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In Blog Posts on
February 16, 2017

A Season of Small Things done with Great Love

 

Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
Mother Teresa

Lately, I have begun thinking that I have the math all wrong. For much of my life, there has been one abiding equation that has driven me: 1 + 1000. That is, I have looked at most of my life as a very small number that would, God willing, eventually culminate is a really large number, an ultimate act or accomplishment that would finalize a life well-lived. When I perceived that this had not–and would not–happen before retirement, I set my sites on post-retirement. Maybe then, I would score the big number. Maybe then, I would do something to warrant the math that had lingered like the proverbial carrot in the distance. Maybe.

Sitting at the bedside of my father in his final weeks, I knew that I was in the presence of a life that had been very well-lived, a life represented by the largest of numbers, by words and deeds unparalleled in my eyes. Today, as I sit at my desk, the volumes of his life’s work sit before me as reminders of the numbers that doubled, then tripled, then grew exponentially into greatness. Not merely the number of books he had written or poems he had published–or even the number of students he had taught. But the indelible presence of something greater than himself. This was math to defy even the finest calculator.

As children, we feast on the words and encouragement of America: Dream big; You can be anything you want to be; The sky is the limit. For a season, celebrity and professional athletic status hang from low branches, like ripe fruit to be plucked by any and all. For a season, life spreads out like a smorgasbord, and all one has to do is choose from the bounty before them, returning a plate uneaten if it isn’t to one’s liking and choosing again. And again. When my daughter declared that she would be in the Ice Capades, I smiled over the pile of student essays I was grading, unfolded laundry, an empty bag of Cheetos, and a pile of unread newspapers at my feet. Oh, to be five years old and dreaming of sequined splendor on the ice!

And even as we grow into adulthood and our life’s work begins to unfold before us, there is that lingering echo: You can be what you want to be. It’s not too late if you work hard and commit yourself to your dreams. We put our noses to the grindstone, we keep our eyes on the prize, we persist. For the spoils go to the victor, and surely, we are destined to be victors at some point in time. Right?

Just the other day, I was talking with a friend who said that we should arrange a play-date for his daughter and my granddaughter. In a world of little girls who grow up far too quickly, these are girls who love to be home, to play imaginatively, to care for their little brothers, and–for want of a better word–are genuinely “nice” people. They may not be sports stars or leaders of the middle/high school pack, but they will be good friends to all. In the world’s eyes, their numbers will be infinitesimally small, their equations a series of quarters and halves, a math of ordinary kind acts that pale on the stage of district championships and most-likely-to-succeed honors. But years after the senior prom and the state softball championship, they will be young women whom others seek as confidantes. Their kindness and loyalty may not be defined by a single great deed but by too many small acts to count.

Mother Teresa was a better mathematician than most. She understood that the sum of small acts done with great love is a large sum. In the slums of Calcutta, she loved greatly–one man, one woman, one child at a time. In the midst of great throngs, her love was laser-focused, endowing each recipient with the very best of what she could give. I sincerely doubt that Mother Teresa had her sites set on a single act of greatness which would define her life. She was far too occupied with small acts committed with great love. In the eyes of God and the countless individuals she helped and loved, these small things are clearly and blessedly equal to any one great thing.

If my father’s math featured large numbers, my mother’s, like Mother Teresa’s, featured a series of many small numbers added, lovingly, over a lifetime. She, too, has always committed herself to small things done with great love. And in the most wonderful paradox, those small things are honestly huge. Their size and worth dwarfs almost any and everything in their midst. Ask anyone who knows my mother, and they will testify to this, for they have been beneficiaries of these acts and this love. She anticipates what others need before they are often even aware that they need it; she opens her house and her heart instinctively. Those who visit are loathe to leave, for they find magnificent comfort and peace in her presence. And if there is coffee and pie, so much the better.

I think I have been waiting for my life to begin. And to end with a bang, with a huge number, some marvelous thing to hang my hat upon. But in truth and in spite of my best laid plans, my math has been quietly working itself out. The fact that I have not truly understood nor taken to heart the good math of the Mother Teresas and Marcia Welches of the world is sad. But then, I was never good at math–not the old math or the new math. I shouldn’t be surprised, then, that the most important math of my life has eluded me until now.

I sincerely doubt that my children will sit at their desks with the volumes of my written work, the large sum of my life, before them. What I can hope for, however, is that many small acts done with great love will live in their memories and light their way. I can hope for the laser-focus of living fully in the moment, giving all in love. I can hope that I grow up to be my mother. And that is the best math, indeed.

 

In Blog Posts on
February 13, 2017

The Sanctuary of Wandering

All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither; deep roots are not reached by the frost.
― J. R. R. Tolkien

There is much glittering and wandering that has no tangible presence, that is largely unseen by most. Sharon Olds and her mother know this as well as Tolkien:

 

Wonder as Wander

At dusk, on those evenings she does not go out,

my mother potters around her house.

Her daily helpers are gone, there is no one

there, no one to tell what to do,

she wanders, sometimes she talks to herself,

fondly scolding, sometimes she suddenly

throws out her arms and screams—high notes

lying here and there on the carpets

like bodies touched by a downed wire,

she journeys, she quests, she marco-polos through

the gilded gleamy loot-rooms, who is she.

I feel, now, that I do not know her,

and for all my staring, I have not seen her

—like the song she sang, when we were small,

I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,   

how Jesus, the Savior, was born for, to die,   

for poor lonely people, like you, and like I 

—on the slow evenings alone, when she delays

and delays her supper, walking the familiar

halls past the mirrors and night windows,

I wonder if my mother is tasting a life

beyond this life—not heaven, her late

beloved is absent, her father absent,

and her staff is absent, maybe this is earth

alone, as she had not experienced it,

as if she is one of the poor lonely people,

as if she is born to die. I hold fast

to the thought of her, wandering in her house,

a luna moth in a chambered cage.

Fifty years ago, I’d squat in her

garden, with her Red Queens, and try

to sense the flyways of the fairies as they kept

the pollen flowing on its local paths,

and our breaths on their course of puffs—they kept

our eyes wide with seeing what we

could see, and not seeing what we could not see.

 

Oh the wandering and the blessed glittering that takes place in private places and moments, when there is no one there, no one to tell what to do. In these moments, we might taste a life beyond this life–perhaps earth alone. In these moments, perhaps we are not lost but found as we wander the crooks and crannies of souls imagined in new places, surrounded by new people and possibilities. Just as we have lived vicariously through others–fictional and real characters who dare to do and to be what we are not, what we have not–we live through wandering.

In the Sanctuary of Wandering, there are starts and re-starts, there are do-overs till the cows come home. If you can wonder as you wander, there are infinite possibilities of lives to live and places to go. Others may look into your situation and see a luna moth in a chambered cage, but you are marco-poloing your way through another adventure from the confines of your own sitting room or porch. Your virtual reality is one you create daily in your wanderings. Neither electricity nor technology is needed.

As a fellow wanderer, Plato writes:

I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.

Small bright pebbles to content ourselves with are enough in the Sanctuary of Wandering. And if one will have but eyes to see, there are, indeed, bright pebbles to be found. For one who wanders is not bound by time or space, by responsibilities or expectations, by physical abilities or disabilities. If you can imagine it, the corridors will be well-lit and the doors unlocked. Treasure awaits with each turn of the knob.

When the circumstances of this world darken and threaten to suffocate us, we often need to wander to survive. I recall reading a memoir of a Vietnam veteran who was held as a prisoner of war for years. He recounted that he played 18 holes of golf on the world’s finest courses daily. His mental wanderings down well-kept fairways and on manicured greens literally kept him alive. His mind buoyed his failing body, and hole by hole, he drove, chipped, putted, and wandered himself into one more day of living.

