Haunted and haunting, human and inhuman, war remains with us and within us, impossible to forget but difficult to remember.
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War  

I have no real rights in this matter. I’m neither soldier nor loved one of a victim or survivor. Still, nearly five decades later, the Vietnam War haunts me.

Kristin Hannah’s most recent novel, The Women, is Frankie McGrath’s coming-of-age story, a searing tale of a young woman gone to war as an Army Corps nurse in Vietnam. Frankie’s story brought it all back to me: the nightly news stories of the early 70s, the images that assaulted the covers of news magazines and television screens, the impending draft that threatened to take my high school classmates. Mostly, it brought back the nights when I lay awake imagining what I would do if I were male: Would I enlist? Would I wait, in hopes that I wouldn’t be drafted? Would I find refuge in college deferment? Would I flee to Canada? Would I conscientiously object?

My mother once joked that I excelled at living vicariously through others’ experiences, recalling how I’d begin to cry during the opening theme song of Lassie. Even before little Timmy got into trouble, you cried, she said, anticipating tragedy as you lived through Timmy’s pain and fear. It has been this gift (or curse) that has marked my Vietnam War experience. For reasons I couldn’t explain as a 17-year-old, I felt compelled to watch Vietnam movies and television series, to read Vietnam accounts and to listen to survivors. I agonized through Platoon, my knees drawn to my chest in my theater seat, my hands gripping the arm rests. I suffered through Apocalype Now–several times–and to this day, can’t hear Wagner’s The Ride of Valkrie without seeing images of helicopters vanquishing a Vietnamese village. I watched the television series, China Beach, and marveled at the persistent trauma that beleagured nurses, medics, and doctors encountered each day. I read veteran Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, and wept. And with each film, each television episode, each written or spoken word, I found myself mired in the same moral quandary: What would I have done? How would I have survived?

In 2017, filmmaker Ken Burns produced an 18-hour documentary series, The Vietnam War. Burns understands the impact that this war continues to have on Americans:

The Vietnam War was a decade of agony that took the lives of more than 58,000 Americans. Not since the Civil War have we as a country been so torn apart. There wasn’t an American alive who wasn’t affected in some way. More than 40 years after it ended, we can’t forget Vietnam, and we are still arguing about why it went wrong, who was to blame and whether it was all worth it. (“Ken Burns to preview Vietnam War documentary at free San Diego event”, San Diego Union-Tribune, April 22, 2017)

As a high school and college student, I was keenly aware of the political and social aspects of this war. But my Vietnam experience remained grounded in the most personal, philosophical, and ethical bedrock. I anguished over “what-ifs” and tried myself in the court of morality. I recall one moment during college when I came face-to-face with my biggest fear. As I imagined myself working through the jungle with my platoon, I saw a shadow–or maybe just a movement–shouldered my gun and fired. I remember thinking, I don’t fear being shot; I fear shooting–instinctively and unthinkingly pulling the trigger and killing someone. I sat up in bed, my heart racing and my hands trembling. I could kill, I thought, and this awareness slayed me.

Years later as an English teacher, I taught Tim O’Brien’s short story, “Ambush.” He opens this story with a scene in which his 9-year-old daughter asks him if he’d ever killed anyone. She knew that he’d been a soldier in Vietnam and that he wrote stories about the war. The story that follows is a grown-up answer to her question, an account that he hoped she might read and understand years later. He writes of being on a two-man watch, the heat oppressive and the fog thick. He describes seeing a man dressed in black with a gray ammunition belt emerging from the mist. Gun at his side, he was making his way down the trail. In this passage, O’Brien recounts the next moments:

I had already pulled the pin on a grenade. I had come up to a crouch. It was entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty. I crouched and kept my head low. I tried to swallow whatever was rising from my stomach, which tasted like lemonade, something fruity and sour. I was terrified. There were no thoughts about killing. The grenade was to make him go away—just evaporate—and I leaned back and felt my mind go empty and then felt it fill up again. I had already thrown the grenade before telling myself to throw it. (“Ambush”)

After killing the man, O’Brien realizes that [i]t was not a matter of live or die. There was no real peril. Almost certainly the young man would have passed by. And it will always be that way. He concludes the story by confessing that he hasn’t finished sorting it out, that sometimes he can forgive himself, and sometimes he can’t. O’Brien’s account here is one that I’d imagined so many times through the decades. This is why I can’t forget the Vietnam War. It stripped away the veneer of the person I thought I was and uncovered someone who could be–who probably would be in the right circumstances–a killer.

Although Hannah confronts a host of political and social issues regarding the Vietnam War in The Women, she does an exceptional job of profiling in-country field hospitals. She writes of the relentless trauma of 18-hour shifts, the crude facilities, the incessant heat, the constant threat of attack, the dying and the dead piling up in mind-numbing numbers, and the tragic inexperience of many doctors and nurses. In their article “In Country: U.S. Nurses During the Vietnam War,” Aaron Severson and Lorilea Johnson report that although the average age of a Vietnam nurse was 23, many were as young as 20, and only 35% of these nurses had two or more years of nursing experience when they enlisted. Most were recruited directly out of nursing school. Such is the case with Hannah’s protagonist, Frankie, who is thrust into trauma surgery after several weeks of stateside nursing duties which amounted to emptying bedpans and filling water pitchers. Severson and Johnson explain that [a] nurse who had been in Vietnam for six months had more credibility than a doctor who had just arrived, even if that doctor was very experienced in the States. These nurses had to learn quickly; this was trial by fire.

I’m haunted by Hannah’s Frankie as she is thrust into trauma surgery. I’m haunted by her experiences with devastating mortar wounds and napalm burns. And I’m haunted by her relentless terror, a terror that soldiers, helicopter pilots, doctors, medics, and nurses often tried to drink and laugh away, finding refuge in whatever might bring them temporary relief. I know that watching a film or reading a book is not active service. As I said, I have no real rights in this matter. But to the extent that I could, I’ve imagined this. In a sense of duty–perhaps misguided but nonetheless sincere–I’ve forced myself to imagine all this.

I can’t forget the times when Vietnam vets shared some of their experiences in college courses I taught. One vet admitted that he’d volunteered for a second tour, as my 18-year-old freshmen looked on in sore amazement. When one student finally asked why he’d gone back, the vet looked him directly in the eyes and said, Because I liked it. Because I was good at it. You could’ve heard a pin drop in that classroom. The look on his face still haunts me. He knew that they didn’t understand. How could they begin to know what it was like to serve in a unit of men who depended on one another, who’d give their lives for one another, to live on adrenaline and the hope that you’d see another day, to stay alive? And to return to a country in which many would rather you didn’t talk about your war experiences, and others condemned you for your service? He knew that they couldn’t understand, and his painful awareness haunts me.

Until I read Hannah’s novel, I wasn’t aware of the reception that most Vietnam nurses received upon coming home. Again and again, her protagonist, Frankie, tries to convince people that there were, indeed, women in Vietnam, that she was truly a veteran. They don’t believe her, insisting that there were no women in Vietnam. And to confound matters, after two years of experience in combat trauma surgery, she’s relegated to changing bed pans and filling water pitchers again, for hospital administrators argue she doesn’t have the proper raining or experience to be a surgical nurse. Hannah’s portrayal of Frankie’s struggle is tragically accurate.

In a profile of Army nurse Edie Meeks (The Washington Post, Nov. 8, 2013), Ruth Tam recounts an incident in 1992 when Meek’s daughter told her that her Mount Holyoke College professor proclaimed that you women will never know what it’s like to be in war. Aghast, her daughter approached the professor and asked if her mother could address the class. To her professor and classmates, she introduced her mother by saying, This is my mother, Edie Meeks. She was an Army nurse in Vietnam. I’m so proud of her. Meeks confessed that this was the first time that anyone had truly acknowledged her service. Twenty-three years later, she finally felt as though she’d been welcomed home. Like many combat soldiers, these nurses suffered from PTSD. It wasn’t until 1978–three years after the war ended– however, that the VFW accepted female veterans. I can’t begin to imagine what this must have felt like, and I can’t begin to forget these women’s pain and disappointment in reentering a country that didn’t appear to know–or care–that they’d even served.

