendulum is, indeed, a serious one that, like Chesterton and Johnson, I believe is a shameful and even shocking fancy and the individual doesn’t have to get caught in that. 

Most of us live somewhere in the middle of most pendulum swings. And if we are honest, we should own this more generously with less shaming and shunning of those who have not made the most recent swings.

This kind of generosity would bring the cinnamon roll–and those who love them–into the light. We could once again share company with others who lick frosting from their fingers. We could throw calorie counts to the wind and choose a breakfast of cinnamon rolls over egg whites. If only for a moment, we could eat, view, read, and embrace what we love without fear of social and political shame.

This would be cause for genuine rejoicing. And these days, those of us who have been dreaming of a great cinnamon roll could really use some.

Titillation: to excite or arouse agreeably

I’m losing them, I’m losing them! This was my head-speak daily–actually hourly–as a teacher and professional development provider. Ever aware of my audience’s attentiveness–or most frequently, inattentiveness–I became a master of pacing, taking my audience on a veritable roller coaster ride of highs and lows, sustaining the highs until common sense and some degree of professionalism dictated that I’d ridden this course as long as I possibly could. And then, I would transition quickly into the real stuff of the day: what was to be learned.

Once in a college Introduction to Literature course, I had my students performing like trained dogs. I’d launch into a personal anecdote–humorous or dramatic–and their eager heads came up, their eyes salivating as they focused on me, their young adult bodies learning forward in their seats as an expectant hush came over the room. And then, when I’d milked the anecdote for all its metaphorical worth, I transitioned to imagery or conflict or whatever the literary content of the day was, and their heads went down. There was a palpable energy loss as students shuffled papers, unzipped backpacks, and tapped away on their not-too-conspicuous phones. And just like that, I’d lost them. Until the next anecdote, which brought their heads up and gifted me with a few more precious moments to make a point, albeit through a story.

Adult audiences were no different. In fact, their inattentiveness was more blatant, an in-your-face message that I was wasting their time. Some shopped or checked football scores online, their computers or phones covering the handouts I’d just given them. Some talked to their table mates, wholly oblivious to the fact that they were not using their “inside voices.” And some slept, their drool making rivulets down their chins and onto their necks.

One of my father’s former colleagues once remarked (pardon the irreverence) that his students “would not pay a dime to watch Jesus Christ tap dance naked.” Strong but sadly truthful words, indeed. And given the fact that I was neither savior nor tap dancer, I didn’t stand a chance.

Boring, they said (or BORING they texted). This is a boring subject, a boring book, a boring video clip, a boring article, a boring lesson. .  . We just aren’t interested; this doesn’t excite us. If I had a dollar for every time I heard these words, I’d be a wealthy woman today.

But of course, I wasn’t awarded a dollar for each time my audiences weren’t titillated. Instead, I suffered silently, mentally searching my teacher/presenter bag of tricks to find something, anything that might arouse a few minutes of honest-to-goodness eye contact. In truth, nothing I could do or say could ever compare with social media, texting, online gaming or shopping or–when technology failed–sidebar conversations. NOTHING. (If my students can voice their disdain in bolded caps, well so can I!)

I remember the concern when Sesame Street hit the airwaves with flashing numbers and letters, bright colors and music–all choreographed to keep pace with the most active preschooler. People feared that so much stimuli at such a pace might destroy, or at least damage, children’s attention spans. They were skeptical as to whether kids could actually learn or would actually attend to such a television program. Well, history is in the books: kids did learn, and they did attend. But best of all, they were royally entertained by the likes of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.

For years, I became painfully aware that I was trying to replicate the Sesame Street strategy with bigger kids. An engaging anecdote here, a little school stuff there, a dramatic video clip here, a little more school stuff there, a quick analysis of last night’s volleyball game here, a little more school stuff there. You get the picture. Somehow, what worked with preschoolers didn’t quite translate to the secondary and post-secondary crowd. Nine times out of ten, I lost them in the school stuff. Sometimes, I lost them for good (at least for the class period), and other times, I lost them for precious minutes of instructional time that we could never get back. In either case, the Sesame Street strategy was mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausting. I often found myself flailing my arms as if my frenetic actions could break my students’ inertia. I took to adopting different voices for different characters, and–in a particularly low moment–I actually retrieved the action figures from the back seat where my seven-year-old son had left them and used them in a reenactment of Macbeth, Act II. Titillating? More like mildly amusing, so they said.

In truth, I was not only losing battles, but I was losing the whole darn war. The audacity of someone like me who thought she could compete with memes, sound bites, Facebook posts, and texts that came in–and kept coming in–faster than I could say “Mark Twain.” The sheer gall of a teacher who clung passionately to the belief that one day the content itself–not my vain attempts to sell it–would hold students rapt for a blessed 45 minutes. But hope springs eternal. Doesn’t it?

Although I believe there is value in student and adult collaboration and understand that it elicits problem solving and critical thinking, at best, and prevents sleeping, at least, I am also painfully aware that teachers and presenters have to use it or risk utter loss. People expect it and loathe a teacher or presenter who is the “sage on the stage” who forces them to “sit and get”. They will tell you that there is nothing less exciting than listening. And listening for more than 20 minutes? That’s simply unacceptable and clearly inadvisable.

The insatiable demand for titillation has brought us to this regrettable state where wit trumps wisdom, and brevity topples complexity. And yet we send thinking people into classrooms and boardrooms and set them up to flounder as audiences turn up their noses, pull out their phones, and mentally check out. The best ones will turn inward, scourging themselves with doubt as penance for their inability to excite the masses.