In Wandering: Notes and Sketches, a collection of poetry, prose, and artwork, Herman Hesse reveals his longing for a new life closer to nature. He, too, understands the necessity of both physical and soulful wandering:

I feel life trembling within me, in my tongue, on the soles of my feet, in my desire or my suffering, I want my soul to be a wandering thing, able to move back into a hundred forms, I want to dream myself into priests and wanderers, female cooks and murderers, children and animals, and, more than anything else, birds and trees; that is necessary, I want it, I need it so I can go on living, and if sometime I were to lose these possibilities and be caught in so-called reality, then I would rather die.

Like Hesse, I want my soul to be a wandering thing, able to move back into a hundred forms. I also need this to go on living.

Oh, there are times when I curse the many stops and starts of my mind. As a writer and a wanderer, I am all too eager to say no, that is not it at all and begin again. I dismay at my attention-deficit-disordered wandering that, untethered as a kite loosed from one’s hand, moves at the command of the wind. And try as I might, I often find that the string is just beyond my reach. The kite of my soul flashes its colorful tail as it heads east, or west, leaving my trembling fingers empty.

Still, I want my soul to be a wandering thing. Even if my hands are occasionally empty, there will be another kite and another day. That’s the true gift of wandering: the promise of another life, another place, another day.

And if you can’t see a destination? In the Sanctuary of Wandering, you can simply embark. Author D. H. Lawrence argues that the place to get to may be nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere. [Women in Love]

I can live with that, for my own nowhere is often a necessary respite from the world’s somewheres. As my grandchildren and I walk the 50 yards from my house to theirs, wandering soulfully into ocean and jungle adventures, living the pioneer lives of those we can imagine and those we have yet to imagine, none of us can imagine anything better. There will be toys to pick up and baths to be taken, but in these moments, we float above the day’s doings. We are more than content to wander.

Eat your heart out, Marco Polo.

 

 

In Blog Posts on
February 7, 2017

A Season of Righteous Indignation

righteousacting in accord with divine or moral law : free from guilt or sin

indignation: anger or annoyance provoked by what is perceived as unfair treatment

 

I have been a fan of righteous indignation, an attribute and attitude that has generally eluded me. In the second season of Dallas, the night-time soap opera that aired from 1978-1991, Miss Ellie, the silent suffering matriarch, turned to her husband, Jock, the heavy-handed ruler of their oil dynasty, and proclaimed, You sicken me. Three simple words delivered quietly but with the power of a right, left, right uppercut. I lived vicariously through these words for weeks, marveling at the clarity of Miss Ellie’s indignation and the righteousness that founded her blow. There she was, an aproned, gray-haired woman who schooled her oil baron, bourbon-drinking husband. What a woman, albeit a fictional one in a network melodrama.

Most of my moments of pure righteous indignation have occurred in those minutes–sometimes hours–before sleep. In the dark and privacy of my own bedroom, I have silently spoken strong, indignant words to countless recipients of my anger. I rehearsed the words I would speak, perhaps should speak, but words that would never leave the confines of my silent rants. Still, I had some moments of stellar indignation, if I do say so myself.

Aristotle wrote: Anyone can get angry, but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy.

Anger directed at the right person, to the right extent, at the right time with the right motive and in the right way–that is righteous indignation. But just consider all those “rights,” all the qualifications that come with righteous indignation! It’s enough to make you exhausted you before you begin. And that is it exactly. Aristotle knew that we should be exhausted–or rather that we should exhaust every concession, every caution, every consideration before we release our indignation, righteously.

Today, righteous indignation has become a legitimate genre in and of itself. In print, online, through radio or television, voices are almost always sharp uppercuts intended to knock-out the opposition in a single round. There is no time for careful research or corroboration of sources. There is no time for conversation or reflection. There is only now and the gratifying release of anger. To hell with those feeble, overly cautious namby pambies who, in solitude and armed with a host of sources and a humble spirit, deliberate until they arrive at a worthy position.

But just as music performed with constant forte becomes little more than loud noise, persistent moral indignation becomes little more than barking at the wind. 19th century French poet, essayist and philosopher, Paul Valery says it well:

An attitude of permanent indignation signifies great mental poverty. Politics compels its votaries to take that line and you can see their minds growing more impoverished every day, from one burst of righteous indignation to the next. 

The election and the presidential inauguration have passed, but we cannot seem to shake the attitude of permanent indignation that characterized the campaign months. My greatest fear is that, perhaps, we will never shake it. That its permanency is actually permanent. And one day, when a voice cries out in righteous indignation that has been carefully forged through reflection and study, after years of voices who have cried wolf, we will simply smile and turn to our own affairs.

Permanent indignation does reveal great mental poverty. Poor is the mind that cannot discern what is truly worthy of righteous anger. If, as it seems today that, everything and everyone is worthy of indignation, then ultimately nothing and no one is. And all of our rantings become little more than tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. [Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5]

In truth, as much as I fear this contagion of righteous indignation, I also marvel at those who feel wholly, utterly confident of their anger and the targets of this anger. These individuals likely sleep well at night. They walk with shoulders back, taking deliberate strides and commanding the centers of hallways and sidewalks. They tremble with anticipation at each opportunity to unleash the fury born from their guiltless, sinless certainty.

I can only guess how many of these individuals would respond if Jesus were stand before them and say, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” My guess? There would be a sizeable pile of rocks and a frenzied hoard whose hands had already gripped the first stone, eager for muscular release. Throw first, and worry about your sin later. Or perhaps never.

I fear too often, as H. G. Wells claimed, that Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. Jealousy of those whose voice is being heard, jealousy of those with power equal to, or maybe greater than theirs, and jealousy of views, that they privately fear, may be proven more “right” in the end. But once they have donned the halo of righteous indignation, they often rest easily on platitudes and charisma. America is a land of immigrants, America can be great again, A true feminist believes in choice, A real woman is pro-life. Platitudes fill the air around us until we are suffocating in righteous indignation.

Don’t misunderstand me. There are causes worthy of righteous indignation, and these causes will surely represent opposing views. It’s just that these causes can never truly be reduced to platitudes, no matter how often and how passionately they are delivered. These causes require Aristotle’s wisdom: right person, right extent, right time, right motive, and right way. They yearn to be tempered with humility by servant leaders.

Open the borders to all? And how many families will you be willing to sponsor in your own homes and communities, which–in the spirit of openness–will forever remain ungated? Will you be willing to open your children’s schools to those who can’t speak the language, who haven’t been formally schooled for years and who will require the majority of the school’s attention, efforts, and services, leaving your children to largely school themselves? And will you be eager to forgo private schooling for public schooling, particularly public schooling in the inner cities? Will you create college or vocational training funds for others’ children, sacrificing your standard of living for the opportunities of others? Will you lead by example?

Close the borders to all? Will you be willing to pay much, much more for fresh produce, to send your sons and daughters into the fields to harvest it? Will you be willing to populate the meat packing plants, the construction sites, your favorite restaurants, etc. with your own family, friends, and neighbors to ensure that all individuals have rights to affordable meat, housing, and fine dining? Will you sit in air-conditioned churches on padded pews extolling the virtues of caring for the least of these?  Will you lead by example?

I think our nation could benefit immensely from servant leadership, from  the expectation that, until–and unless- we are willing to lead by example, we must refrain from public righteous indignation. We could expect our citizens to remove the plank in their own eyes before attempting to remove the speck from others’ eyes. I could honestly get behind this kind of righteous indignation, for its origins are divine–not man-made.