I’m quite certain that I’ll never be able to forget what I’ve learned and what I’ve imagined about Vietnam. I don’t want to forget. It’s important that I don’t forget. Living vicariously through real and fictional characters has helped me experience the moral complexity, the indelible trauma, the exceptional comraderie, and the inconceivable costs of war. For me, the Vietnam War continues to be a moral testing ground, one on which I’ve discovered who I am–and who I’d like to be.

Smitten with love for my mother, my father bought 50 penny valentines at a drug store while he was on a college basketball road trip. It was 1952, and before he took the court that night, he mailed this legion of little cards in a declaration of love that would last a lifetime. This was the beginning of a love story that emerges in surprising ways through the letters that my mother lovingly archived. She kept them in their original envelopes, secured them in groups with rubber bands, and labeled them: Letters from Basketball Road Trip, Letters from Basic Training, Letters from Chicago, Letters from Summer School/Masters, Letters from Summer School/PhD. Before my father was a serious writer, he wrote remarkable letters that chronicle astonishment and gratitude for his great fortune in meeting and marrying his beloved, Marcia Lee Zorn.

Many children struggle to see their parents as lovers. Some outright reject the notion, preferring to believe that the father who changes their oil and the mother who makes special birthday dinners began their “real lives” after they became parents. That is, they may insist on beginning their family stories with parenthood. Of course, we know that our parents met and dated, fell in love and married. But to think of them as lovers? This may seem too intimate, too human.

I confess that my journey through these letters has been fraught with a whole host of emotions. Mostly, I’ve cried as I’ve read the tender proclamations of a man who preferred “shall” instead of “will” in his early letters, who elevated his love language to Jane Austen heights and rivaled the ardency of a Mr. Darcy. In one of my father’s early letters to my mother, he closes with these lines of verse and this final comment:

I pray thee bear with me. I need you so
When you’re away, life’s river ceases to flow
Your warmth, your tenderness, I’ll love you my own
Till eternity’s ash replaces my bone.

Whatever may happen in the future, I’ll always remember you by that last verse. It is a tribute to the finest girl I know, and I’m only reluctant that I can’t portray it better. I am yours forever. Your husband, Don.

In other letters that followed throughout the years, he often closed with “I’ll love you my own/Till eternity’s ash replaces my bone.” My mom often remarked that my Dad really knew how to close a poem. I’d add that he really knew how to close a letter, too. Each letter became a Valentine in spirit, as my father poured out his love in words that would make Wiliam Wordsworth weep.

My father’s letters from Basic Training in 1954 reveal a husband desperate to be reunited with his wife. He wrote daily from his tar-paper hut at Ft. Bliss, Texas, a 24 x 24 ft. shelter that had previously been used (and later condemned for use) as a prisoner-of-war shelter during WWII. On one hot and dusty night after he’d returned for the day’s training, he writes:

Your voice has been with me every minute today and as I am still with you and you with me, I will try to speak to you this evening through these written words. Never in my life have I loved anyone as much as I loved you today while speaking to you. . . To be in a strange place without you is like being lost in a forest, calling and calling, but no one hearing your plea and no guiding hand to guide your steps home. As I look back on this past year, I never cease to marvel the way God brought together two people who were so perfectly suited to each other.

In letter after letter, my father writes of the strength and simplicity of their marital love, a love he understood –even as a young man–to be infinite and eternal. He confesses to committing my mother’s letters to memory and to living for each long-distance phone call from Gothenburg, Nebraska. And he reveals the vulnerability of a lover who is overcome with gratitude, as he confesses:

The tears of happiness are streaming down my face, for I realize how truly fortunate I am. Why did God single me out among men to bring so much happiness into my life? You have never seen me cry, but I am tonight, and the tears are coming without shame, for being alone, the happiness is overwhelming.

To think of my dad sitting in that tar-paper hut, overcome with tears as he poured out his love and longing over three handwritten pages (front and back), almost breaks me. In a good way. In the very best way. From the early days of their marriage, he could see through the years and knew how it would end: with a love for the ages, a love set apart and blessed by God.

In a few days, men and women will make their way to greeting card aisles all over the world. They’ll scan the rows of Valentine cards for just the right one; they’ll read the verse inside for just the right sentiment. And then, perhaps they’ll buy a dozen roses or a box of chocolates (or some cashews–always a good choice, I think!) for their Valentine. Over the years, I’ve read and received many Hallmark Valentines, but I don’t think that I’ll ever read words as poignant, as utterly lovely as these of my father:

My wife, if I never deeply convince you of another thing, know that I love you beyond my strength and with such a love that reaches far into a reserve that is not mine.

Throughout their marriage, my father wrote birthday, Christmas, and Valentine poems for my mother each year, tucking them into a clip on her vanity mirror. She kept all of these in a scrapbook decorated with pink and red hearts. As his writing style developed over the years, the ornate style of his early letters evolved into the leaner–yet no less ardent–style of a free verse poet. Consider these lines from a 1984 Christmas poem for my mom:

We may be broken hard upon
time’s stone, but what I’ve come to love
is nothing time can break. There are those who
deepen into love by way of all the risks love takes,
and you are one. This Christmas let me
name you what you are, a woman beautiful in time,
and tell you what I know: I could not come
to love for any better sake. 

The night my father died in our family home, I had to wake my mother who’d finally fallen asleep. She refused to leave the living room where his hospital bed had been moved, insisting that she sleep on the sofa. I will never forget my mom throwing her arms around my dad, quietly weeping, her heart broken and yet full of gratitude for his peaceful passing and for their love: one born from a great and holy reserve that neither time nor distance could break.

In those years after my father’s death, I know that my mom regularly reread my father’s letters. As she pulled each letter from its envelope and read her husband’s words, I know that she could hear his voice and that she found great solace in passages like these:

When in later life, we sit together and perhaps even with the children gone, for it may be in those years when they have married, we shall recall the most memorable times in our life together, and it will help us to realize once and for all, how very fortunate we were that God brought together two people so remarkably suited for each other to live under and within the laws of matrimony. Darling, we have so very much to be thankful for, and lest I forget, never let me forget that our children must come from the same kind of homes and live among the same love that we have experienced. If love was a tangible thing, I would capture as much of mine as would be possible and send it to you. But it is not tangible, and perhaps, therein lies its real beauty, for it cannot be seen, only experienced, cannot be purchased, only given. Tonight, I give my love to you, my darling, and hope that you will treasure it always, for it is honorably given and created in a simple but powerful heart, capable of enduring strife, loneliness, pity, hunger, and most of all being away from its earthly source.

I take great solace and find great hope in these words. I’ve always known that I had remarkable parents, but through these letters, I’ve come to see them as lovers. For them–and for me–these letters are a sanctuary. In this sanctuary, I’ve discovered a man and a woman who suffered poverty and separation, who raised six children and opened their home to visiting writers, friends, and students, who enjoyed the simple pleasures of crane-watching and Potato Olés at Taco Johns, who loved their family beyond measure, and who’d always known that their marriage would go the course, for it was uniquely blessed. The legacy of this marriage is, indeed, a Valentine for the ages.

The Valentines 
--fifty-three years ago

Each one cost a penny.
While I was picking them out,
your face hovered over the counter
like a vision—

better than a two-bit sack
of peanut clusters,

better than the Sales
in Lingerie.

Later, in my single-bulb
hotel room

I signed all 50
with a sigh.