I can offer no magic bullet here. Heaven knows, I’ve pulled out all the stops, tried everything I thought might possibly have a chance of garnering and holding attention. Still, at the end of my career, I was struggling more than I had as a beginning teacher. I had more tricks, more stamina, and more years of learning under my belt, but none of this offered any lasting solution. If I got a few good minutes, I came to realize–sadly–that this may be as good as it gets.

But I can’t help worrying about those who have come to expect titillation as standard fare. And I can’t help worrying even more about the rest of us who will be under these folks’ watch and care someday. I’d like to think that my future doctors will actually read, listen, and learn from colleagues whose wisdom and experience are invaluable –and not get their expertise from a YouTube video or two. And although I cringe every time President Trump tweets, I am painfully aware of the fact that he does so because many people will actually read up to 140 characters. But I hope that my future lawmakers will expand their horizons, turning from tweets to white papers, from sound bites to genuine debate. Above all, I hope that audiences who will listen and read attentively will reach critical mass, outnumbering those who have no time or stomach for this.

But who am I kidding? This would probably take a revolution of sorts. A whole lot of people would have to come together, throw down their proverbial gauntlets, link arms and proclaim, “We are here to educate, to inform, to challenge you to think. That’s it. So if you expect a dog and pony show, there’s the door. Use it.”

If I see this revolution in my lifetime, I will die a happier woman.

A corridor is a funnel that narrows and tightens until–what? A door? Another passageway? That’s the ecstasy and the agony of a corridor. It is both exhilarating and terrifying, pleasurable and horrible.

In his non-fiction book about horror, Danse Macabre, Stephen King writes:

Nothing is so frightening as what’s behind the closed door. The audience holds its breath along with the protagonist as she/he (more often she) approaches that door. The protagonist throws it open, and there is a ten-foot-tall bug. The audience screams, but this particular scream has an oddly relieved sound to it. ‘A bug ten feet tall is pretty horrible’, the audience thinks, ‘but I can deal with a ten-foot-tall bug. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall’.

The artistic work of horror is almost always a disappointment. It is the classic no-win situation. You can scare people with the unknown for a long, long time but sooner or later, as in poker, you have to turn your cards up. You have to open the door and show the audience what’s behind it.

There are corridors that lead to closed doors behind which unspeakable horror and grief may reside. And with each wary step forward, we grow new disaster. We give it a makeover with new and more terrifying faces and voices, and then we give the makeover a makeover. If the loss of my current job would be devastating, the prospect that I would go jobless for months is even more devastating. If a bug ten feet tall is pretty horrible, a bug a hundred feet tall would be even more horrible. And when the doors at the end of the corridors are opened, revealing something bad–but not too bad–we may be relieved. But we are also bone-tired from trepidation, from harrowing minutes or hours, searing days or months spent in the corridor.

The Sanctuary of a Corridor is a transitional place, a place suspended in time, a nether world through which the impending door is but a faint, dark outline in the distance. And terrible or wonderful as this transition may be, we live large here. If nightmares grow arms and legs of epic proportions, so may dreams.

Lauren Oliver of NPR describes John Crowley’s novel, Little, Big as a strange novel which might be best regarded through the metaphor of its central setting: Edgewood, the house in which many generations (and permutations) of the Drinkwater family live. Edgewood is designed by the patriarch, a renowned architect, to be many houses within a single structure. It unfolds, as the viewer circles around it, to reveal many different facades — Victorian, modern, gothic — like a complex piece of origami.

Edgewood is a house of corridors that unfold like a complex piece of origami. Here is a place where one might dream her way through a nether world of possibilities. Crowley writes:

She had always lived her best life in dreams. She knew no greater pleasure than that moment of passage into the other place, when her limbs grew warm and heavy and the sparkling darkness behind her lids became ordered and doors opened; when conscious thought grew owl’s wings and talons and became other than conscious.

This is the stuff that the best corridors are made of: consciousness that grew owl’s wings and talons, moments when the sparkling darkness behind [one’s] lids became ordered and doors opened. I can say with certainty that I, too, have lived my best life in dreams. In dreams, I have said and done what I could not (or would not) in consciousness. I have lived larger than my humble existence in a perpetual state of possibilities.

In the corridor, as the director of my own feature film, I can cut scenes that fail to inspire, re-shoot those that deserve closer, tighter frames, and filter light in such a glorious way that I appear, scene after scene, with softer edges, back-lit and haloed. Corridors permit such creative license, for in a suspended state, anything and everything is possible.

In this state, I have walked down corridors to interviews. With each step, I created scenes in which titles and salaries grew exponentially as I moved towards the door. In this state, I have walked down corridors to obstetricians’ offices. With each step, I created scenes in which the babies I held were beautiful boys, then beautiful girls, then armfuls of beautiful boys and girls. And in this state, I have walked down corridors to doors through which I would never enter again. With each step, I relived the best of the years inside those buildings, embellishing them with richer notes and hues.

In the end, the Sanctuary of a Corridor is a necessary journey for many of us, the time we can spend anticipating, mulling, wondering, and dreaming. Destinations with all their inevitability will always be there, waiting with resolute doors that will open into what they must. For those who live their best lives in dreams, doors that stay closed–if only for a moment longer–offer a few more yards of corridor in the sparkling darkness behind one’s lids. 