Two rooms away from the television where I can’t detect individual words, I can hear the fevered and prolonged pitch of someone’s indignation. This, I fear, is the genre of the season. My greater fear, however, is that I will become one of many whose disillusionment leads to partial, and then complete, deafness. When the next great philosopher, statesman or woman, business or technological leader, theologian, artist, social or educational advocate comes along, I fear that I will be humming to myself, blissful in a self-imposed cocoon of simple song, wholly unaware that there is genuine cause for righteous indignation. Wholly ignorant to the fact that, right there before me, is one whose anger is directed towards the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive and way. Wholly deaf and blind towards acts and attitudes that are clearly not aligned to moral or divine law.

Certainly, such ignorant bliss will not make America–or anything else–great again. And in the proverbial words of Miss Ellie, this sickens me.

 

In Blog Posts on
February 3, 2017

A Season of Entitlement: Reprise

As far as television series go, I have perpetually lagged behind contemporary viewing audiences and felt woefully out of place during water cooler conversations concerning “the last episode”. So, in true form, I missed Downton Abbey–all six seasons. I could honestly say that I heard about it, generally speaking, but knew little specifics. People whom I respected spoke of the series in glowing terms, so I assumed it must be worthy of viewing. Sometime, that is.

That time arrived for me a few weeks ago when, armed with a set of DVDs from seasons 1-4 and an Amazon Prime account for seasons 5-6, I embarked on a binge-viewing session while my husband was in Honduras on a mission trip. I know him well enough to safely say that Downton Abbey would not be his cup of tea. (Sorry for the horribly obvious pun!)

To say I have been smitten with this British series, with the characters and the setting, with the costumes and the accents, is one of the largest understatements I have ever made. Most certainly, the people of Downton Abbey–the upstairs and the downstairs people–have their share of problems which often center on the growing conflict between a traditional, aristocratic world and an emerging modern world in the early 20th century.

In this world, a virtuous appearance is everything; a hint of impropriety is disaster. And this is true for both the aristocratic class and their house staffs. When the head butler enters the staff dining room, everyone stands out of respect for his position. Ladies and gentlemen, house staff and visitors disagree, sometimes passionately. But there are no raised voices, no vulgar comments or ad hominem attacks. Traditionalists and progressives spar over five course meals or soup and bread. Still, civility reigns supreme in the formal dining hall and the kitchen alike.

For the inhabitants of Downton Abbey, no one is entitled to be cruel in his or her advancement of an idea or position. Individuals may disagree and move on to the business of the day. When the day winds down, disagreements may be revisited over tea served in china cups with saucers. Or they may be slept upon, reflected upon, or settled upon.

Which has led me to wonder if our country needs some serious tea-time, complete with china cups, silver serving trays, and chintz-covered chairs. How have we become a nation of individuals convinced that we are entitled to pressing our views regardless of the costs? How have we convinced ourselves that we are entitled to incivility disguised as freedom of expression?

I concede that freedom of expression is a hallmark American privilege and right. Still, the fact that we are free to express our opinions and positions does not excuse the often uncivil manner through which we bludgeon others.  I agree with John Gerald Zimmerman, famous American magazine photographer, who wrote:

Incivility is the extreme of pride; it is built on the contempt of mankind.

Words that maim and destroy, voices raised in blind anger, ideas thrust like spears into opponents’ hearts, kill shots that pierce with force and leave victims bloodless. This is incivility at its best. And worst. It is contemptuous and inhumane. At its heart (dare I say incivility has a heart?), is extreme pride. Uncivil individuals are excessively and tragically proud. Armed with righteous indignation and a certainty that often defies logic, they cannot, they will not consider another perspective or person. They leave a trail of victims in their wake.

The words of Peter Kreeft, author and philosophy professor at Boston College and The King’s College, may be perhaps the best remedy for incivility:

Be egalitarian regarding persons. Be elitist regarding ideas.

It is possible–and clearly preferable–to be egalitarian to others, particularly those with whom we disagree. They are entitled to share their views; they are entitled to our genuine and polite consideration. We must, however, be elitist regarding our ideas, for our failure to be discerning will ultimately result in these once solid ideas watered down into a moral mush unfit for human consumption.  Civil people can most certainly hold fast to ideas and principles and yet honor those who oppose those very ideas and principles.

Every time I read Martin Luther King’s “Letter to Birmingham Jail,” I am struck by the power of his arguments delivered so powerfully, so eloquently, and so civilly to fellow clergy who have criticized his words and actions. Consider his opening paragraph:

 My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

My Dear Fellow Clergymen? Men of genuine good will whose criticisms are sincerely set forth? These are men who have called his civil rights’ work “unwise and untimely.” They may be fellow brothers in Christ, but they are real opponents who argue that he should not engage in non-violent civil disobedience and should, even after 300 years of discrimination and subordination, continue to wait patiently for change. Clearly, King could take his place at the head of the dining table in Downton Abbey, comfortable and well-versed in the civility that transcends time and place, race and position. King can passionately but civilly disagree. In his world, everyone is entitled to this civility, friend and foe alike. In his world, no one is entitled to cruelty or violence as means of protest.

Tom Allen, former member of the House of Representatives representing Maine’s 1st Congressional District, wrote:

Incivility is a symptom, not the disease. We’ve always had partisan conflict in Congress, and we always will. Yet when I worked for a year (1970-71) on the staff of Sen. Ed Muskie of Maine, this was a different place, more collegial, more sensitive to data, more concerned about all of the American people. I think because the for-profit media prizes conflict above cooperation and sound bites above analysis, politicians have learned to adapt to those tendencies. Consequently, our public debates are dumbed down as our problems grow more complex.

If Allen is correct, and incivility is a symptom, not the disease, it stands to reason that we must cure the disease if we are ever to get rid of this painful symptom. In this Season of Entitlement, I could make a legitimate case for the claim that all Americans are entitled to this type of health care. Call it CivilityCare. Call it what you wish, but, for heaven’s sake, cure it! (Although I’m not sure that Lady Crawley of Downton Abbey would approve of my my bold and unladylike use of the exclamation mark here, I will beg for forgiveness later.)

There are hours of my life I will never regain during which I modeled and taught the virtue and necessity of civil disagreement in countless high school and college classrooms. Today, some may seriously argue if these hours have been worth my time and effort, for the world into which these students emerge seems to be increasingly apathetic–if not outright disdainful–towards such civility. Just as I grieve for those who will not know the virtue and blessing of work, I grieve for those who will never know the virtue and blessing of civility and civil disagreement. These, too, may be lost after generations who have fed solely on dramatic conflict and angry sound bites.

In his book How Now Shall we Live? Charles Colson warns that:

People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government… without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well.

How now shall we live? That is, indeed, the million dollar question. Around us, there are daily reminders of those who cannot or will not restrain their baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility and who are not capable of self-government. Incivility floods the airwaves, the internet, the sidewalks and hallways, rural and urban settings. It is an equal-opportunity choice for liberals and conservatives, educated and uneducated, old and young, rich and poor.

In my ideal world, I would round up all of these folk and require them to attend years of professional development and training at Downton Abbey. If they became proficient at civility, they would be invited to eat in the grand dining hall. If they chose to remain uncivil, they would eat with the pigs at the edge of village, out of sight and earshot from the civil folk. They would receive a life sentence of trading slop for slop. They could spew vicious, venomous words into the pig lot, endlessly. Unlike feeling, thinking humans, the pigs could care less.