        ---your varsity guard, No. 11, 1952 (Don Welch to Marica Welch on Valentine's Day, 2005)

My mom and siblings, 2016

On January 10th, my mother would’ve been 90. She’s been gone almost a year now, and I’ve struggled for days knowing that I couldn’t pick up the phone and wish her a happy birthday. And I’ve struggled for days wanting to write about her and failing to find the words. It’s like that for most of us who’ve lost those we’ve loved. Words simply fail in the wake of such love–or they flounder about, well-intentioned but wholly inadequate. Still, we try–as we feel we must–to give voice to our memories and our longing. And so, I begin.

My mother never forgot a birthday. Edited in uniquely personal ways, she marked her birthday cards to us with underlined text (or double-underlined text) and an army of exclamation points. She took Hallmark verse to a whole new level. Or–as my dad once remarked–she out-Hallmarked Hallmark. In her final years when she’d taken up adult coloring, she sent us cards she’d lovingly colored with the set of colored pencils that were always within arms’ reach of her recliner. It goes without saying that her greatest embellishments were the notes she penned to remind each of us that we were loved and valued. In a world of throw-aways, her birthday cards were keepers.

My mother was the kind of woman who made birthdays real events. When I requested that my 5th birthday party be blue–everything blue!–she came through with blue Kool-Aid, blue frosted cupcakes, blue napkins, and blue party favors. When the party ended, she sent six kindergartners home with royal blue lips, teeth, and fingertips. I like to think that we were the original prototypes for Smurfs–blue toothy grins and all!

I often find myself thinking: If I could just have just one more hour–even a half hour–what would I say to my mother? It’s a silly mind game that generally results in the realization that I couldn’t even begin to say the things I want to say in an hour. Still, I play it often, rehearsing all the things I’d tell her over a cup of tea. As I ponder, I’ve come to realize that these moments are ones in which I feel her presence most, moments during which our imagined conversation is nearly as good as the real thing. For in these moments, I can hear her voice, can see her seated in her maroon recliner with her cat on her lap, and can feel the peace that always radiated from sitting next to her. In my many imagined conversations, I always say this: You are sorely missed and loved. The rest of of what I have to say is pretty much chicken scratch in comparison.

On her 90th birthday, how would I have begun to measure the worth of a woman who’d poured herself fully into so many lives? As I noted at her memorial service last year, she was a cup-half-full kind of woman who continually emptied herself into her husband and children, relatives and neighbors, friends and visitors. Paradoxically, in spite of all this pouring out, she was never empty. Magically, the more she emptied herself into others, the more she was filled. Each year on her birthday, I would tell her that when I grew up, I wanted to be a cup-half-full kind of woman just like her.

My mother was a tree-climbing, cat-loving girl who grew up to attend college on a drum scholarship. In the 50s! She was a honey-haired coed pounding away on a snare drum in a music practice room when my father heard her. And then he saw her, barefooted and lost in a rhythm that drew him in–for life. She was the kind of woman who happily consented to a first date that took her into a hay field at dusk, a dime cup of coffee in hand. There, she crouched with my father behind a haystack where they could watch the sandhill cranes before they left for the river at night. She was the kind of woman who told my father that the Chicago apartment they could afford to rent while he was stationed there in the Army wasn’t so bad. It was bad, my father told me, so bad that my baby crib occupied a small room that had once been a coal room. So bad that my grandmother cried when she visited. So bad that my mother wouldn’t let me crawl on the floor, which was cold and dirty despite her repeated efforts to scrub. It was very bad, he said, but at the time, neither of them could see how bad it truly was because they were desperately in love–with each other and with me. In old black and white baby photos of this time, I’m diapered and wearing my dad’s garrison cap as my parents smile widely in the background. There’s no trace of the poverty that marked their lives here.

My father was a prolific letter-writer in the early years of their courtship and marriage. And my mother kept all of these letters: those from college basketball trips when he was on the road, those from his weeks of basic training, and those from his university office where he did the majority of his writing. When I think of what I would take if my house was on fire, I know that I would take those carefully bundled letters in my first grab. In these letters, I’ve come to know my father and mother in new and glorious ways. Above all, I’ve come to see my mother as my father saw her. Quite simply, he adored her. From the beginning, he recognized her seemingly endless capacity to give, as well as her commitment to encourage and affirm. Over the years, he wrote poems and letters in which he acknowledged what he’d known from their courtship: she was–and always would be–the beautiful foundation upon which he’d built his life. She was his greatest source of peace and joy. In a 1987 Mother’s Day letter, he wrote:

Maybe, just maybe, someone will recognize someday what an unusual marriage we have had. If not, we know, have known, and will continue to know how much we love each other, how we move in unison so often.

As I walk the path at the nature center each morning, I pass a small stone bench tucked a few feet off the path. In a family of practical cedar benches that flank the path, it’s an anomaly. It would look more at home in an English garden, centered in a field of violets under an aging willow. Its legs are ornate corbels that have sunk unevenly into the earth. Its top is large enough to hold two people, but only if they sit shoulder to shoulder, leg to leg. Each day as I pass the bench, I imagine that this is where my mother and father sit, watching the sun rise over the eastern ridge as it flames the dawn. I imagine that this is where they begin their day, their talk mingling with birdsong. I imagine that they will always be here, their presence grounding me as it always has and always will.

On the occasion of my mother’s 90th birthday, I imagine that I’d linger at the bench for a while and chat. And then, handing my mom a birthday bouquet and a poem I’d written her, I’d call over my shoulder as I walked down the path: When I grow up, I want to be just like you.

The question, however, is not whether beliefs can lead us astray, as they all can, but what sorts of beliefs are most likely to lend themselves to respect for human life and flourishing. Should we see human beings as virtual supermen, free to flout any convention, to pursue power at any cost, to accumulate wealth without regard for consequence or its use? Are gold toilets and private rocket ships our final statement of significance? Or is it a system of belief that considers human beings all synapse and no soul, an outgrowth of the animal world and in no way able to rise above the evolutionary mosaic of which everything from the salmon to sage is a piece? David Wolpe, “The Return of the Pagans” (The Atlantic, Dec. 25, 2023)

David Wolpe’s analysis of the paganism that persists in the world today was not exactly the Christmas Day reading I was expecting. His article was a socks-and-underwear kind of gift, one that would never make your official “Christmas gift list,” but one that proves a necessary and valuable gift, nonetheless.

From Wolpe’s opening paragraphs, I was taken by his even-handed application of paganism to both conservative and progressive political views:

Although paganism is one of those catchall words applied to widely disparate views, the worship of natural forces generally takes two forms: the deification of nature, and the deification of force. In the modern world, each ideological wing has claimed a piece of paganism as its own.

Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple, Wolpe accuses those on the left of being “world-worshippers” who endow nature with sanctity, while accusing those on the right as being “force-worshippers” who hold wealth and political power as sacred. Of course, he generalizes both views, for he’s aware that there are individuals in both camps who refuse to worship nature or force. Still, he asserts that, generally speaking, “the paganism of the left is a kind of pantheism, and the paganism of the right is a kind of idolatry. Hug a tree or a dollar bill, and the pagan in you shines through.”

Thoughout his article, Wolpe reasons well and provides readers with many good contemporary examples of paganism and paganists. He does so, however, to raise more important questions about what we choose to believe. He concludes aptly by asking us to consider which beliefs are most likely to lend themselves to respect for human life and flourishing .

As I finished Wolpe’s article, the words of Martin Luther King Jr. quickly came to mind. In his “Letter to Birmingham Jail,” he writes to refute accusations from eight “dear fellow clergymen.” One of these accusations was that King and his followers were extremists. King’s responds that although he felt badly about being called an “extremist,” his disappointment was short-lived. He levels these words at his fellow clergymen:

Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .” 

