Dilemma: a difficult decision, a quandary, a predicament

It may seem counterintuitive to laud dilemma, to consider it sanctuary-worthy. Yet, The Sanctuary of Dilemma is alive and worthy of its place among other sanctuaries. For those willing to enter, it offers a full-body workout. Clinched fists and jaws, adrenaline rushes, pacing, trembling, pounding, head-scratching. And that’s just the physical stuff. Pondering, analyzing, fixating, obsessing, wrestling–that’s the mental stuff. Yearning, seeking, tempering, testing, loving and losing. The soul stuff.

Just the other day I reread William Stafford’s poem, “Traveling Through the Dark.” For the past forty years as an English teacher, this poem has been one of my go-to poems. In it, Stafford presents his dilemma:

Cliches concerning the blank page abound: your life is a blank page, this day is a blank page, etc., etc. And while there is intangible truth in these cliches, there is truth and inestimable worth in the tangible blank page. The new notebook opened to its first clean page, the just-gessoed canvas, eager for new color, the computer screen, its cursor blinking, yearning for release. In its discrete form, the Sanctuary of the Blank Page invites beginning.

As children, my friend, Val, and I spent hours with yards of newsprint. Inch by inch, hour by hour, and room by room, our pencils shaped homes that had germinated only in our dreams. We seldom knew–nor worried about–where our pencils would take us. Commenting on the poet’s craft, Robert Frost claimed, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” In our case, this translated into “No surprise for the creator, no surprise for the beholder.” As children, we understood the magnificent power of the blank page, upon which preferences, prospects and possibilities lay before us as the Promised Land. White was good. White was life-giving. White held infinite surprise.

When my father had to attend the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to complete his doctoral work, my family moved to Lincoln, where I attended a new school. Unlike my Kearney school with a playground as gateway to Harmon Park, Bancroft Elementary had a gravel playground. With no playground equipment, it was literally a blank page. While the boys tossed or kicked balls in the west section of the playground, the girls lost themselves in creation. With the edges of our shoes, we painstakingly scraped the gravel into ridges, creating the outlines of rooms which–through collective effort–grew into houses. If we were lucky enough to find unique rocks, we added fish to the aquariums which graced our rooms. Sticks offered more scraping potential and ultimately became light poles or lamps or whatever. Recess after recess, we put shoes to gravel. When the boys inevitably ran through our homes, scattering neatly-edged gravel and ruining any semblance of rooms, we began again. This time would be better. This time we would add more. This time we would protect our work.

As a child, I understood the joy in the parameters of the blank page. In her book, Juliet Immortal, author Stacey Jay writes:

Seven, ten, fifteen, eighteen years old and still there is nothing finer than a blank sheet of paper, the white promise that the world can be what I make it. A magical place, an adventurous place, a possible place. Erasers take away the mistakes. Another coat of paint to cover them up. Black and red and purple and blue. Always Blue.

The white promise that the world can be what I make it. Exactly. I lived for this white promise, seldom passing up an opportunity to fill a blank page with something. In fifth and sixth grades when we finally were able to use cartridge pens during penmanship class, there was something even grander about this white promise: the loops and whorls, the slant and slight made from a cartridge pen. I could feel the tension of push and restraint as I learned to make the pen move across the page. And it was this tension that began to initiate me into a new realm in the Sanctuary of the Blank Page.

In restraint, I began to learn the power that such pause gives. And with pause came fear. Stephen King warns that you must not come lightly to the blank page. Writer Margaret Atwood writes that blank pages inspire me with terror. English novelist, Virginia Woolf, writes: My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry. Ah yes, like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry. Where yards of newsprint and pages of notebooks once made me giddy, my fingers itching to put pen to paper, now they began to terrify me, leaving me on the bottom step of the page, crying.