 

 

 

 

 

In Blog Posts on
February 1, 2017

A Season of Entitlement

I write this post with a heavy heart and a list of genuine concessions:

  1. Everyone is entitled to understanding. That is, everyone deserves to be understood by those who will compassionately listen and learn.
  2. There are those who have benefited–and those who will always benefit–from financial, educational, emotional, and spiritual support. Their support is well-deserved, temporary, and essential for a new and better life.
  3. Single parents with low-paying jobs cannot often afford to work, for the costs of daycare and transportation prohibit it.
  4. More money can solve some problems for some people, but not all problems for all people.

 

A pile of neatly folded laundry, a stack of graded student essays, late summer flowers cut back, lawn chairs hosed and housed in the garage, and windows so clean that the scent of Windex persists for days. The fruits of my labor. Still, as satisfying as these tangible fruits may be, there is something profoundly more satisfying in the virtue of labor, the very act and completion of a task–any task, great or small, extraordinary or menial.

As I was painting my entry way last week, my granddaughter begged to help me paint. At age 7, she loves to play, but she yearns to work at grown-up tasks in much the same way as I do. She understands–and is wise beyond her years–that as much as well-meaning adults wish to give her a self of worth, ultimately only she can find this worth through what she does and what she contributes to greater causes. The fact that the greater cause is an entry way to her grandmother’s modest home in rural Iowa makes no difference. It is the virtue of the work and a cause beyond herself.

How I wish that all humans could know the genuine virtue of work , the profound satisfaction of completing a task, a day’s labor, and ultimately, a career. After seven months of retirement, I would be less than honest if I did not admit that there are days during which I flounder, restless in the present hours without school bells signaling the start and the finish of a day, the passing of one class to the next. There are mornings that open terrifyingly with countless possibilities, choices to be made–all of which are at my discretion. What to do, what to do. . .

I have become increasingly burdened with the knowledge that there are many around me who have not known, and probably will not know, the virtue and satisfaction of work as I have known it. Many of my students are third generation Welfare recipients. Their grandparents and parents have not worked, and–in truth–many of them will not work either. Others may look upon their lives as nothing more than subsistence: an inferior dwelling, a vehicle on life-support, and no real prospects. Still, many have televisions, cell phones, internet, and enough food to eat.

When a high school student of mine blew off a full-ride scholarship to a welding program at the local community college, I asked him what he planned to do after graduation. To which he responded, “Party with my friends.” Another female student answered the same question with, “I don’t really know. Probably sit at home and watch television with my mom.”

In increasing moments of clarity, I began to realize that, as I was pulling out all of the educational/motivational stops I had to prompt my students to work at reading, writing, and thinking, I was little more than an alien in a land that I no longer recognized. These students had no role models who had worked or aspired to work. Why would they work at something that did not at least produce a tangible, and preferably financial, reward? Why would they aspire to something different and more than their parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents and friends? Why would they work?

They regularly asked me to give: extensions on deadlines, passes on assignments they had missed, higher grades to prevent their failure. I am quite certain that most expected me to give my time, my efforts, and my compassion to meet their requests. This is what teachers do. This is what “nice” people do for those who are in need. This is the way the world works for them.

I grieve for these students and their families. And what about my students’ children and their children? Will the legacy of entitlement persist? Will the virtue of work be lost on whole generations?

I concede (as I did above) that there are clearly times and circumstances during which those of us who can and will work must do so for the sake of others who cannot. I am painfully aware that there are those who may be willing to work but who literally cannot afford to, that there are those who need a temporary “leg up” to move ahead independently, and that there are those who simply cannot work because of disabilities and injuries. These individuals are entitled to our help: financial, emotional, and spiritual.

And I admit that it was often much easier for me to simply give some students what they wanted than it was to hold them accountable for what they had actually earned. I could extend a deadline, raise a grade, and send them on their way. As they walked away, I might even feel good, knowing that I had helped a student in need. But had I–really? Or was I perpetuating their expectations that well-meaning others, like me, would give regardless of the circumstances? These were students who could work at reading, writing, and thinking but who simply chose not to do so. In the education world, we often classify students as “the cannots” and the will nots.” The students to whom I was giving were “the will nots.” In the face of work, they stood their ground and proclaimed, “I will not.”

At the heart of this issue is a spiritual void. Educators cannot teach it away, social workers and government institutions cannot program it away, and lawmakers cannot legislate it away. People of faith must engage in honest dialogue about what constitutes real “help” for those who have chosen not to work. This dialogue will certainly require discernment, openness, and compassion. But it will also challenge some of the prevailing attitudes and practices that have often become easy fixes for a real and growing problem. More money is not always the answer for all people and their particular circumstances. This, I realize, is not a politically correct admission; still, it is an honest one that people of faith should embrace for all the right reasons.

If we have been blessed by the virtue of work, we should want others to be blessed similarly–even those who may refuse this blessing. For their refusals may be made in ignorance and from the security of what they have known and experienced. In short, how would they truly know what they are missing if they have never known it? How would their children and grandchildren?

All individuals–working or not–are entitled to our understanding, our compassion and genuine interest. And they are entitled to our help. Certainly, I do not have as many answers as I have questions. The questions that persist and keep me up at night continue to be these: What does it really mean to help? And does help look the same for all?

It is my prayer that those of us who know the virtue of work and its power to bless individuals with genuine satisfaction and self-worth will lead the dialogue in our churches and communities. These conversations will be neither easy nor conclusive, but they will be a necessary beginning.

 

 

In Blog Posts on
January 18, 2017

The Sanctuary of a Few Good Women

For those good women who have blessed–and continue to bless–my life

Years ago I read and was profoundly moved by Lisa See’s novel, Snowflower and the Secret Fan. See provided me with a unique look into the 19th century Chinese life of her female protagonist, Lily.  For her entire life, Lily longed for love, something she admits was not right for her but which she could not help but yearn for, wait for, hope for. Ultimately, she realizes that this unjustified desire has been at the root of every problem I have experienced in my life.

It was See’s crafting of Lily and the life she bore that introduced me to the concept of laotong. In some Chinese provinces when girls as young as seven began the footbinding process, they were matched with others who were beginning the same excruciating process. This contracted relationship which grew and developed over a lifetime was called laotong or old same. What these women often lacked in love and security in their marriages, they found in each other’s friendship. Old sames communicated in a secret language that only women could read: nu shu.

Lily and her old same, Snowflower, find in each other a lasting and deep love that they could not find in their arranged marriages or even in their families:

a laotong relationship is made by choice…when we first looked in each other’s eyes in the palanquin I felt something special pass between us–like a spark to start a fire or a seed to grow rice. But a single spark is not enough to warm a room nor is a single seed enough to grow a fruitful crop. Deep love–true-heart love–must grow. 

Throughout my life, I have been blessed with the friendship of a few good women. At the end of the work day, I have taken solace in those precious moments when I could unburden myself in the presence of an old same. Here, before I faced an evening of making supper, giving baths, folding laundry and grading essays, I could speak my joys, my fears and regrets of all that I’d done or not done that day to a trusted friend. Here, I could speak my doubts in the safety of one who truly understood. Was I a good mother and wife? A good teacher? A good person and friend? What was I really contributing to this world? Who might I become? And what if I didn’t? 

In the Sanctuary of a Few Good Women, you can put everything on the table. Every course is served with transparency, and there is no judgment for dessert. For me, the banquet of laotong has been, and continues to be, one of life’s greatest blessings. As I have moved to new places and new jobs, a new Snowflower would emerge, a new spark to start a fire or a seed to grow rice. And over time, true-heart love would grow and flourish.

Holocaust survivor and author Eli Wiesel writes: Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing. Never anything but sharing. . . For me–and I suspect for many women–sharing, however, is everything. In her novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison’s protagonist, Sethe, explains the genuine power of sharing much better than I can:

She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.