And he finishes off this refutation with words I’ve never forgotten: So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. King asks if we will be the kind of extremists who love or hate, who defend or destroy justice. Decades before Wolpe began to write, King understood that the effects of extremism come directly from the belief system that girds it. Our beliefs can preserve and improve life, or they can weaken and destroy it. What we believe in matters greatly.

To a certain extent, I think it’s safe to say that many of us can respect the extreme devotion of those who live solidly within their belief systems. If respect is too postive a word, perhaps it’s better to use Webster’s second definition of respect: giving particular attention. We pay particular attention to those who live their beliefs intensely. Even if we vehemently disagree with their beliefs, we are often sorely amazed at the force with which they live them and die for them. Our world has been, and continues to be, a stock pot in which force heats some beliefs to the boiling point, scalding the guilty and innocent alike.

There have always been those who’ve argued that the ends justify the means, that if beliefs are worth living for, they’re worth dying for–and killing for; that violence and collateral damage are to be expected and accepted; that we must simply put our heads to the plow of our beliefs and not look back. In contrast, there have always been those who’ve asserted that the ends never justify the means and that we must live in the world, even as we strive not to be of it. History is marked with–and continues to be marked with–individuals and groups who promote their beliefs in disparate and often tragic ways.

As I aged, I became more convicted that high school students should be required to take a course on world views. The more I taught high school students, the more I realized how little they understood about the fundamental differences in what people believe regarding creation, free will, morality, life, afterlife, etc. As I designed and then taught a world view unit, I faced many challenges. Not the least of these challenges was the issue of exclusivity. No self-respecting high school student wanted to go on record and admit that every world view is exclusive; that is, that subscribing to the tenets of any world view meant that you must exclude tenets of others. I recall classes during which students asked questions like these: “Wait, does that mean that if you hold a monotheistic world view that you can’t believe in other gods?” “If you’re a Christian, does that mean you don’t believe in reincarnation?” “If you believe in Scientism, does that mean that you can’t believe in an afterlife because only science can give us the truth about life and death?” In truth, most of my students preferred a smorgasbord of beliefs–a mashup of their favorite tenets from different world views. Still, they came to understand that these views were fundamentally different and exclusive, that subscribing to one meant that you accepted it as truth.

I had colleagues who advised me to consider the costs of teaching such a unit–the professional and personal costs. They weren’t so sure this was a good idea and thought it was better to be safe than sorry. But I remembered my own freshman year in college, shuddering at how naive and unprepared I was to be confronted with professors who challenged what I believed. Sadly, some did more than challenge; they attacked, using their classrooms as bully pulpits to advance their beliefs. Unarmed and mostly defenseless, I lacked the understanding of world view differences that would’ve better prepared me to ask good questions and refute propostions. Recalling all my confusion and shame, I became more convicted that my students would be better prepared with, at the very least, a general understanding of how and why belief systems differed greatly. I wanted them to know that they would be challenged intellectually and spiritually. I wanted them to carefully consider what they believed, for as David Wolpe argues, some beliefs can lead us astray. And I wanted them to put on the full armor of knowledge as they made their way through postsecondary education and life beyond. I was preparing them for battle.

And though I’m certain I didn’t say it as eloquently as Rabbi David Wolpe, I wanted my students to examine a variety of belief systems, so they might decide for themselves which beliefs were most likely to respect life and cause it to flourish. Our beliefs provide us with strongholds, places to which we go for strength and inspiration, for truth and virtue. Behind the walls of such fortresses and in the company of fellow believers, we take refuge and prepare for intellectual, social, and spiritual battle. But may our belief systems also be sanctuaries to which we go in supplication, in humble examination of our own souls. May the penitent among us challenge the way we live our beliefs and continue to ask: Are our beliefs most likely to lend themselves to respect for human life and flourishing?

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
― Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith  

In the 1st century B.C., King Herod–also known as “Herod the Great”–ruled the Roman province of Judea as both a great and terrible leader. In the Gospel of Matthew, we read of his anger when he discovered that a Jewish messiah was born, a baby enthroned as “King of the Jews,” a title he’d claimed for himself during his 30-year reign. To ensure that this infant king was killed and would pose no threat to his own position, Herod issued the order to kill all male children under two years of age who lived in and around the region of Bethlehem. We know this tragedy today as the “Massacre of the Innocents.” This was a dark and frightening time during which Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt to protect their newborn son.

We tend to sanitize the nativity, placing a plump, white-faced Jesus in a sweet manger, surrounding him with adoring parents in humble, but clean clothes, and placing the whole lot of them–shepherds, sheep, cattle, wisemen–in and around a quaint and rustic stable that looks much like popular wedding venues today. We tend to focus on the light, so that we might keep the darkness at bay. And we hold fast to the peace, the love and joy of the nativity, keeping our fears tucked safely away.

For just as those in Judea were filled with fear so many years ago, we are, too. Our world is dark and darkening daily. Since that “Massacre of the Innocents” near Bethlehem, there have been–and continue to be–many such massacres. Today’s news looks as though it might’ve been taken as a page from Herod’s playbook. In truth, even as we celebrate Christmas–claiming the good news of Christ’s birth–we’re painfully aware that the world is a wolf, pacing outside our doors and waiting for its next meal.

I confess that as I finish this Advent series, a post about fear seems, perhaps, unnecessarily maudelin. And yet, I felt compelled to write it, for I believe that the complexity of the nativity is something we shouldn’t ignore. Frederick Buechner, American author and theologian, proclaims that beautiful and terrible things will happen in our world and insists that we shouldn’t be afraid. He seems to echo Jesus’ words in John 16:33: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” To live as a Christian is to embrace the reality of trouble, of terrible things that have happened and continue to happen. It’s also, however, to live with the assurance of beauty and hope that transcends this world. This tension between fear and hope, between the terrible and the beautiful is one with which most of us are all too familiar. And if we sometimes grieve the burden of this tension, we also begrudgingly acknowledge its necessity.

For years, I had a quote from Holocaust survivor, Gerda Weissman Klein taped to the wall above my desk at work:

Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry, and you give it to a friend.

Klein’s words became a powerful metaphor for my life, as I imagined a world–dark and darkening–lit gloriously by a single act of generosity and beauty. Even as I struggle with my own fears for the world my grandchildren will inherit, I can imagine a world in which one raspberry could change everything. And I like to think that in the midst of their fears, Mary, Joseph, and so many others understood that Jesus was a single, miraculous gift that would change the world. I like to think that they, too, could imagine a world in which a father would make the greatest sacrifice for the greatest good.

Each morning as I walk at the Pioneer Ridge Nature Preserve, I round the corner of the first pond and stand–just for a few moments–to take in the eastern sky which seems to bloom, opening above the tree line in tangerine, aubergine, and rose. Every time is just as breath-taking as the last. I stand amazed that, in the midst of the world’s persistent darkness, there is light enough for this day. And light enough for the next.

I stand amazed that somewhere in the world, a friend is giving his entire possession to another, that a parent is sacrificing all for her child, that a bystander is intervening in a single act of courage and kindness. Against a backdrop of darkness and fear, these acts shine more brightly. Just as Christ’s birth did against this same backdrop of darkness and fear so many years ago. What we fear is real, but we can take heart at Christmas and always: Christ has overcome the world.

The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before. ― Samuel Johnson

“He is exhausted, the King is exhausted on high!” Quinn, age 4, was singing at the top of his lungs from the corner of his bedroom. He’d heard us sing the popular 90s praise song, “He is Exalted,” at church, but because “exalted” wasn’t a word in his preschool vocabulary, he substituted one that was. No doubt, he’d heard me use “exhausted” many times as a working mother of four. I remember chuckling but quickly sobering as the truth of what my son sang washed over me. The Creator of the universe, the Lord of all who loved his people enough to give them free will only to watch them turn their backs on Him, the Father who sent his son to live among us, to suffer, die, and rise again for the salvation of the world–all of this must have been, and must continue to be, seriously exhausting.