“But he meant well. . .” “She had good intentions. . .” We speak these words and cast them like necessary nets over good intentions gone bad. Truth’s corrosive elements often tarnish even the best intentions, leaving them brassy, stripped of any luster and left, bare-boned, to face the storms that ensue.

Coincidentally, I have read three books in the past months that all deal with adoptions. All three books are based on the true accounts of adoptees. In each book, there have been adoption workers with good intentions (mostly) that have gone tragically wrong. In The Orphan Keeper (Camron Wright) and A Long Way Home (Saroo Brierley), children are taken into Indian orphanages and placed with adoptive couples in America and Australia respectively.

And these would be beautiful stories if these children were truly orphans who needed new homes. In The Orphan Keeper, seven-year old Chellamuthu is literally kidnapped by middlemen who sell him to the Lincoln Home for Homeless Children. From there, he is placed in an adoptive home in Colorado, thousands of miles away from his grieving family. In A Long Way Home, the memoir turned feature film (Lion), five-year old Saroo becomes accidentally separated from his mother and home, trapped on a train, left to fend for himself in the busy train station and then the streets of Calcutta until he ends up in an adoption agency.  There, workers post his picture throughout the city and in local media, desperately seeking his family. When weeks go by and no one claims him, they place him with an adoptive couple in Australia.

In spite of abject poverty, both boys loved their lives with parents, siblings, and extended families. Both grieved their losses as they began new lives in new countries. And the adoption agencies? They had good intentions: under the auspices of “orphan status”, they sought to ensure that these forsaken children–children whose lives would surely be filled with struggle, want, and loss if they remained in their current families–would have better, safer, more promising lives.

Though these boys flourished in their adoptive homes, they never forgot their birth families and Indian homes. As adults, both Chellamuthu (later Taj) and Saroo search for and ultimately find their birth families. Years of anguish and searching brought them across the world to their Indian homes.

From India to Tennessee, Before We Were Yours, is a novel based on the actual accounts of Georgia Tann, countless adoptees, and the Tennessee Children’s Home.  Miss Tann packaged, sold, and delivered adoption to desperate parents with empty cradles. She made adoption respectable, personal, and convenient (albeit costly–very costly). Serving the likes of Joan Crawford, Pearl Buck, Lana Turner, June Allyson and Dick Howell, and working alongside Eleanor Roosevelt in her advocacy for child welfare, Miss Tann revolutionized adoption, instituting “viewing parties” during which prospective parents could shop from a pool of available children, advertising with slogans like “Want a real, live Christmas present?” and promoting her children as blank slates ready to become anyone and anything you wanted them to be.

Over 30 years (1924-1950) Tann placed an estimated 5,000 orphans for adoption. Good intentions? It certainly appeared so. The reality of Georgia Tann’s work, however, is another story, a dark storm that left thousands of victims in its wake. A black marketeer, Tann stole children from their parents. Using a network of employees–including politicians, mobsters, police, attorneys–she claimed the struggling poor as business opportunities. She took babies straight from delivery, convincing their mothers that they were stillborn or had died during childbirth; she canvassed poor neighborhoods and literally stole children off their porches or from their backyards; she sent workers to relief offices to “listen in” on pleas for help and then used this information to convince parents that they could “temporarily release custody of their children until they could get back on their feet”; she sent workers to the banks of the Mississippi to snatch the children of “river gypsies” who traveled up and down the river on houseboats; she altered the birth certificates of adopted children, erasing any legitimate birth rights they had; and she covered up–and dismissed–the deaths of countless children under her care who died from dysentery, malnutrition, and other diseases. Miss Tann operated the first and most notorious black market for children our country has ever known.

Georgia Tann lived well, basking in the limelight of Hollywood stars, prominent citizens and politicians. What a wonderful service she was providing to orphans who had no prospects, no homes, and no love! What a visionary she was in transforming adoption into an acceptable and respectable practice! What a woman! Indeed. Under the slick veneer of good intentions, Tann’s motives were wholly self-serving.

When the scandalous practices of Tann and the Tennessee Children’s Home were revealed in 1950, 30 years of unspeakable malpractice came to an end. In those decades, birth parents grieved the children they lost, and in many cases, the children for whom they had desperately searched. In those years, siblings were separated and sent to far corners of the country, most never to be reunited. And in those terrible years, she sold children to adoptive parents who never would have passed any reputable adoption home study today. One of her customers told his adopted child, “I want you to know I paid $500 for you, and I could have gotten a good hunting dog for a lot less.”

And what of the good intentions of adoptive parents who spread cloaks of secrecy over their homes, believing they were protecting their adopted children from the painful truth of their origins? Well-intentioned as these mothers and fathers may have been, when some revealed the truth to their children years later, they often found their children’s love and trust in ash heaps at their feet.

After the Tennessee Children’s Home scandal ultimately broke but before Tann could be indicted and convicted, she died of uterine cancer. And it wasn’t until the 1990s that adoption records from the Tennessee Children’s Home were finally unsealed. Tragically, less than 10% of Georgia Tann’s children were ever reunited with their birth families, though many searched relentlessly throughout their lives.

Still, through the Tennessee Children’s home, many children found new homes and filled the empty cradles and hearts of formerly childless mothers and fathers. Some found happiness in spite of the fact they were ripped from their birth families; some were so young that they never knew any parents but their adoptive parents. And through Tann’s efforts, adoption, which had been dismissed as a reputable option for childless parents, gained newfound popularity and respectability.