In the Sanctuary of a Few Good Women, those who can gather your ragged pieces together and give them back to you in all the right order are those who have made sharing their life’s mission. They are those whose very presence is more than enough. When words fail, when there is no way to “fix” things, when circumstances spiral heedlessly beyond your control, old sames settle in beside you for however long it takes to find what poet Robert Frost calls a momentary stay against confusion. Acquaintances, well-meaning as they may be, offer glib words of advice and quick pats on the back. They smile and utter the dreadful words, Just let me know if you need anything. As if you know what you need. That’s the whole point of laotong: you feel another even when there are no right words. Even when there are simply no words at all.

Laotong may grow in female friendship, in the relationship between mother and daughter, between sisters or cousins, between colleagues. In the Sanctuary of a Few Good Women, there are no rules about who can or cannot be an old same. You can make your own rules, choose your own sisterhood. In Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells writes:

She longed for porch friendship, for the sticky, hot sensation of familiar female legs thrown over hers in companionship. She pined for the girliness of it all, the unplanned, improvisational laziness. She wanted to soak the words ‘time management’ out of her lexicon. She wanted to hand over, to yield, to let herself float down the unchartered beautiful fertile musky swamp of life, where creativity and eroticism and deep intelligence dwell.

Porch friendship with familiar female legs thrown over yours. This is it exactly. And if you can’t have a porch, a grocery aisle, a corner of an office or classroom, or the front seat of a car will do. Laotong transcends place and time. If you seek it, she will come.

Perhaps the best thing about the Sanctuary of a Few Good Women is God’s hand in laotong. We may believe that we choose our old sames and that this true-heart love is the product of our own efforts. C. S. Lewis sets us straight:

In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends, “Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.  [The Four Loves]

Laotong is, indeed, an instrument of God’s great grace through which He reveals to each of us the beauties of others. And it is likewise an instrument through which God allows others to reveal to us and to affirm in us our own beauties. In a world in which ugliness and uncertainties dominate the airwaves and pervade our lives, old sames doctor the gray oppressiveness of it all with beauty and light.  They communicate in the secret language of a bond forged like steel and tested by fire.

And when they sidle up beside us and we are assured of their tangible presence, this is more than enough to sustain us through whatever may come.

 

 

 

 

 

In Blog Posts on
January 15, 2017

The Sanctuary of a Single Spoken Word

Glassable, she said with a definite flip of her six-year old blonde curls. It’s just glassable. Seated on the floor with a bevy of kindergartners and first graders in a creative writing workshop, I had asked them about the things they treasured most. Rose–I’ll call her Rose–had just identified a glass figurine of a collie dog that stood atop her dresser. She named its colors, the way one leg curled up underneath it, and then she frowned. It’s the frown of one who is trying desperately–on the spot–to retrieve the right word. Just the right word to name just the right thing.

I had learned to bite my tongue, not to interject with possibilities like fragile or delicate. And sure enough, within seconds her brow softened, her eyes sharpened, and she burst forth with glassable! Her fellow writers looked on with assurance. Clearly, it was the just right word for all.

Twenty some years later, I cannot pass a glass vase or candlestick or figurine without inwardly proclaiming It’s just glassable. That’s what it is–glassable. 

Don’t get me wrong. I love the written word, dearly. But there is something akin to an out-of-body experience for me when certain words are spoken.

The beauty and magic of some words are unparalleled. Take limerence, for example. Not to be confused with limerick, the bawdy rhymes of sailors and barflies, a word that clicks off your tongue in witty preface to the humor that follows, limerance is the state of being infatuated with another. The definition is magical enough, but the sound of it, the other-worldly sound of it! You cannot say it quickly or without purpose. You do not let it slip out or say it under your breath. It is a show-caser, a show-stopper, a show-stealer of a word. In the Sanctuary of a Single Spoken Word, limerance is simply magnificent.

Or what about sonder? The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid, as complex as your own. Now this is a word you can hang your hat on. If the spoken wander draws one into the nether world of leisurely adventure, sonder is all this and more. Imagine traveling the world of another’s life, the subterranean life behind the passing smiles and hellos, the life beneath three-piece suits or overalls or aprons. Just imagine. And then say it aloud. Give it its sibilant and its schwa-like o. Let the final syllable linger, its filling the air with a resonant timbre. In the Sanctuary of a Single Spoken Word, this is a word meant to be the centerpiece of conversation.

Heliotrope is as stunning spoken as it is arrayed amidst other summer blooms. I remember when I first heard the word spoken. A sixth grade friend read a passage from a book she had checked out from the library, and when she came to the word heliotrope and spoke it perfectly into the bedroom where we had hidden away for the afternoon, it took on a life of its own. Gone were the gingham curtains and posters torn from pages of Tiger Beat. Gone were our cut-off shorts and plastic headbands. Heliotrope transported us into the corner of a Victorian garden where we shared the shade of an organza parasol and secrets unfit for a governess’s ears. Heliotrope carried the full weight of  adolescent romance for us, and merely saying it aloud sent us into communal bliss.

I’ll give it to the French for some singularly spectacular spoken words. Denouement, bouquet, silhouette, chignon, melange, milieu, panache and soiree.  Tres bon, indeed.

The strange wistfulness of used bookstores: vellichor. In the Sanctuary of a Single Spoken Word, there is a special place for such beautiful oddities. They are rarely spoken, not the stuff of casual conversation. And yet spoken, they are the stuff of dictionary-diving, of mulling and re-mulling, and finally, of affirming the absolute perfect marriage of sound and sense.

But just as there is a special place for beautiful oddities, there is also a place for those ordinary words that, when spoken by just the right voice, are extraordinary. In a crowded, pre-Christmas Target, I had misplaced my four-year-old daughter. Actually, she had intentionally placed herself in the middle of a rack of sweaters, completely hidden in what she later claimed was a “fort.” She remained hidden there as her sisters and I frantically searched and were just about to contact the manager when Mom pierced the air. It wasn’t just any Mom, for as any mother knows, moms punctuate the air in any public place. It was my Mom, the spoken word reserved just for me, the most beautiful ordinary spoken word ever. In the Sanctuary of a Single Spoken Word, Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, as well as your own name and the names of those you love, sit gloriously on the throne.

So let’s hear it for aquiver, aurora, ethereal, gossamer, lithe, winsome, and love. Speak them with reverence. Let them move with effervescence, shine with incandescence, and fill your soul and your world with grace. 

 

 

 

In Blog Posts on
January 9, 2017

The Sanctuary of Hiraeth

Hiraeth is a Welch word without a direct English translation. Roughly translated it means a homesickness for a home you cannot return to or a home that never was.

I dream of places. I dream in places. People and plots are secondary characters to places that linger with me for days. Often, I return to dream places and find comfort in the crooks and crannies, the hills and dales of places I have visited before. While others travel to cities peopled with theaters, restaurants, and bustling sidewalks, I can only think of the places I would travel to, places with craggy mountainsides, meadows of lavender that stretches as far as the eye can see, deep woods with abandoned cottages, and cold streams that polish rocks and babble deliciously.

I suffer from hiraeth. I have never lived in the places I dream of; nor can I return to them except in dream. Still, they haunt me, delight me, sustain me in ways that people often cannot.