And as we watch the daily news and plow through our daily lives, I’m guessing that many may describe our planet as exhausted. Even three centuries ago, English writer Samuel Johnson felt the persistent ache of the world’s exhaustion. Rather than succumb to it, however, he looks forward with anticipation that he might see something which he’d never seen before. Like fellow 18th century writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau who claimed that “Anticipation and Hope are twins,” Johnson built his anticipation on a foundation of hope. We build our own anticipation on all sorts of foundations, many of which are flimsy, worldly foundations that crumble and slip away like sand. In this season of Advent, the anticipation we witnessed in a waiting world was built on a firm foundation of hope in God’s promise to send a Messiah.

It goes without saying that act of anticipation can be exquisitely painful. I remember watching my children circle the Christmas tree, counting packages, mentally weighing and measuring them, imagining what lay beneath the wrapping paper. And I remember their nightly pleas, “Just one. Can’t we open just one?” Truthfully, the waiting was often just as painful for me, and more times than I can count, I found myself faltering, perilously close to caving in. In his novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini writes: “Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.” Perhaps he’s right. Still, anticipating is a special type of waiting. Founded on hope, it’s a paradoxical mix of pain and pleasure. Even as we agonize in waiting, we rejoice in the hope that what we’ve waited for will be greater than we’ve imagined. Even though the wait is excruciating, it truly “hurts so good.”

Last year at this time, I made a trip to Kearney to see my brother perform in a community theater Christmas production and to visit my mom. Looking back, this was the last time I would see my mom in her faithful recliner, welcoming and visiting with family and guests who’d come to spend time with her. In a few weeks, she’d be bed-bound, and my siblings and I would gather to spend our final days with her. I knew, even as I grieved her impending death, that she’d anticipated this moment for six years. The moment when she’d enter into glory and see my father again. For six long years, she’d waited for death and rebirth. Her wait was painful, as daily, she grieved the loss of her husband, the love of her life. And it was wonderful, as she spent precious time with her family and friends, loving, encouraging, and offering counsel to all until the very end. Above all, her anticipation grounded her in sacred hope that “the dead in Christ will rise first” [1 Thessalonians 4:16]. I have only to close my eyes, and I can see my mother and father, feel their presence, hear their familiar words of greeting. And the expectation of remembering them is that special kind of expectation that brings both pain and pleasure. How I miss them. My tears seed my days in sweet anticipation of joining them in heaven.

There is an element of preparation in anticipation, the period during which we formulate plans to act upon what we’ve been anticipating. With all four of my children–through adoption and through birth–this period of preparation happily consumed me. There was a nursery to be outfitted (or re-outfitted), names to be chosen, hand-me-downs to be washed or clothes to be bought, siblings and family to be told. The preparation for a new baby came in like the tide, washing upon the shore of my days with urgency and certainty. Each act of preparation fueled my anticipation. As I folded blankets and washed bottles, I saw my new son or daughter grow up and become an adult in my mind. I imagined the lives they’d lead and the blessings they’d bestow. In Isaiah 40: 3-5, we read of the preparation for Christ in the Old Testament, words that John the Baptist repeats again in the New Testament as he announces Christ’s coming:

A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord ; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together.

I think it’s safe to say that many of us greet each new day as if we’re entering the wilderness. That is, even as we try to control our circumstances, we encounter a jungle out there, one in which we’re often at the mercy of forces beyond our control. And so, we wake each day in expectation, prepared to forge a better, straighter way in this wilderness, to clear a path for Christ’s entry into our fallen world. I’m afraid that my own preparations are humble, daily reminders to refocus on what’s important, to cut through the clutter of responsibilities and schedules and find–again–the straighter, better path forward. They’re ongoing preparations, for I find that I often do what I don’t want to do, wandering off onto paths that too often lead away–rather than toward–Christ. And so, I rise each day prepared to make my way through the wilderness again.

There’s also an element of disappointment that may accompany anticipation. We build our expectations up to enormous proportions, creating outcomes that often grow exponentially with each passing day. When I was a sophomore in high school, I knew that my mom was making me something for Christmas. A self-taught seamstress, she could make anything. Our prom dresses, coats (and floor-length cape for my sister!), and school clothes were testaments to her skill and desire to outfit us with the funds she had available. I’d been imagining what she might be making me when I decided (or was this less decision than impulse?) to peer into the basement window where I knew she was a work on her sewing machine. And there it was: the pieces of a pleather (yes, this was a thing in the 70s–genuine artifical leather!) jumper laid out across the floor. I looked and backed away as If I’d been stung. I stood on the small sidewalk that ran along the side of our house and immediately regretted what I’d done. And what then? I had weeks until Christmas to live with my deceit. I’m not sure what gift I’d expected to discover, and it no longer mattered. What did matter was how I was to move forward, whether or not I’d be able to feign convincing surprise when I opened the gift on Christmas Eve. In the days after, I stewed in my own juices. I don’t actually remember much about how this Christmas Eve played out. In the years since, however, I remember how my expectation led to disappointment–in myself, not the gift–and how my focus shifted quickly from the gift to the gift-giver. In those remaining days before Christmas, I was consumed with my desire to show my mom the gratitude I genuinely felt.

Undoubtedly, there were some who’d anticipated their own kind of Messiah and who were sorely disappointed with the gift of a baby. Clearly, there were many whose expectations for a King of Kings were sorely disappointed with the gift of a suffering servant, the Son of God destined to die among thieves on a cross. Like me, they’d lived in anticipation of the gift. There were some, however, whose eyes were fixed firmly on the gift-giver. Those, like Mary, knew well the gift-giver and built their anticipation on God’s love and promise. There are who continue to live with this same type of anticipation, with the assurance that [e]very good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows [James 1:17]. In this season of Advent, as we look back upon that night in Bethlehem, we might also look forward in glorious anticipation of the gift few of us can begin to imagine. For our hope is not yet exhausted, and there is a way through the wilderness.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 1 Thessalonians 4: 16-17

‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her. Luke 1: 38

As I walk in the nature preserve each morning, words buzz about my brain. I compose as I walk most days and find that the rhythm of my steps works its own kind of magic as I write. In the past week, the lyrics of a song kept building until “Mary’s Psalm” was born–lyrics with hopes of finding a melody one day. The song opens with this stanza:

There is wonder here
On this midnight clear
And I will not fear
What I will carry

Every Advent season, Mary’s resolute acceptance of all she would carry astounds me. She carries the child in her womb, the incarnate Son of God. She carries the suffering servant who would live among us, teaching and healing, bringing God to earth. And she carries our salvation, the Christ who was born to die for us. Though the weight of all she carries should crush her, Mary faces the angel Gabriel and concedes: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me, according to your word.”

Ask most mothers about what they’ve carried–and continue to carry–and they’ll recount the weight of their respective journeys. They’ll tell you much (perhaps more than you’ll ever want to know) about their pregnancies and deliveries, about their hopes and fears, about their subsequent joy and ongoing concern for their child’s well-being. They’ll tell you much about the emotional and spiritual weight of raising a child, the crucible of protecting a child against all the forces which threaten to destroy him or her, the sleepess nights, and the hours of prayer. Still, they soldier on because the load they carry is for life, through good times and bad times, in sickness and in health. And this consent is both sweet weight and release.

I have a friend and former co-worker, Ariann, whose consent to carry has inspired many. Five years ago, she and her husband, Drew, were told that their unborn son suffered from hydrochephalus, that he would only live a short time, perhaps minutes, if he made it to term and survived birth. Upon hearing such news, some couples would have chosen to terminate the pregnancy, sparing themselves and their unborn child further suffering. But Arianne and Drew said, “let it be with me, according to your word.” They chose to carry the sweet weight of Matthew to term and to love him for as long as they could. To say that their story is miraculous is, indeed, an understatement. For not only did Matthew survive his birth, he survived several brain shunt operations and lives today as a spunky and beloved big brother to Aurora. Nicknamed Matthew the Great for his tenacity and spirit, he continues to bless and inspire many. Understandably, Ariann and Drew carry concerns for his future health and well-being as Matthew will inevitably face other surgeries. They live with gratitude, though, a joyful testament to their faith.