So what of good intentions gone wrong? Are they means that justify some benefits, happier endings for some (in spite of pain and unhappier endings for many)? Or should we heed the advice of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) who claimed, “Hell is full of good intentions or desires”?

I think back on many of my good intentions. Some never came to fruition (Houston, we have a failed launch); some went horribly awry (Houston, we have lost control); and some–blessedly–hit their intended mark, delivering a payload of justice and mercy and blanketing the target with truth and love (Houston, mission successful).

It pains me to think of many intentions I birthed, believing them to be philanthropic and even sacrificial, when, in truth, they were self-serving aims coated with the thinnest veneer that could be regarded as anything close to “good”.

English novelist and philosopher Aldous Huxley wrote:  “Hell isn’t merely paved with good intentions; it’s walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.” If so, there’s a whole lot of paving, walling, roofing and furnishing that results from our collective good intentions.

As I look back historically on my life and the lives of so many others, I do believe that many good intentions are fueled by a passionate and authentic commitment to truth and goodness. At least truth and goodness as it lives in the souls of those who intend to act magnanimously. And at least truth and goodness as it lives at a particular time in the lives of those souls.

Time often unmasks our good intentions, though. Holding painful remnants of words and deeds, we lift them up and cry, “But I meant well. I did not intend for this to happen. . .” And in some cases, we sincerely did not. We could not overcome the challenges in our paths, could not rally enough support, could not find enough folks who would accept our efforts to help, could not persevere in our work. So even our genuinely good intentions may fail to help others–at best–or hurt them–at worst. In other cases, we failed to examine our motives, our claims on truth and goodness, and our very hearts, thrusting our good intentions like heat-seeking missiles into the lives of others, whether they needed them or not.

As I consider the state of our country today, I concede that much of the conflict we see and hear about daily is the painful consequence of someone’s or some group’s good intentions. And herein lies the ethical and intellectual dilemma: when there are conflicting good intentions that are born from–at least in part–passionate claims for truth and justice, whose intentions are right? Whose intentions are more justifiable? And if one individual’s, one group’s intentions are more right, more justifiable, what of the other’s? Should they receive a personal and social “smack down” which seeks to obliterate any genuine claim to their aims and views?

We love a good enemy. Particularly when we can take the moral high-ground. When a person or group becomes our enemy, we can summarily reject anything they say or do. Haughtily, we can argue, “You did or said ______, and look how that turned out!” We can bask in the wake of their good intentions gone bad.

But lest we bask too much or too long, perhaps we should remember that intentions are often purer than their ultimate consequences. They may also be complex. There may be–as in the cases of The Lincoln Home for Homeless Children and The Tennessee Children’s Home-some good in intentions that are largely wrong. Certainly, this doesn’t mean that we should overlook or condone the pain and injustice that results from intentions like Georgia Tann’s.

But it should make us pause, I think. It should turn us inward to search our own history of good intentions gone bad. In the end, it should make us own a universal propensity to serve ourselves–even as we may be legitimately serving others. For when we own this truth, we will be one step closer to understanding our enemies, one step closer to understanding those whom we seek to serve and, most importantly, one giant step forward to understanding ourselves.

..she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn’t know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. .. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. 

–Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

In the months prior to my retirement from a 40 year educational career, I found myself standing around the gate, expecting things. Like Zora Neale Hurston’s protagonist, Janie, I didn’t know exactly what things I should expect. Still, the undeniable mantel of expectation hung from my shoulders like a cape. Tied around my neck, it trailed behind me as I navigated the obligatory retirement paperwork and filed a lifetime of work into manila folders. It was a constant reminder that when school bells no longer ruled my days, then I would fly, my cape of expectations billowing happily in the breeze.

What to expect after you retire your alarm clock and teacher clothes? What to expect after you no longer drink lounge coffee or spend your lunch hours doing cafeteria duty? What to expect when no one expects much of anything from you? Hmmm.  .  .

Perhaps it is our nature to expect the next phase (of whatever) to be better, grander, more noble than the last. The urgency that propels us forward is a compulsion that is hard to deny. So today sucked, tomorrow will suck less. So this job is simply a job, your next position will be a career extraordinaire. So you settled for this relationship, this place, this idea, you will not settle in the future.

Americans are largely a “pull- yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps-go-west-young-person” sort. Expectation courses through our veins, the giddy lifeblood of the hopeful. We leave sod homes on dry, desolate prairies for gold mining camps and the promise of prosperity. On factory lines, we toil and dream, toil and dream, our heads bent to the task before us, but our souls fixed on a life beyond. In classrooms, we stomach busy work–the miserable fodder of some “professionals”–as we imagine the pathway to significance.

But what if one buoyed by years of expectation finds herself first treading water and then sinking? For expectation is not only a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future but a belief that someone will or should achieve something. It was this belief, like the lead weight we had to retrieve from the bottom of the deep end during lifeguard training, that began to pull me under. It was this belief–that I should achieve something–that pinned me to the pool floor. And it was this belief that left me breathless to break the water’s surface where some kind soul would throw me a lifeline.

Expectation at the beginning of a life is so much sunnier than at the end of a life. In youth, much seems possible, even probable. For a number of years, I genuinely expected that I would join the Ice Capades as a professional skater. Never mind the fact that I had only skated (badly) on Kearney Lake a few times in my entire life. I could easily brush this detail away, for the vision of sequinned splendor on the ice was blindingly hopeful. Young expectation accepts delayed gratification as a necessary rite of passage. When I grow up, I will . . .  Although there may be occasional frustration in this delay, more often there is comfort in the promise of something that will surely happen at sometime.