Perhaps I have inherited this hiraeth from my father. At the heart of his poetry is a sense of place. The plains, the rivers, the wind and skies are Nebraska–and yet more. Something beyond the literal landscapes of the state or any state, something that never quite was but could be, and perhaps should be. In “After Haying,” my father writes:

After Haying

There were evenings when

the land drew the sky across its pelvis

 

blue coming softly down

marrying the brown

 

filling the windbreaks

with the shadows of long songs

 

Blue coming softly down/marrying the brown/filling the windbreaks/with shadows of long songs. In these lines is the home I cannot return to, the home that perhaps never was. Some may argue that blue skies and brown earth are the common stuff from which most places are made. They will say that you can go home to these places, for they are all around you. But this blue and this brown are uncommonly my father’s. And mine. These long songs are those I hear most clearly as the songs of home. Perhaps others will not understand the hireath here. How it teases those who will see it with the promise of both tangibility and mysticism. How it lives more fully in dreams and poetry.

In Horton Foote’s play, The Trip to Bountiful, he presents an elderly woman who lives in The Sanctuary of Hiraeth. Carrie Watts is confined to a two-bedroom apartment in Houston which she shares with her son and daughter-in-law. Unable to support herself and live independently in her family home in Bountiful, Texas, she fixes breakfast for her son, vacuums and dusts, and–when she cannot sleep most nights–sits in a rocking chair by the window, the night sky and moon the only tangible reminders of the home she yearns for and dreams of seeing once again. She has attempted, and failed, to escape by bus to Bountiful. Each time, her son, Ludie, finds and retrieves her, warning that she must consider her “bad heart” and stay put.

Finally, in a stroke of the best fortune, she makes it to the bus station–undiscovered–buys a ticket, boards the bus, and makes it to a town ten miles from Bountiful, which no longer exists. When the sheriff finds her sleeping on a bench in the bus station, he informs her that her son charged him with keeping her until he can come and take her home. She cries, she cajoles, she begs until the sheriff consents to driving her the ten miles to see her family home in Bountiful.

Her home is but a shell now, but Mrs. Watts sits on the porch and takes in everything that she has only dreamt of in the Houston apartment. When her son finally arrives, she admits that Bountiful and the family home are no longer how he would have remembered them. But she continues:

But the river will be here. The fields. The woods. The smell of the Gulf. That’s what I took my strength from, Ludie. Not from houses, not from people.

In 1985, Foote’s play was made into a feature film starring Geraldine Page as Carrie Watts. As I have watched and re-watched this film, I live vicariously through Page’s performance. Even today, I can hear her voice giving hiraeth a theatrical substance and permanent presence in my all-time favorite characters. Ultimately, Carrie Watts is returned to the two-bedroom apartment where she will live out her remaining days. As she gets into her son’s car, she turns–one last time–to whisper, Goodbye, Bountiful, goodbye.

She knows the homesickness for the home she cannot return to and understands that, in many ways, this was a home that never really was. At least, it never was the home she believed it to be. The two-story home with upstairs bedroom where she and her son stayed, with the fireplace that her father tended, with the garden where she planted and harvested the stuff that sustained all of them. This home has been ravaged by the Gulf winds and salt. It will not last more than a year or two before it will succumb to the elements. Still, she understands that there is something more, something tangible and mystical like the shadows of long songs in the fields, the woods, the smell of the Gulf. 

In her book, The White Album, Joan Didion writes:

A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.

Like Didion, like Carrie Watts, like my father, I claim the places in my dreams the hardest, I remember them most obsessively. In the Sanctuary of Hiraeth, homesickness is shared among those who love places so radically that we remake them in our own image. When place and self are inextricably bound, this is hiraeth.

Will I always dream of places that I love so radically? I suspect that I will. The yearning for these places is a bittersweet homesickness that both pains and delights. I will not wish it away, for its presence sustains me far more than its absence ever could.

 

 

In Blog Posts on
January 9, 2017

The Sanctuary of Naivety

You speak like a green girl / unsifted in such perilous circumstances.                                                                                                                                                                             [Hamlet, William Shakespeare]

Naiveté or naivety: lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment. These are the attributes of a green girl moving unsifted through the circumstances of her world. This is me–or rather this has been me for most of my life. Now, however, let the sifting begin.

I am the mother of a black son, the sister of a black brother, the teacher, colleague, and friend to countless blacks.  I am green. And white.

Standing in the kitchen of my family home, my mother and I were talking when my brother, age 5, entered. Flushed and sputttering, he asked, What does it mean when someone calls you nigger? I am sure that I must have gasped, but my mother simply turned to her son. She never missed a proverbial beat as she pulled him to a stool, sat him down, and offered up the truest definition a child could fathom. As a college student, I marveled at her composure and compassion, for I was seething with anger at the boys next door. I was certain that they would inevitably grow up to be white supremacists or grand wizards in the KKK or drunken men who drove around with Confederate flag decals on their 4-wheel drive trucks. I wanted to school them in all that was good and right and true. I wanted them to feel the degradation and shame that was exclusively black. I wanted them to pay.

As if I knew or had felt the degradation and shame that was exclusively black. How could a white girl growing up in the middle of Nebraska, green and inexperienced in most ways of the world, ever know this? Was my black brother my ticket to understanding? How about my black basketball player friend/Friday night dance partner? Did my relationships with both give me a leg-up on my white friends and neighbors? What, in fact, were my credentials in the world of race relations?

In How It Feels To Be Colored Me, Zora Neale Hurston writes He has only heard what I felt. Exactly. I had only heard about what others felt. Still, I was much like the young white narrator in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees. Living in a household of colored women, she felt as though she were living among hidden royalty:

Up until then I’d thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan. I thought of that policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I’d lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn’t understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us. Eddie Hazelwurst. What a shitbucket.

In the presence of my brother and my college friend, I often felt as though I was simply ordinary, while they were splendidly royal and special. And the boys next door? They were shitbuckets. Genuine Eddie Hazelwust shitbuckets. I felt something, though it was not–and could not be–uniquely black.

Through my blue eyes, I did try to see the world as my brother did, to understand what he must have felt when a middle-aged store clerk refused to wait on us in our hometown J. C. Penney’s store. But I was white college girl with a story yet to be told, a veritable novel of promises at my fingertips. How much my life, my very being differed from Toni Morrison’s protagonist in The Bluest Eye:

Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty….A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes.

As a black woman, Morrison understood the weightlessness of universalism, how it thins the substance of racial differences and how, like water, it ultimately holds no form. In response to critics who chided her for writing about and for black people, she wrote:

I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don’t know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That’s what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say ‘people,’ that’s what I mean.

When Morrison says people, she means her people. Black people. Although I have read Morrison’s novels and have found themes and characters that offered me insight into myself and my world, I am painfully aware that she was not writing for me. I might write an essay about the universal themes in Beloved or Sula, but truthfully, such an essay would be more academic exercise than truth.

I don’t see color. I just see people. How many times have I heard people brandish these words as weapons against racism? Too many. I may not have said these words, but I fear that I have thought them–or at least, agreed with them. As my son has grown into a man, however, I have had to try these words with the honesty that has come from his experiences and his insights. In this court of experience, these are words that any black prosecutor worth his or her salt could decimate.

Recently, I heard my son on the phone with one of his college professors. He was calling–again–to ask about his grade from a summer course. His current “D”, the professor had explained months ago, was simply a placeholder until he turned in his final paper. Quinn had turned in his final paper the morning after the midnight deadline last summer. He knew the paper was late and had emailed the professor with his apology. The professor responded and asked him to visit him in his office, to admit blame in person before he would grade his paper. Quinn complied, appearing in his office to admit fault and to respectfully ask if his paper might be graded. When he left, he believed that finally he would see his paper graded, and the placeholder “D” replaced with his legitimate grade. Weeks later, nothing, no change in his grade. He followed up by emailing again and asking, once more, if the professor might grade his paper as he had agreed to do in October. Nothing. When his university advisor told him that the professor asked that he appear in person again, Quinn decided to put the entire ordeal behind him and cut his losses.