In Tim O’Brien’s famous collection of short stories, The Things They Carried, he chronicles a platoon of American soldiers fighting on the ground in the Vietnam War.  He writes: “They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.” In truth, perhaps we all carry what we can bear. Perhaps we all carry a silent awe for the terrible power of those things we carry. For, in truth, we all carry loads that bring us both joy and pain. We carry plans and dreams that challenge us and may even threaten to bury us under their weight. We carry hope throughout our ordinary days, believing that the world can be a better, brighter place for all. We carry grief as we watch those we love suffer and die, as we watch our world collapse under the weight of conflict, war, and natural disaster. We carry time, measuring our days against the running clock of mortality. And we carry faith, which buoys and burdens us, as we seek to live both in this world and not of it.

Our consent to carry these things is sometimes resolute and sometimes tremulous. There are moments in our lives during which we experience great peace as we proclaim, “Let it be unto me, according to your word.” And there are other moments during which we quake, mouthing the words we hope to believe, the words by which we hope to live: “Let it be unto me, according to your word.” For we want to take up our crosses, and we want to lay them down. We want to carry the weight of our faith, and we want to unburden ourselves of it. In our human frailty, we can only cry out, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Matthew 9:24)

In this season of Advent, Mary’s words convict me to consider all that we carry. Much of what we carry is unseen, hopes and fears and doubts that shelter in unspoken prayers. But make no mistake, the weight is there. Sometimes it grounds us in peace and joy, while other times, it buries us in pain and fear. Even as a teenage girl, Mary understood that her load would be lightened only if she turned to God. By her own efforts, she couldn’t bear the weight. By our own efforts, neither can we.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11: 28-30

Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith. Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith

A disclaimer: For most of my life, I’ve had an intimate relationship with doubt. Over the years, self-doubt grew to be a constant and insistent companion. In classrooms and social gatherings, I hung back, watched, and waited as others eagerly asserted themselves into conversations and activities. As I examined myself in mirrors, doubt stood at my shoulder, a stern matron who scrutinized what I’d chosen to wear or how I styled my hair. As I navigated relationships, doubt held court as the great inquisitor: Should I say this? Or this? Or nothing? Should I do this? Or this? Or nothing? In truth, many are plagued by self-doubt, and I’ve come to see that my own experience is more universal than unique.

At its worst, doubt can cripple and destroy, paralyzing individuals from actively participating in their lives. This is largely why almost everything we hear or read casts doubt as a foe, an enemy to be hunted down and finally vanquished. Doubt is an adversary that robs us of confidence and certainty; it spreads like a malignancy and kills the good cells of our well-being. At least, that’s what we’re often told. I recall a group of high school students proudly offering the words of a popular coach to the class one day: Say what you mean, and mean what you say. They lauded the wisdom of these words. Words to live by, they said. At 16, they believed that living life well was all about being certain and proclaiming this certainty with passion. For them, doubt was a bad character trait, an attribute of the weak and indifferent.

In spite of some dark times with doubt, I’ve found that it’s generally been more blessing than curse. Recently, I read Austrian poet Ranier Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. He writes to Franz Xaver Kappus, a 19-year-old cadet at the Theresian Miliatry Accademy in Wiener Nestadt. I was taken by his words to Kappus on doubt:

And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. But don’t give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers–perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.

Perhaps, like Rilke, we might take a closer, more positive look at doubt. Perhaps, if we would train it, doubt might become one of our best workers, maybe even the most intelligent of all the ones that are building our lives. When I think of the times I’ve wrestled most strenuously with doubt, I confess that the struggle has almost always been a redemptive one. True, it has been wraught with sleepless nights and some intense soul-searching. Like Rilke, I asked much of my doubt. I demanded that it prove itself and come clean with a resolution, whatever that may be. During these wrestling matches, I felt as though I were in an old-time melodrama, an angel in white and a devil in black perched on opposing shoulders. One would assert an argument, as the other prepared to counter. This might go on for days–or months. And though some might regard this as unnecessary psychological and emotional torture, I’ve come to see it as a redemptive struggle. That is, as I worked through my doubt, I began to shape the underpinnings of my own worldview. I began to understand who it was I wanted to be and how I wanted to live.

My friends and family were both alternately bemused and amused during a few weeks in the late 80s when I wrestled with whether or not to use the funds I’d saved from teaching an extra night class to remodel our upstairs bathroom. On one hand, I really wanted to replace our tub with a walk-in shower, to purchase a new vanity, and to generally bring the decor into the 80s (it had been stuck in the gold and avocado 60s for much too long). But on the other hand, I didn’t know if I could justify spending money on something that wasn’t truly necessary. I struggled with a materialism that seemed decadent. My doubts over whether or not to remodel consumed me for a time. In hopes of gaining clarity, I read several books that offered a faith-based perspective on money. In the end, I decided that it was o.k. to remodel our bathroom. Most importantly, however, as I wrestled with my doubts, I began to develop a healthy sense of stewardship that has served me well through the years.

French scientist and philosopher René Descartes claimed that “[i]f you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” As I watch political and cultural battles rage today, I’m convinced that most of us would do well to take Descartes’ words to heart (and mind). That is, we shouldn’t discount the vital role that doubt plays in the search for truth. All my life, I’ve been amazed at the quick confidence of those around me, in both my personal circle as well as on the world stage. The certainty with which some speak and act often astounds me–and often saddens me. It seems as though these individuals never doubt themselves, never consider the gray areas, never wrestle with the what-ifs. Without an active sense of doubt, it seems as though they’ve become blind and deaf to opposing ideas and positions. Without doubt, it seems as if they aren’t truly seeking truth. “Where doubt is, there truth is–that is her shadow,” writes American short story writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce who understood the partnership of doubt and truth to be a healthy and necessary one.

In Camden Conversations, American writer Walt Whitman extolled the virtues of doubt, which he regarded as a kind of “scientific spirit”:

I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.

Although it’s true that doubt may result in self-deprecation and even self-loathing, it’s also true that doubt can–and perhaps should–result in humility: the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them, the chance to try over again after a mistake or wrong guess. I consider the times when I’ve misjudged, times during which my doubt gratefully rescued me from myself and set me on a truer, more humane course. Having battered me until I came to my senses, doubt kept the way beyond open and offered the possibility for starting over.

When it comes to faith–spiritual or otherwise–there are those who argue that doubt foils belief. In one of my favorite Philip Roth short shories, “The Conversion of the Jews,” the young Jewish protagonist, Ozzie, has many questions for his teacher, Rabbi Binder. Much to the dismay of his friend and classmate, Itzie, Ozzie continues to wrestle with the idea of a virgin birth, with an immaculate conception. As a Jew, Ozzie has been taught that Jesus is a prophet, an extraordinary man, but that his birth was a typical, human birth. But Ozzie wrestles with sincere doubts, reasoning that if God could create the entire universe in six days, it wouldn’t be impossible for him to impregnate Mary. He shares this reasoning with Itzie after class:

“Anyway, I asked Binder if He could make all that in six days, and He could pick the six days He wanted right out of nowhere, why couldn’t He let a woman have a baby without having intercourse.”