But expectation that occurs as a life is winding down–let’s say at retirement–is clothed in apprehension. Whereas earlier expectation is a stout stem that will produce a certain bloom, later expectation is a gossamer filament in a lifetime web. It is tenuous, dubious, slight and suspect. Passing time dictates no promise of delay, no prolonged rite of passage. Time is literally ticking.

In her short story, “Yours,” American author, Mary Robison, writes:

He wanted to tell her, from the greater perspective he had, that to own only a little talent, like his, was an awful, plaguing thing; that being only a little special meant you expected too much, most of the time, and liked yourself too little. He wanted to assure her that she had missed nothing.

After an evening of pumpkin carving, Clark has just told his wife, Allison, ʺYour jack‐o‐lanterns are much, much better than mine.ʺ His cancer-ridden wife will die that night, a few weeks earlier than expected, and he yearns to make her believe that she has lived a good life, that she has missed nothing. As tragic as her impending death is, the “awful, plaguing thing” of his life–to “own only a little talent”–is just as tragic. At least to him. He is painfully aware of the fact that he has “expected too much, most of the time, and liked [himself] too little.”

Herein lies the blessing and the curse of being “a little special”: for some, the expectation of achieving something, of becoming something more special comes with a healthy dose of self-doubt. Perhaps even self-loathing. You find yourself expecting that the little bit of talent you have will burgeon into the achievement you have imagined. Even in the direst moments of self-doubt, you whisper: “Maybe. Someday.” But then self-doubt rolls in, a returning storm that blackens the maybes and blows the somedays into another, rosier country. Then you look into the mirror and accuse: “Who do you think you are?”

I recall a 20/20 episode that featured five octogenarians. These men and women were growing and changing, becoming better selves as they played in symphony orchestras, trained for marathons, or taught university courses. In short, they were nothing short of amazing individuals. Here were achievers who were not only meeting but surpassing expectations. As the television segment ended, I remember thinking, “Is it too late for me to take up the cello?”

And then there is the issue of what to achieve. Some of these octogenarians were continuing pursuits and talents they had cultivated their entire lives; others were taking up entirely new ventures. Although I have nothing but admiration for 86-year-olds who train for the Boston Marathon, I’m quite confident that I will not be taking to the ice for future Ice Capade performances. So, realistically, what achievement should I expect?

In looking back over years of work–both parenting and teaching–I admit that my days were filled with doing. And certainly in all this doing, there were achievements: building a family, making a home, growing into a good teacher, deepening my faith, and forging countless relationships with great people. I realize that many would look at me as one who had achieved much. And all of this made my post-retirement standing around the gate, expecting things surprising, at best, and ungrateful, at worst. Why expect more?

And why not just be? Isn’t that a natural and kind progression: doing that ultimately leads to being? Being is undervalued, understated, and underappreciated. When I think of those people with whom I feel most at home, they are those who have perfected the act of being. Just being in the moment, content to listen, to comfort with their sheer presence, and to convince you that there is no one else they’d rather be with and no place else they’d rather be. Ironically, being may be the greatest achievement of a life well-lived.

So maybe standing around the gate isn’t such a bad thing. Standing without expecting, that is. For if, like Hurston’s Janie, I can stand at the gate knowing that world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether, then this is more than enough.

for all those who have restarted or who wish to restart

“See right here,” the ER doctor held the EKG strip up to me, “this is where your heart stopped beating. Flat line.” I could only nod and give my most convincing smile. Flat line, great.

I came to the ER after my heart had raced for four hours, 180 beats per minute. I have a history of SVT (supraventricular tachycardia) that had been annoying and a bit scary a couple of times, but this was the grandmother-of-all-episodes. When my heart didn’t give any indications of stopping on its own–coupled with jaw and arm pain–I knew that this was not good.

In the ER, they hooked me up to an EKG machine, put in two IVs, made me chew a baby aspirin, took my temperature, and then administered a drug that literally stops and restarts your heart. As your heart restarts, it returns to normal sinus rhythm (at least that’s the plan). And sure enough, my heart stopped for several seconds and then restarted normally.

The doctors had warned me that when my heart stopped, I would feel pretty bad. “Pretty bad?” I asked. “Yes, we can tell exactly when the heart stops by the expression on patients’ faces. Are you ready?” Six doctors and nurses stood around my bed and watched as one doctor pushed the drug through my IV. I’m guessing that on a slow day in the ER, this may be about as exciting as you get. For them, that is–not so much for me. I could have done without all this excitement and attention.

Still, a normal sinus rhythm is nothing short of a miracle, and I will always be grateful for those doctors, nurses, and the wonders of modern medicine. The slower, steady beating of my heart through the monitor was a glorious thing. The down-shift from 5th to 2nd gear was hours overdue. Now in the quiet of the ER, my heart hummed along as if on a Sunday afternoon drive. This was a leisurely pace, and as the driver, I could wander the back roads, pointing out barns and ponds of interest as we made our way through rural Davis County.

But when you’ve suffered a minor heart attack, when your heart has stopped and restarted, you pull over to stretch your legs and reflect. The normal rhythms of your life seem anything but ordinary. Time which had previously unfolded before you in an endless maze of roads seems limited–at best–and scant–at worst. And those people who have been your favorite passengers seem all the more precious. Not only are you able to tolerate the frequent Are we there yets?, but you relish them as yet another sign of the life you have loved and will continue to love. Oh that the Sunday drive would go on and on and on . . .