A week before he was to graduate, however, he asked me if it was worth another try, since by now an entire semester had gone by. When I encouraged him to try one final time, he made the phone call from our kitchen. I listened as he talked to his professor. My heart swelled with pride as I listened to his respectful tone, his well-considered words, his honest admission–a third time–of his fault in missing the deadline.

But something in me soured the more he talked. From their conversation, I could tell that his professor was searching through past emails for proof that Quinn had, indeed, made contact with him. I heard Quinn recall details of their meeting in his office in a desperate attempt to remind him that he had appeared in person, as requested. Finally, I could deduce that the professor found Quinn’s former emails, which jogged his memory of their office meeting, and the phone conversation ended with his promise to grade his paper and change his final grade.

When Quinn hung up the phone, he shook his head. He wanted me to jump through hoops, to prove that I cared, that I wasn’t just another black athlete on a free ride. He didn’t come right out and say it, but that’s the bottom line. How could he not remember that I stood before him in his office, admitting my fault? How could he not even remember meI wanted to say because he’s a shitbucket–that’s why, but I didn’t. I took the party line: There are always going to be people–of all colors and persuasions–who refuse to see others. You did the right thing by being respectful and honest. 

Two days later, he made good on his promise, and Quinn received a B for the course. Victory? Maybe.

In truth, I knew that I had witnessed my son kowtow to a white man who was jerking him around. To each yes sir, I could imagine his white prof swiveling in his office chair, confident in his power to grant favors. Or not. Would he have made my son beg for his paper to be graded if he were white? Honestly, I don’t know. If I had to make an educated guess based on Quinn’s experience, though, I would say no. There’s a good chance that a white son’s email would have received a timelier response. A white son would probably not have been asked to accept blame in person, not once but twice. And a white son would likely have been remembered.

For Quinn’s entire life, we have hoped that he would be judged for his character and his acts. My husband and I have coached him to be respectful, polite, honest, compassionate, hard-working, faithful, and persistent. We expected him to see through others’ eyes and perspectives before he judges, before he speaks and acts. Like most parents, we simply wanted him to grow into a man of virtue.

But if I were to be brutally honest, I would have to admit that we also told him that he would have to be the bigger man on the athletic field, in the classroom and workplace, and in general. I would have to admit that I cautioned him about driving a nice car with window tint, warning that he may be targeted as a young black man (and he was–three times by the same officer). And I would have to confess that, as a college student, I worried that, to some, he would be just another black athlete majoring in football and to others, a dark-skinned man with a white soul, a white family, and no legitimate place among his black peers.

As a baby, Quinn solicited many head-pats, coos, comments and questions. What a head of hair he has! How good of you to do this [adopt a black child]. Are you babysitting? A foster parent? What does his father look like? Quinn and I took it in stride. He allowed perfect strangers to pat his afroed head, to literally get in his face in an attempt to make him smile, and to touch him. I accepted questions and comments that could have been offensive but ones that I shrugged off as well-intentioned but ignorant. I embraced my role as ambassador of something wholly unique in rural Iowa: a white mother who had chosen to adopt a black son.

On several occasions, people would ask where Quinn came from. When I identified our adoption agency, they persisted with but where did he come from? I would smile and answer, Georgia. Columbus, Georgia. It took several occasions like this for me to realize that when these people didn’t respond, their silence was disappointment–at best–and disapproval–at worst. In my arms, they hoped to see a poor black orphan from Zimbabwe or the Sudan. They wanted to affirm the missionary work that my family had undertaken. In their eyes, a black child from Africa was simply acceptable in a way that an American black child was not.

In my greeness, however, I chalked such interactions off to their loss. What they could not or would not understand was just too bad. Because I had been unsifted in such perilous circumstances, I excused others for their ignorance and excused myself for my restraint. I could have given them a piece of my mind, but I didn’t. Certainly, this was the more civil position. After all, I was not going to change the minds and hearts of such ignorance. Was I?

I just finished listening to Jodi Picoult’s novel, Small Great Things. As I drove, I listened to others narrate her book, their voices bringing her characters to life for me in unexpected ways. This is the story of veteran black labor and delivery nurse, Ruth, who is raising her son on her own after her husband was killed in Afghanistan. Forbidden by a white supremacist couple to touch their newborn son, she is removed from their case. When the white nurse charged with his care is called away on a medical emergency, she asks Ruth to watch the baby momentarily until she returns. Clearly uncomfortable and fearing for her job, Ruth consents but hopes that no one–especially the baby’s racist parents–will see her. Within moments, however, the baby appears to be lifeless, ashen and still. With the other nurses and doctors attending to the emergency, there is no one to call. And so Ruth jostles the infant, hoping he will breathe again. He doesn’t, and when she hears noise in the hallway, she quickly re-swaddles the baby and steps back from the bassinet.

The head nurse who arrives quickly calls a code, but in spite of everyone’s (including Ruth’s) best efforts, the baby dies. Days later, the parents file a lawsuit against Ruth, who is charged with murder. The narrative is largely Ruth’s as she faces the loss of her job, her friends, and her dignity in the face of a murder trial. Her white public defender, Kennedy, is confident of the fact that she does not see color, that she has defended and understood other blacks, but that the trial must be about creating reasonable doubt as to the baby’s death–not race, never race. As the trial comes to a close, Ruth finally confronts her lawyer and says:

You say you don’t see color…but that’s all you see. You’re so hyperaware of it, and of trying to look like you aren’t prejudiced, you can’t even understand that when you say race doesn’t matter all I hear is you dismissing what I’ve felt, what I’ve lived, what it’s like to be put down because of the color of my skin.

This is a popular novel–not a book you will find on an university syllabus. Still, there were moments in my car that I simply sat there, taking in Ruth’s words and knowing that I did not know. When Kennedy spoke, I cringed. In many scenes, her voice could have been mine, dismissing what blacks have felt and lived under the guise of my colorblind care. When Ruth spoke of the dreams she had for her son, Edison, I saw my son’s life spill out before me. And once, my car idling in the HyVee parking lot as I listened, I actually teared up and wondered if Ruth could be for Quinn what I could not.

Ultimately, Ruth saw that her dark skin–not her character, her education, or the life she had built–would define her:

On one side of the seesaw is my education. My nursing certification. My twenty years of service at the hospital. My neat little home. My spotless RAV4. My National Honor Society-inductee son. All of these building blocks of my existence, and yet the only quality straddling the other side is so hulking and dense that it tips the balance every time: my brown skin.

In my naivety and out of my great love, I tried to tip the balance towards all of those attributes which make Quinn the man he is. But I failed to honestly acknowledge that his blackness may–at times–tip the balance in spite of all he has become. I failed to see how hulking and dense this may be for him. I played the Pollyanna because I desperately wanted the world to be a kinder, better, more equitable place for him, for my brother, and for all those who have had the balance of their lives tipped towards what others believe them to be.

Of one thing I am certain: I am white, and I am green. This doesn’t excuse me from trying to understand, from actively listening, and from feeling–to the extent that I can–what others feel. But it does remind me that I must see color. My refusal to do so is dishonest and adolescent.

Neither, however, will I claim victim status or ask for special treatment for my black son. I will not excuse his sins as inevitable products of white oppression. I will not condone general retaliation or blanket resentment against whites because they are not black and because their great, great grandparents may–or may not–have been slaveholders.