When the Rabbi begins–again–to explain that Jesus was a historical figure, that he lived as a man, Ozzie persists and later tells Itzie, “So I said I understood that. What I wanted to know was different.” Roth tells us that what Ozzie wants to know is always different, that doubt is an active agent in his spiritual life. During free discussion time the next school day, Ozzie offers his reasoning once again, exclaiming “Why can’t He [God] make anything He wants to make!” and accusing Rabbi Binder of not knowing anything about God. When Binder insists that he apologize for his outburst and accusation, Ozzie continues his line of reasoning, reasserting that his teacher doesn’t understand anything about God. In frustration, Binder slaps him. Shocked, Ozzie calls his teacher a “bastard” and then flees from the classroom, taking refuge on the rooftop where he locks the door behind him. Bedlam ensues, as classmates, Binder, and eventually his mother anxiously stand in the school yard below and beg him to come down. The fire department arrives, and firefighters haul out a large net in preparation for Ozzie’s possible leap from the roof. After much begging and cajoling, Ozzie agrees to come down–but only after all who are gathered below kneel and confess that they believe in Jesus Christ and the immaculate conception. Satisfied with their confession, he jumps into the firefighers’ net, and the story ends.

As readers, we don’t get to see how Ozzie’s faith journey plays out over his lifetime. Although he is a fictional character, I think it’s safe to say that his doubts reflect those of many individuals who question their faith. And if he were a real person, I think it’s safe to say that his doubts would play an important role in shaping his faith. Like many who wrestle with questions of faith, in the end, I believe Ozzie’s doubts would prove to be more beneficial than harmful.

German-American philosopher and Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich would see that Ozzie’s doubt is not “opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.” In “Faith and Doubt, Friends or Foes?” author and theologian Stephen D. Morrison expounds on Tillich’s statement:

When faith is defined as the belief in an object or set of facts, then faith is opposed to doubt. But, as Tillich argues, when faith is defined properly as the state of being ultimately concerned then doubt is included in that concern and is indeed necessary to its existence. Faith and doubt are then not opposite acts, but co-dependent acts.

Clearly, many would argue that faith is, indeed, the belief in an object or set of facts; they would reject Tillich’s assertions that faith is the state of ultimately being concerned and that faith and doubt are co-dependent acts. Still, I think Tillich and Morrison give us much to consider here. Before critics summarily dismiss the idea of doubt as a vital element of faith, perhaps they might look to those pillars of faith in their own lives. I’m guessing that they’d be hard-pressed to find one of those individuals who hadn’t encountered doubt in his or her faith journey. In fact, I’m guessing that those individuals became pillars of faith because they actively and humbly wrestled with their doubts.

Thomas, one of the twelve apostles, doubted Christ’s resurrection. In John 20: 25, he tells his fellow apostles: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Consider Thomas who lived and worked alongside Jesus, who heard him speak and witnessed his miracles, and yet, who doubted. A week later, when Jesus appears to the group, he instructs Thomas to touch his side and see his nail-scarred hands, to stop doubting and believe. A reluctant missionary, Thomas continues to struggle in his faith until years later, he plants seeds for the Christian church along the western coast of India. Today, Saint Thomas is venerated as the Apostle of India. A population of Indian Christians who live along the Malabar Coast lay claim to conversion by the saint whom we’ve come to know as “doubting Thomas.”

This is by no means an argument against certainty. Rather, this is a proposal to look more carefully–and compassionately–at the role of doubt in our lives. I realize that this may buck current trends that encourage us to purge our doubt, to beat it back when it rears its ugly head, and, by doing so, to become our best, most confident selves. Still, I propose that we consider the words of English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon, who like Tillich, valued the integral role that doubt can play in one’s search for truth:

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Then, as I was scrolling, I came upon a short video of an interview that the author James Baldwin gave many decades ago. “There may not be as much humanity in the world as one would like to see, but there is some,” he said. “There is more than one would think.” He spoke with gravity and moral conviction, his eyes boring into the interviewer, who was off-camera. “Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you,” he continued. “What you’ve got to remember is what you’re looking at is also you. Everyone you’re looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide for yourself not to be.” Excerpts from “A Humanist Manifesto” by David Brooks, (The Atlantic, Oct. 24, 2023)

David Brooks, opinion columnist for The New York Times, argues that James Baldwin is a defiant humanist. That is, he’s an individual who challenges the belief that there may not be much humanity in the world. He’s an individal who seeks [t]o try to see others in all their complexity and depth, to look to onself with humility, self-awareness, and compassion, and [t]o try to act in ways that are considerate, just, and discerning. Above all, to try to see the world from another person’s point of view. We see defiance daily in many forms as we tune into the news or scroll through social media. In the current landscape of defiance, I can only hope that the defiant humanist will prevail. If more of us walked through our days looking at everyone we met as though we were truly looking at ourselves, we might agree that the world as we know it would be a much better place.

Years ago when I traveled to Nigeria with the mission group in the photo above, I worked among defiant humanists, American and Nigerian. I recall a conversation with a Nigerian nurse in the small village of Bambur. She proudly showed our group the village pharmacy, which–much to our dismay–amounted to a few scant shelves of bandaids, rolls of gauze, bottles of Tylenol, and tubes of antiseptic cream. When we asked her about her work as a nurse, she admitted that it was good work, even though she hadn’t been paid for two years. Later in the van on our way back to our lodgings, we marveled at a woman who worked joyfully without pay, who explained that she worked faithfully with the hope that she’d be paid someday. If not, she confessed, I’ll continue nursing because the people need me. If I’d had Baldwin’s words then, I’m quite certain I’d have turned to my group and said, There may not be as much humanity in the world as one would like to see, but there is some.

Brooks cites a 2021 McKinsey study in which their consulting firm asked business executives why their employees were quitting. The executives explained that employees left their firms in search of positions that paid more. When the consulting firm asked the employees the same question, however, they answered candidly: they didn’t feel as though their employers recognized or valued them. Quite simply, they didn’t feel seen. It goes without saying that to be a defiant humanist, you’d have to be one who genuinely sees others.

When I was teaching English at a small rural high school, a parent confronted me during her parent-teacher conference. What are you doing specifically for my son? she challenged. It was the only time I cried during a meeting with a parent. Through my tears, I said, Not enough, not nearly enough. With 120 students daily, I was quite certain that I wasn’t meeting the individual needs of each of my students. I was painfully aware that I didn’t see each of them in the fully human way they desired to be seen and I desired to see them. If they were quiet quitting in my course, I understood that their reasons may have been like those of the McKinsey study employees: They didn’t feel seen.

One might argue that we just can’t see everyone. Much as I’d like to argue this, I concede that it’s more rationalization than anything. In Brooks’ “A Humanist Manifesto,” he quotes novelist Frederick Buechner who marveled at how the Dutch painter Rembrandt saw people. Buechner noted that even subjects with plain faces are so remarkably seen by Rembrandt that we are jolted into seeing them remarkably. A defiant humanist looks with such eyes, seeing others remarkably.

According to Brooks, the defiant humanist seeks to develop keen ears as well. One man with such ears was the early 20th century British stateman, Arthur Balfour. Brooks cites John Buchanan who explained his friend Balfour’s unique skill of making each person feel seen and heard:

I remember with what admiration I watched him feel his way with the guests, seize on some chance word and make it the pivot of speculations until the speaker was not only encouraged to give his best but that best was infinitely enlarged by his host’s contribution. Such guests would leave walking on air.

Sadly, the art of conversation today often involves one-upmanship. It’s about getting the conversational upper hand, using another’s comments as a springboard into your own brilliance. It’s about dazzling the crowd with your oratorical prowess, lacing your conversations with witticisms, allusions, and more facts than others would ever care to know. In short, it’s about you. But the defiant humanist purposely seizes on another’s words and encourages them to expand and expound, offering their very best. Those who converse with defiant humanists, like Balfour, leave walking on air, convinced they’ve been truly heard and that they matter.

Most of us can probably recall at least one such conversation. I’ve been blessed to have held many conversations with my parents, siblings, and friends that left me walking on air. They validated me by looking directly into my eyes and asking for elaboration. When they spoke, they often repeated and expanded on what I’d said in ways that affirmed me. These are conversations that buoyed me, convicting me to pass it on, to make sure that I did my best to leave others walking on air after we parted.