In my academic work as a high school and then college student, I came to the blank page with trepidation. A productive day of writing seldom yielded more than a single paragraph of prose. Which had been written, rewritten and then rewritten again, looking and smelling more and more like something decayed, its dry bones sprawled across the page, stripped of their original promise. The more I wrote, the more I had to psyche myself into the sheer act of beginning. For beginning grew to mean inevitable dissatisfaction and failure. Beginning meant coming to Jesus. And beginning meant hours of agonizing reflection and revision in hopes of harvesting something passable. In truth, the Sanctuary of the Blank Page frightened me in ways that nothing else had.

As a graduate student, I spent an entire semester studying the work of the confessional poets, focusing primarily on Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton. Immersed in their lives and their work, I lived through their personal and professional pain, their valiant efforts to save themselves from the depression that consumed their days and nights. Each poem was yet another raw confession of self-doubt, self-loathing, self-denial. Each poem was an assault on the senses. In the Sanctuary of the Blank Page, these women were writing for their very lives, baring their deepest pain line by line, stanza by stanza. Sylvia Plath writes:

I have done, this year, what I said I would: overcome my fear of facing a blank page day after day, acknowledging myself, in my deepest emotions, a writer, come what may.

Come what may. Ultimately, neither Plath’s nor Sexton’s facing a blank page day after day was enough to save them. Both took their own lives after years of suffering with debilitating depression. Still, had they not committed themselves to filling the blank pages of each day, I am convinced that they would not have lived as long or as well as they did. Or that the world would now have the wealth of their insights and imagery.  Consider Plath’s poem, “Mirror.”

Mirror

Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present it 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.                                                                                             Gerda Weissmann Klein, Holocaust Survivor

Ask anyone in my family, and they will tell you that I don’t view television programs or movies. I experience them. We’re talking full-body experience of the often painful sort. I’ve clawed my way through suspense, wounding myself and companions and leaving bloody reminders of climatic scenes on forearms and hands. I’ve tented myself with sweatshirts or jackets, peering through a neck peephole at horror that is predictable (every seven minutes or so–I’ve timed the interludes between hackings) but nonetheless scream-worthy. I’ve outfitted myself with kleenexes and cried at the opening theme songs of Lassie and countless other poignant programs.

When I experienced Schindler’s List for the first time, however, this was both a full-body and out-of-body experience. Even today, having seen the film thirty or more times, within seconds, I am standing behind a barbed wire fence, my hair shorn, my hand clutching my mother’s, awaiting the selection. This film assaults my senses in ways I cannot begin to describe. And yet, it also ushers me into the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry, that tangible and intangible place in which singularity matters.

Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry, and you give it to a friend.  Yes, imagine this world of single possessions given willingly to another. In the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry, one thing, one word, one touch or gesture can save a life and soul. In the final scene of Schindler’s List, Oskar Schindler speaks through tears to a crowd of Jewish survivors, grieving his inability to save more of their families and friends. His accountant, Itzhak Stern, presses a gold ring into his palm, a ring that he and other Jewish survivors created in tribute to the man who gave them work and, as a result, saved their lives. Inscribed on the ring is this Hebrew line from the Talmud: Whoever saves one life saves the world entire. A single life, a single raspberry. In this sanctuary, singularity saves the world entire. 

For there is magic math in the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry. One word from a sideline coach affirms the efforts of a team, one raised hand, one question opens a room for many voices, and one touch–a hand that covers another–encourages one who sits weeping, solitary in his loss, to touch another, who touches yet another. In Mark 6:41, we read how Jesus fed 5,000:

Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. 

So little fed so many. This is the “new” math in the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry. It defies numerical logic. Turn your head, blink your eyes, and where there was a base of one, you find the exponent of many has performed its magic.

Don S. was the only fifth grader who was never chosen for a kickball team at recess. He was always the last kid standing in the middle of the field after the two captains had picked their teams. By default, he earned a spot as last man standing. As such, he had never heard his name called until one October recess when I was captain. To my shame, I had never chosen Don, never actually given him much time or thought. Until that recess, when I called his name. First pick. I’m not sure what prompted me to really see him that day. I’d like to think it was the prompting of the Holy Spirit or, at least, a sense of social responsibility, unfamiliar yet urgent. I called his name, and with that, I presented a single raspberry on a leaf to a friend.