In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the tenant farmers argue that the Sunday drive is essentially over for them:

But you can’t start. Only a baby can start. You and me – why, we’re all that’s been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that’s us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can’t start again.

I admit that there are days–and I suspect this may be true for most of us–that feel more like the flood years and the dust years and the drought years than a Sunday afternoon drive in the country. There have been days during which I have lived as though I could not, I would not start again. These are the dark days of the soul, the days during which I simply put one foot in front of the other, plodding my way through the hours. Call it lack of faith, call it unwillingness to ask for help, call it pride or call it whatever you like. I dropped my shoulders, hung my head, and muttered, “I cannot start again.”

But in the Sanctuary of Restart, you do not have to be a baby to begin again. As a community college instructor, I spent several summers teaching in a national program called Elder Hostel. Senior citizens from all over the country would spend their summers attending week-long college courses in creative writing, wine tasting, local history, etc. My courses were filled with amazing men and women who were beginning again in spectacular ways. Rose, the wife of an accomplished attorney, came to Elder Hostel with a heavy heart. Her once-brilliant husband had been consumed by Alzheimer’s, and she was simply worn out from constant care-taking. She admitted to me that when her frustration reached the proverbial boiling point, she would take an armful of Tupperware dishes into her garage and heave them, one plastic dish after another, into the garage door. The image of an eighty-some woman madly chucking Tupperware in a suburban Des Moines garage still amuses and amazes me. For this week, for this one glorious week of respite, Rose was starting over as the vital and beautiful woman she was. And oh what a restarting it was! She shared with me some writing she had done in the past, and her ear for good prose was unmistakable. And, blessedly, more than ready to be revived for another go. You can begin again, and without reservations, Rose restarted.

In A Chesterton calender, G. K. Chesterton writes:

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

So we may not have a new year. We may not have a new life or a long life. But, as Chesterton argues, it is not the new year or life but the new soul and new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. It is the starting afresh about things that truly characterizes the best restarts. Rose’s husband will not likely be cured of Alzheimer’s, and her life will likely be lived out through vigilant care-taking and continual worry. Still (and what a word this is!), still she can begin again with a new soul, new ears and eyes. Not to mention a new backbone, which–along with some wicked Tupperware heaving–will sustain her through the darkest of days. Starting afresh has little to do with circumstances and much to do with resting in the one who gives us abundant life.

And who is to say where things actually begin and end, poet Seamus Heaney asks?

“Since when,” he asked,
“Are the first line and last line of any poem
Where the poem begins and ends?” 

The first line of a poem, the first day as husband or wife, the birth of a child–are these the only real beginnings? The last line of a poem, the last day as husband or wife, the death of a child–are these the only true ends? Not so, Heaney posits. Not so at all. In the middle of a poem, a marriage, or a life, there are beginnings and endings too numerous to count. And after the last line, after a marriage or life has ended, there are also beginnings and endings, and Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand [Psalm 139:18]. The Sanctuary of Restarts defies conventional logic about beginnings and ending. It throws traditional wisdom to the wind and cries Redos are guaranteed at any time, any place! This is a space in which inhabitants come to see a life as a fluid thing, perpetually stopping and starting, darkening and brightening. Here is a place where first and last lines are but pieces of a larger whole, neither more nor less significant.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but in the ability to start over. So writes F. Scott Fitzgerald. Look around you, and you will see a whole lot of persistence. People with their heads to the plow, people whose backs are wholly bent to whatever is before them. Some will stop, lift their heads and fix their souls and eyes on something greater. And as they release themselves from the harness that has held them, they will restart. You will see it in the way they throw their heads to the sky; you will hear it in their easy laughter. More than anything, you will look on in sore amazement, for you will know that you are in the presence of a soul restarted.

In the Sanctuary of Restart, vitality is the ability to start over. I’m a fan of vitality and plan to be one who starts over. In a month, I will have a catheter ablation procedure that will, hopefully, prevent future SVT episodes and resulting heart attacks. This is a procedure to create scar tissue within the heart in order to block abnormal electrical signals and restore a normal heart rhythm. A few lesions in the heart, a little scarring and voilà! Bad heart rhythms end, and good heart rhythms begin.

The physical procedure sounds easy enough. It’s the mental, emotional, and spiritual process of restarting that is more challenging. How, then, shall I live? I plan to drive the country roads with the ones I love, stopping and starting when we wish, taking in the sites and relishing the time we spend together. Clichéd as it may be, I plan to spend more time in 2nd gear with my arm trailing in the Iowa breeze. When you live in 2nd gear, you simply see and feel things you cannot when you are speeding down the four-lane. And whatever your age, your health or circumstances, down-shifting and restarting is a good, good thing.

David and Goliath is a book about what happens when ordinary people confront giants. By “giants,” I mean powerful opponents of all kinds—from armies and mighty warriors to disability, misfortune, and oppression. Each chapter tells the story of a different person—famous or unknown, ordinary or brilliant—who has faced an outsize challenge and been forced to respond. Should I play by the rules or follow my own instincts? Shall I persevere or give up? Should I strike back or forgive? Through these stories, I want to explore two ideas. The first is that much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of these kinds of lopsided conflicts, because the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty. And second, that we consistently get these kinds of conflicts wrong. We misread them. We misinterpret them. Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness. And the fact of being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate: it can open doors and create opportunities and educate and enlighten and make possible what might otherwise have seemed unthinkable.

Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (2013)

In the biblical account of David and Goliath, the shepherd and obvious underdog reigns, leaving a literal giant of a man dead at his feet, felled by a single stone from a boy who would be king. Christian author, Philip Yancey, is not surprised, for he claims that “though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.”

Our world is largely a Goliath world–if you consider the daily news reports, social media posts, and the like. We laud the big people, the big events, the gargantuan gestures. Larger than life is laudable. The Guinness world record holders, the first-round picks, the election winners, the kings and queens that reign over county fairs, school events, and nations, the all-stars and champions are the Goliaths that capture our collective attention. Our genuflexion is faithful and passionate as we watch them, read about them, and center them in our conversations and aspirations. Goliaths are natural targets of admiration and easy bets in a world of lowly shepherds.

Not so, says author Malcolm Gladwell whose research on Davids and Goliaths turns conventional wisdom on its head. One account of such a David and Goliath battle particularly interested me as I read Gladwell’s book. He recounts the story of a National Junior Basketball team, a group of 12-13-year-old Silicon Valley girls, girls that Gladwell describes as “the daughters of computer programmers and people with graduate degrees. They worked on science projects, and read books, and went on ski vacations with their parents, and dreamed about growing up to be marine biologists” (Gladwell, How David beats Goliath, The New Yorker, April 11, 2009).

Vivek Ranadivé, an immigrant from Mumbai who founded TIBCO, a Silicon Valley software company, knew very little about basketball. But his daughter, Anjali, wanted to play with her Redwood City friends. And so he became the unlikely basketball coach for a team of relatively short, wholly inexperienced girls. These were not girls who played pick-up games in their spare time or who had to be called into their homes at dark from hours of shooting hoops in their driveways. Rookies would not even begin to describe these girls.

This was a team of Davids who would face Goliath girls, girls who had attended basketball camps since they were preschoolers, girls who put the neighborhood boys to shame, girls who wanted to win and who almost always did.

Ranadivé understood how little he knew about basketball, and so he recruited Roger Craig, the former all-pro running back for the San Francisco 49ers, who is also TIBCO’s director of business development. Craig, in turn, recruited his daughter, Rometra, who played Division I basketball at Duke and USC. Together, they took their Redwood City girls to the national championships.

They followed two basic principles: 1) they would run a full-court press during the entire game, and 2) they would deny their opponents’ inbound passes. Ranadivé understood his team’s weaknesses and knew that playing conventional basketball would never work. He coached his girls to run, to work hard, to literally smother the girl Goliaths of opposing teams. And it worked. They stunned and dominated their opponents. Team after team fell to the full court press of a group of Silicon Valley Davids.

When I read this story, I couldn’t help but think about the possible ramifications of such a strategy. What if others who were less naturally talented, less experienced, and less advantaged simply out-thought and out-worked the Goliaths in their lives? What if parents, teachers, coaches, business and government leaders looked seriously at the Davids in their midsts? And what if stories of upsets–Davids beating Goliaths–flooded the airwaves and internet?

What if? Gladwell turned to the research of political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft. His findings concerning David and Goliath battles are surprising:

Suppose you were to total up all the wars over the past two hundred years that occurred between very large and very small countries. Let’s say that one side has to be at least ten times larger in population and armed might than the other. How often do you think the bigger side wins? Most of us, I think, would put that number at close to 100 percent. A tenfold difference is a lot. But the actual answer may surprise you. When the political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft did the calculation a few years ago, what he came up with was 71.5 percent. Just under a third of the time, the weaker country wins. Arreguín-Toft then asked the question slightly differently. What happens in wars between the strong and the weak when the weak side does as David did and refuses to fight the way the bigger side wants to fight, using unconventional or guerrilla tactics? The answer: in those cases, the weaker party’s winning percentage climbs from 28.5 percent to 63.6 percent. To put that in perspective, the United States’ population is ten times the size of Canada’s. If the two countries went to war and Canada chose to fight unconventionally, history would suggest that you ought to put your money on Canada.

We ought to put our money on the little guy, the David who uses unconventional tactics? History has confirmed that we should. Gladwell warns us that when we fixate on the giant “with the sword and shield and glittering armor,” we may overlook that “so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine.”

During WWII, the Nazi Goliaths grossly underestimated the British shepherds. Gladwell argues that “They bombed London because they thought that the trauma associated with the Blitz would destroy the courage of the British people. In fact, it did the opposite. It created a city of remote misses, who were more courageous than they had ever been before. The Germans would have been better off not bombing London at all.” The Nazis used conventional warfare, and it backfired. Hunkered down in their bomb shelters, the British hung on and bravely persisted. In the end, they became symbols of all that is “beautiful and valuable in the world.”

You don’t have to look far to see the shepherds around you. They sit on athletic benches, waiting for a few meager seconds of play. They sit in the back rows of classrooms, their heads often swallowed up by over-sized hoods. They sit in offices behind computers, quietly doing their thing. They stand in factory lines beside others, who–day after day–show up to work. They run government offices, making copies and coffee, answering emails and phone calls. They sit beside us in doctors’ offices and on buses, stand beside us in bank and cinema lines. We see, but do not see, them every day.

Years ago, I led my school staff in some professional learning around Carol Dweck’s research on the growth mindset. Dweck argues that we either adopt a fixed or a growth mindset and that the consequences of both are powerful. Those who hold a fixed mindset believe that they are born with–or without–a set of talents and aptitudes. Their success, then, is directly a result of these talents and aptitudes. Their failure? This is largely due to the simple fact that they were not born “math people”, not inherently “mechanically-inclined,” “artistic or athletic.” In short, they can’t help that they were not born with the skills to compete in such environments.