Defiant humanists prefer, too, that their conversations be storytelling conversations. Brooks explains that while much of our conversation is practical and informative, [s]tories capture a person’s character and how it changes over time. Stories capture how a thousand little influences come together to shape a life, how people struggle and thrive, get knocked about by lucky and unlucky breaks. People often share more openly through storytelling.

In my first college teaching position, I recall a young mother who pulled me aside after the first class to inform me that she hoped to be able to complete this course but that, regrettably, she might have to withdraw at some point in the future. Offering no details, she made this announcement, thanked me, and exited the classroom. Weeks later as we were conferencing over her first essay, she told me the story of her life, a story I’ve never forgotten. She recounted the savage details of her marriage to a man she claimed had committed a murder that had gone unprosecuted. As she told her story, the portrait of a woman-on-the-run emerged, a mother desperate to protect her daughter from the man who continued to hunt them years after their escape. As our conference came to an end, she looked at me and said, So, you’ll understand if I don’t show up to class one day. You’ll understand what this means. I understood. Over the years, this story shaped how I looked at and dealt with other female students. At times, I may have been too permissive, too eager to accept excuses, but each time I questioned my judgment, I had only to remember the story of the young mother on the run.

In addition to being a good conversationalist, Brooks contends that the defiant humanist is a good friend. He turns to essayist and poet David Whyte who insists that friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self. Instead, Whyte insists that the finest friendship has quite a different foundation:

[t]he ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

To be a witness is both a responsibility and a privilege to those who seek defiant humanism. For witnessing demands that we see the essence of another and that we have walked with them. . . on a journey impossible to accomplish alone. To be a witness is to celebrate with others, acknowledging and honoring them for all they are. But it also requires that we grieve with them, suffering with them as they work through disappointment, sorrow, and loss. Such a witness is no fair-weather friend but rather a true friend who walks with you in all seasons–dark and light.

I confess that as I read the news of war, military conflict, immigration challenges, poverty, and oppression of all kinds, it’s often difficult to deny that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Bombarded with images and stories that push us further into darkness, it’s difficult to muster the courage and conviction to raise our heads and train our eyes to see the humanity around us. It’s there, and it begs to be seen and valued, to be lifted high, as Brooks insists, because it’s the right banner to raise.

I’ll let David Brooks have the last words here, for he writes passionately to a world that hungers for more defiant humanists:

Every person is sacred. Every person deserves to be seen, and given just and loving attention. We may later decide that the person we are looking at is venal or cruel or wicked—but at least we will have tried to fully understand them before making those judgments. The rot that pervades our democracy comes in large part from our failure to do this. Despite the prejudices of the postmodern ideologues, history shows us that it’s possible to enter into a compassionate understanding of people who are different from ourselves.

Photo by Collyn Ware

All-devouring time, envious age,
Nought can escape you, and by slow degrees,
Worn by your teeth, all things will lingering die.
--Ovid 

Oh, all-devouring time, glutton with an insatiable appetite for things beautiful and dear! You’re the agent by which all things will lingering die: childhood, summer, beauty, life. The Roman poet Ovid understood how time gnaws away at the things and places, the moments and people we’d most like to preserve. When I look at this photo–my granddaughter’s hands framing her bright 4-year-old face, her eyes filled with promise, her hair honeyed against a backdrop of spring, everything green and greening–I can only sigh. How I’d like to linger in this loveliness, spend an afternoon with a dollhouse and a tea party for two. How I’d like to linger in those moments when our world was so intimate, so small that we had eyes only for each other. How I’d like to thumb my nose at time and burrow into all the best moments, pulling the quilt of their beauty and goodness around me.

When we linger, we’re most often reluctant to leave, and this reluctance creates a tension between now and then. In college, when I climbed into the back of a vintage convertible, hoisting a blue velvet cape behind me, I knew that my ride around the football field as homecoming queen would take a few scant minutes. The rhinestone crown they’d positioned on my head had begun to tilt precariously over my left eye, and as I pushed it back atop my head, we’d already rounded the first turn on the track and were heading down the straightaway on the visitors’ side. I remember thinking how desperately I wanted to be in the moment but couldn’t. I was painfully aware that time was passing quickly. I understood that the next morning I would wake up–robeless and crownless–as just another college coed. I wanted to linger in now but was ambushed by then.

In his novel, Enduring Love, Ian McEwan writes: I’m holding back, delaying the information. I’m lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still. Possible. Both my father and mother were able to die in our family home, surrounded by family and friends. Inevitable as their impending deaths were, I recall those moments when I caught myself thinking that maybe, just maybe, the doctors were wrong. As our loved ones die, we may cling to a universal desire to linger in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still. Possible. Perhaps death isn’t the imminent outcome. Perhaps a miracle, perhaps recovery. Perhaps life. Time may tease us with hope for a different, a better outcome.

But time may tease us, too, with anguish as we watch those we love diminish before our eyes. A few weeks after my father had come home from the hospital to die, my mother turned to my sister and me in a private moment and said, “What if he lingers?” She didn’t have to elaborate, for we understood her greatest fears: that he would go and that he would stay. Here was the love of her life who, just weeks before, had walked miles each day through town, but was bed-bound now, waiting to die. Lingering can be such a cruel thing, as we watch the ones we love curl into themselves, leaving the world and us bit by bit, hour by hour. As much as we want them to stay, we also want them to go. As much as we want to hold on, grounding them with our great love, we also want to release them, sending them to heaven, whole and perfect.

In her novel, White Oleander, Janet Fitch writes: Life should always be like this. . . . Like lingering over a good meal. Oh, that time and life would not devour us, but rather linger with us over a good meal: a steaming pan of lasagna, a crisp salad, and a loaf of crusty artisan bread! This is lingering at its finest, a momentary stay against the knowledge that this, too, shall pass. I did my best lingering around my family’s dining room table at 611 West 27th Street in Kearney, NE. This is where I cut my teeth on philosophy and poetry, social and moral issues. During the hours I lingered around this table–the dessert served and dishes cleared–I grew up. I tried on ideas and arguments. I listened and learned. Even my mother agreed that the second-hand dining chairs she’d bought were terribly uncomfortable, but we all lingered, our bottoms numb but our heads and hearts full.

Like so many things, lingering is bittersweet. We may linger sweetly, willing the moments to pass more slowly. Or we may linger painfully, willing the moments to pass more quickly. In either case, we linger with a keen sense of who we were, are, and may be; what we had, have and may have; where we were, are and may go. Utterly human, we linger with our eyes fixed on earth and beyond.

In Requiem

The fishing dock that Boy Scout Troup 15 built
has been condemned.
Its legs are splayed unnaturally into the shallows
having lost all cartilage years ago.

Today, I think about ducking under the rope
that holds the cardboard sign reading:
Danger! Keep out!

I think about walking all the way to the edge
to test the structure’s will 
and my own mettle.

As the sun just begins to break
over the eastern tree line,
I find I’m unreasonably sad thinking that,
one day soon, the dock will fall, 
easing to its knees and into the forest of lily pads below,
succumbing to the elements it has braved 
for decades.

I find that I can’t stop imagining its death:

     the aging timbers laid to rest,
     algae slicking each plank with much,
     the water swallowing the structure whole
     to leave no trace of the spot
     where boys stood shoulder to shoulder to fish,
     their bobbers marking the surface
     with promise.

I can’t stop remembering my father in his final days,
how, just weeks before, he’d walked miles through town
and then how his legs went dormant,
their muscles molting beneath the blankets
on his hospital bed. 

And so, I will this dock to make a quick death—
to hurl itself into the water, the sound splitting
the dawn, the force swamping the cattails
below—

until finally, a moment of silence
for a life that had been.