Years later, I received a phone call in my college dorm room. Given his one phone call from the county jail, Don called me. I don’t remember what he had done to land himself there, but I do remember his voice, a voice that carried me back to that elementary playground on the day during which both of our lives were changed. In the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry, one moment in time can forge a bond that spans years.

Truthfully, too much of my life has been defined by the pursuit of many and more. I have chanted more is better when I knew better. More time, more money, more knowledge, more accolades. And at my fingertips? Single moments, single things, single words and ideas that could be–should be–served up lovingly on a bed of leaves.

When I was in Nigeria several years ago, I was smitten with this little girl who came out to meet us in the village of Bambur. Before I left Iowa, I had been warned–by family and friends–that I wouldn’t be able to bring any children home. (They know me all too well, I’m afraid.) All I could offer this girl was my hand as we walked the dirt paths of her village. Still, in the Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry, I had felt the power of a single hand and understood that long after I left Africa, I would carry this child with me.

A month after I returned, I thought about Gerda Weissmann Klein’s words and imagined myself in Bambur, a single mango my entire worldly possession. I imagined myself gathering cassava root for drying, working the maize fields, the mango stowed lovingly away until I could return to the village. Until I could give it to my friend.  An ocean away, however, I had to settle for writing my intentions.

To My Friend

In the dry season when little grows,

everything is edible:

bark from breadfruit trees,

termites, even goat dung.

When land and skin turn ashen,

you feast on the memory of mango,

now a shimering specter

in the noonday sun.

In the absence of sweet meat and juice

that once stained your fingers and chin,

you drool dust.

.

In a world gone dormant,

how can your loveliness live?

If there were one ripe mango in your village,

I would carry it in my pocket

all day.

And tonight when you lie outside your mud hut—

one perfect piece

in a quilt of small, sleeping children–

imagine me kneeling,

then placing my gift on a leaf

near your face.                                                                                                                                                                            .

Imagine me your friend.

The Sanctuary of a Single Raspberry opens up before us daily. I’m training myself to do the “new math” and present single gifts for multiplying. For if a single raspberry or soul can save the world entire, then I can think of no greater singularity to steer my course.

Lighthouse, Harmon Park

In the Sanctuary of a Park, you can have Disney Land in your backyard. Or nearly your backyard. Two blocks from my childhood home is Harmon Park, 6 1/2 city blocks of bliss. In 1924, having received a Harmon Foundation grant, the city of Kearney, Nebraska purchased land, designated as Harmon Field, for a playground. A plaque in the park reads:

This playground was made ours through the assistance of the Harmon Foundation, 1924, dedicated forever to the plays of children, the development of youth and the recreation of all. “The gift of land is the gift eternal.”                       Wm. E. Harmon

Lighthouse, Harmon Park, circa 1936

And what a gift eternal it is. From the window of Park Elementary School, the magic kingdom spread out before me as far as I could see. Once these acres held chautauquas, pony rides, and a petting zoo complete with monkeys. But for me, my sisters and friends, they held something better: the promise of what could be. In the Sanctuary of a Park, if you can imagine it, it will be.

Just outside the Youth Center, a WWII tank found a permanent home on a concrete slab. Wars were fought on and around this tank. Dares were made. Can you shimmy out to the end of the gun and drop to the ground? Can you stand on one foot on the top of the tank? And lunches were eaten on its fenders, while the stories of wars and war strategies continued through pb & j and baggies of crushed potato chips.

The Sonotorium, an open-air Art Deco theater, was constructed in 1938. Home to concerts, dramas, graduations, and community gatherings, the Sonotorium hosted our childhood pageants and plays, performed for park squirrels and neighborhood dogs.