Undoubtedly, I will spend the rest of my life acknowledging what I do not and cannot know about being black, while continuing to hold my son accountable for living a godly life. And I can take solace in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., who always held out hope for the kind of world I wish for my son and brother, for all of us:

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. 

In Blog Posts on
January 7, 2017

The Season of Myrrh

Myrrh (n.) A gum resin, usually of a yellowish brown or amber color, of an aromatic odor, and a bitter, slightly pungent taste. It is valued for its odor and for its medicinal properties. It exudes from the bark of a shrub of Abyssinia and Arabia, the Balsamodendron Myrrha. [Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary]

Myrrh is a word that will not quit. Its liquid syllables ooze like the sap, making their way forward in an endless descent. You cannot say it quickly or forcefully. It is a door that will never snap shut, a sky that rumbles but never matures into cracks or peals. For most, it is a word reserved for magi, biblical scholars, and essential oil peddlers. For some, it is the season that defines their lives.

In 1857, John Henry Hopkins, Jr., a rector at Christ Episcopal Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, wrote “We Three Kings of Orient Are” for a Christmas pageant in New York City. His fifth verse–a verse I can never recall actually singing–can hardly be sung with lustful good cheer:

Myrrh is mine: it’s bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom.
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.

According to some sources, myrrh is actually more musky-smelling than bitter. Still, most will agree that its identification as a perfume is an exaggeration. Unless you consider Vicks Vapor Rub, WD-40, or mimeograph solvent as cologne, that is. Named the perfume of the dead, its use as an embalming ointment is noted in John 19:39. Myrrh mixed with wine (Mark 15:23) was also used as a type of anesthetic to dull pain. Associated with pain and death, then, myrrh is not the stuff that naturally spawns joy, peace, and goodwill.

And oh, how Hopkins characterizes myrrh with his string of dreadful present participles: gathering, sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, and dying. Now that’s a cheery string of verbs for you! And the pièce de ré·sis·tance, the final blow? A past tense sealed coupled with a stone-cold tomb. 

The season of myrrh is a stone-cold tomb. Those who live there, sealed in gathering gloom, are sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, and dying. Theirs is a one-season existence in which spring never comes, never gives way to summer. In her poem, “The Moon and the Yew Tree,” Sylvia Plath writes as one who is well acquainted with the season of myrrh:

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.

Plath lived in the Season of Myrrh until she did not. Live, that is. She owns the season as one of complete despair, she identifies it as her home, and she ultimately writes that “the message of the yew tree is blackness–blackness and silence.” In one way or another, Plath was perpetually sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying. The slogan of her life could clearly have been myrrh is mine. Although she ultimately took her own life, her greater death occurred daily, moment by moment, when life ravaged and spit her out, tattered and moorless, to breathe again, to live another day. For Plath, her life was, indeed, a dark crime.

In Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary,  he presents a woman who is trapped in a banal and provincial life, a life in which she is convinced that nothing was going to happen and in whose future, there was nothing but a dark corridor and at the far end the door was bolted. Through a string of adulterous affairs with men she believed, she hoped beyond hope, would rescue her, she tries to turn winter to spring. Through a wanton pursuit of luxurious things, she tries to force spring into summer. Like Plath, however, she is far too aware of the futile means she had chosen to save herself and finally swallows arsenic. Her death, like her life, is agonizing. Though the trappings of Bovary’s life have glittered with promise, in the end, she realizes the truth of her earlier fears: she has lived solidly in the Season of Myrrh which imprisons its inhabitants in dark corridors with bolted doors.

Edna Pontillier, Kate Chopin’s protagonist in her novel The Awakening, suffers from a similar provincial malaise. With cooks, maids, and nannies to staff her winter and summer homes, she drowns in daily social and familial obligations that leave her passionless and purposeless. Tragically, she awakens to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her only to finally discover this awakening to be more curse than blessing. In the Season of Myrrh, bitterness comes in a variety of forms. Perhaps the worst is the kind of painful self-awareness that culminates in the desire to simply cease to exist.

At the end of the novel, Chopin offers present participles that appear in sharp contrast to those Hopkins uses in verse five of his carol:

The water of the Gulf stretched out before her, gleaming with the million lights of the sun. The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water. [The Awakening, Chapter 39, pg. 151-152]

As Mrs. Pontillier walks into the sea whose voice is never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude, however, she walks to her death. The sea’s seduction–like the seduction of gas or poison–is a major theme in the Season of Myrrh. In the abysses of solitude, you will feel no pain. You will unload your bitter burdens. You will cease to exist.

In Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard’s book, The Sickness Unto Death,  he defines his concept of despair. Writing under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, he begins with a reference to John 11:4 [This sickness in not unto death.] This is the story in which Jesus raises Lazarus from death. Anti-Climacus posits that the Christian concept of death is one that leads to eternal life. He argues accordingly that death is nothing for the Christian to fear. What does he claim should be feared then? The inability to die.

Those who live in the Season of Myrrh know this fear. Intimately, incessantly, intellectually, and spiritually, they know this fear. They fear that the well-intentioned but ultimately cruel platitudes of others will never end: this, too, shall pass; tomorrow will be a new, a better day; time heals all; look on the bright side; see your cup as half-full; take account of the blessings in your life, blah, blah blah. They fear they will drown in positive words and rescue efforts but will not die.

Although some desperate, depressed individuals do take their lives when they cannot find a way forward, most who live in the Season of Myrrh do not. They may wish to cease to exist, but they are often unable to die. Some are bound by ethics of service and/or love for others whom they do not wish to hurt or disappoint. Others are bound by a faith that affirms the worth of even a wretch like me. Still others are simply cowardly, unable to fathom such a deliberate and final act. Whatever the reason, depression’s scent lingers like myrrh, a sickly and bitter reminder that there are things far worse than death.

Every day, I hear or read of the mental health crisis in our country. I have lived this crisis in the workplace, in my family and in my friendships. Though I cannot say that I know depression of this magnitude, I have had seasons in my life when I skirted along its edges and felt the compulsive pull of despair. I am more than grateful that antidepressants have helped me keep this despair at bay. Now, I can actually sleep at night, I no longer hold my breath or tense my muscles uncontrollably, and I can tame my guilt and worry into something I can manage most days. My altered brain chemistry has transformed my life, and I can fully experience spring and summer.

But what of those who have tried it all–antidepressants, counseling, self-help programs, ECT, new relationships, new careers, no relationships, no careers? Theirs is a relentless Season of Myrrh, of gathering, sorrowing, sighing, bleeding. And the type of dying reserved for the living who must find the courage to drag their desperate corpses through another day.

There are far too many who suffer this way, and it goes without saying that we are failing to provide the necessary and compassionate services for them. We pay lip service to their needs and to our concern for them, but in the end, theirs is a messy problem that brings us all down. So we turn to the living and assuage our guilt with occasional donations to organizations must better equipped to handle such issues.

As one individual, one who is neither a trained counselor or doctor, I realize how little I can effectively do for those who walk the Season of Myrrh. It is this helplessness which has plagued me my entire life. What I can do and what others can surely do is to show genuine compassion.

The ecclesiastical Latin definition of compassion is to suffer with. Suffering with others is a messy, painful business. But if it is messy and painful for us, imagine what it is for those confined to the Season of Myrrh. While we ultimately walk into stories with happier endings, they wander dark corridors  of stories that conclude with bolted doors. And on the other side of these doors? There are the fruits of summer that they can only imagine and will never taste.

The Season of Myrrh is real. It knows no social, economic, or racial boundaries. It disregards age and education, reputation and faith. If I could wish or pray it away, I would. If I can offer a glimpse of summer to those in darkness, I will. And if I can suffer with another, I hope to have the courage and stamina to do so.