Those who hold a growth mindset are acutely aware of their unique talents and aptitudes but refuse to believe that these will define them or prevent them from completing tasks that require skills they hadn’t inherited. They believe that with effort, persistence, and support that they can grow and change. Perhaps they will not be the best, the smartest, or the most talented, but they will be better at something tomorrow than they were today. Dweck’s research reveals the positive consequences of teaching students about the growth mindset and helping them to understand that the brain–like other muscles–can grow and change. In short, just because they were not born with math aptitude, they are not destined to be math flunkies; they may not become Olympic figure skaters, but they can learn to skate backwards and, perhaps, execute a mean spin.

The growth mindset is generally the mindset of the world’s Davids. Goliaths are bigger, more accomplished, more advantaged, but destined to fight conventionally with their natural, inborn talents and skills. Davids, however, do not have to cower in their shadows, convinced that they can do nothing, that they will be nothing. They can choose to fight differently, using the skills and aptitudes they do have and working even harder to grow and develop these. They can full-court press when they lack the natural dribbling and shooting abilities of their peers.

I think of my friend, Rhonda, who won a national Betty Crocker Award when she was in high school. Even Rhonda would freely admit that she is no domestic goddess. (I can attest to the fact that she once stapled–not sewed–her kids’ Halloween costumes!) But she is an excellent test-taker, which ultimately won her the award. She may not have been a Goliath in the kitchen or sewing room, but she used the talents she did have to win. I can just hear Vivek Ranadivé: “So you can’t cook, but you can take tests? Well, then, be the best test-taker you can possibly be. That’s how you’ll win.”

The Bible is filled with underdogs and misfits and the least-likely-to-succeed. And yet, God uses them and who they are to lead his people out of captivity, to build nations, and to save the world. Time after time, the shepherds–not the giants–win the day.

Consider Jesus, a son, a friend, God-made-flesh. When he could have used conventional tactics, calling on God’s power to smote evil and to save himself, he used the most unconventional and extraordinary tactics of all: he loved his enemies, turned the other cheek, and gave himself up to a sacrificial and atoning death. Even today, Christ is full-court pressing the world with mercy and grace. He persists in denying the inbound passes of those who would do evil. And he wins souls as a shepherd, not a giant.

Consider Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi. When others were all too eager to smote their enemies–literally–they embraced non-violent resistance. They marched in protest, suffering the insults and blows of those who wished to destroy them and their movements. Day after day, they hit the streets with dogged persistence and heart, keeping their eyes on the prize. In the end, their unconventional tactics changed the world and ushered in new eras of hope and equality.

Like Gladwell, I think we need to rethink our battle tactics. He writes:

We have a definition in our heads of what an advantage is—and the definition isn’t right. And what happens as a result? It means that we make mistakes. It means that we misread battles between underdogs and giants. It means that we underestimate how much freedom there can be in what looks like a disadvantage.

There is freedom in what looks like a disadvantage. There is much value in the shepherd who bravely, devotedly goes toe-to-toe with more powerful giants, using his or her disadvantage to an incredible advantage.

Maybe it’s time we celebrate the underdog, the disadvantage-turned-advantage, and the unconventional victories of shepherds. The world could use a lot more Vivek Ranadivés and Davids. But more than this, the world could use a lot more genuine fans and followers of these underdogs and all the underdogs-to-be.

For all of those who are–or will be–canning a bountiful harvest of garden fruits and vegetables, there are others out here who are canning-deficient. The Green Giant and the vendors at the local farmer’s market save us from ourselves, season after season. 

Life in Kitchen

The Tombstone Pizza was the last straw,

their breaking point.

Her family sentenced her to life in kitchen.

And it was no country club kitchen,

no.

They marshmallow-creamed her to their Amana door,

the neighborhood’s first human

refrigerator magnet.

Sometime during the seventh night,

the kids heard her scream for Nutty Bars,

and a few nights later for Ho-Hos.

But during the twenty-first night of captivity,

her husband swore she muttered

zucchini bread

and they let her down.

Consider her newly acquired skills:

She’s learned to make Ragu from scratch,

and after weeks of intensive kitchen work,

she, alone, unlocked the secret

to Velveeta.

Neighbors say her husband gives guided tours

of their kitchen daily,

that she is, indeed, a culinary wonder.

(Some admit, however, that her hands have grown

to look much like egg whisks,

and that when she speaks,

you can almost make out that pale pink spatula

that is her tongue.)

Last week, she made our local paper,

Community Events section, page two,

when she organized a picket

of the high school lunch room

the day they were serving tator tots

and meatball surprise.

And her children report that she has recently made

the Guinness Book of World Records

for the single largest order of Mason jars

from a True Value Hardware Store.

You see, she’s into canning these days.

And word has it, that on the last guided tour of her kitchen,

she unveiled her latest acquisition:

a twenty-by-twenty-foot pantry.

Lining the shelves there

were rows of canned goods neatly arranged:

corn, beans, tomatoes, rutabagas

And on the floor of the pantry,

in the largest Mason jar they’d ever seen,

she canned her husband.

He floated there in cucumber brine,

his skin and hair a pale and glossy green.

And as he bobbed about

to the extraordinary hum of the Cuisinart,

they say he was smiling.

And so was she.