But the real magic was found in the Rock Garden at the northern edge of the park. Initiated in 1936, the Kearney Daily Hub reported that if all Kearney residents who travel to mountain country, the Rockies or elsewhere, …will pick out just one or two odd-shaped rocks or stones and bring them back to Kearney, the park would soon have a very good start toward its proposed rock garden. A rock pyramid near the entrance of the Rock Garden testifies to the fact that residents did, indeed, contribute rocks–from every state–to the project. Still, the Works Progress Administration did the majority of the construction during the Depression years, creating a paradise from rock.

And the rock came in. Union Pacific flatcars brought stones from Wyoming, Utah, North and South Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska. WPA workers unloaded them and moved them to their final destinations. According to personal interviews with Kearney residents and records from the Kearney Daily Hub, this was no small task:

The story is told of one huge rock weighing 8,400 pounds being moved on a sled through the park and while crossing the stream the rock rolled off blocking the water. It was too heavy to move so workmen dug under it to let the water flow. The rock stayed where it fell and can be seen today. 

In the Sanctuary of a Park, something as common as rock becomes the stuff that dreams are made of. The Rock Garden was not professionally designed–no blueprints for its design exist–but rock by rock, the garden took its shape organically, perfectly, until the whole became so much greater than its mineral parts. At the northern end of the park on its highest point, the headwaters of the Rock Garden flows from its largest waterfall down through a series of streams and small pools, around islands, through more waterfalls, and finally to the larger pools at the foot of a magnificent stone lighthouse with a curved exterior staircase. From the balcony of the lighthouse, you can look out upon a grotto, carved in the eastern hillside, and over lily pads that color the summer pools below. There are eleven stone bridges; some are wide slabs of rough rock, others are narrow cuts of smooth stone, but all lead to adventure for those of us who grew up in the park.

For who can boast that they owned an island before they were 12 years old? My sisters and I laid claim to an island near the lighthouse, having chosen it carefully from a host of other islands and christened it TES Island (Timaree-Erin-Shannon Island). We spent hours on and around this island, spinning stories of love and loss, venturing into less familiar Rock Garden territory, and grounding ourselves in the other-worldliness of this place that was, remarkably, so close to home and so accessible.

TES Island, Harmon Park

In the Sanctuary of a Park, there is a willing suspension of disbelief. Legend had it that a disgruntled fiancee threw her diamond engagement ring into the pool, an angry flash of brilliance cast into the mossy water below the falls. I can see us still: a cozy clutch of children, huddled beneath the big cottonwood tree at the base of Diamond Ring Falls, whispering the legendary words that held us all, spell-bound, in the magic of the moment. We would find the diamond ring. Who else but us, those who loved and haunted the Rock Garden most, should be the beneficiaries of this treasure? We would willingly suspend our disbelief, refuting the obvious: that the pool’s 18 inches of water was drained in late October, that if–and this is a BIG if–there really had been a diamond ring thrust into the shallows, it is more than likely that some park worker would have found it as they prepped the park for winter. Summer after summer, we spoke the legend into life, searching the water for some hint of the gem we carried in our hearts and dreams.

Diamond Ring Falls, Harmon Park

And we were willing to suspend our disbelief as we climbed the winding stairs to the top of the lighthouse, where we stood in front of the grafittied and padlocked black door. In truth, behind this door lay park workers’ tools. For us? Behind this door lay glorious possibilities. Kidnapped children (the ones who stole lunch money and cut in lunch lines, the ones we hoped would someday vanish)? Treasure (bags of gold, neatly stacked in circular rows inside the belly of the lighthouse)? Skeletons (of old people–the scary kind who invite you into their homes BEFORE they will give you candy on Halloween)? And what were these words scratched into our line of sight? Clues to mysteries long unsolved? Cautionary words to STAY OUT, to BEWARE, to WATCH YOUR BACK? Never mind that closer, more critical looks would reveal the work of vandals, drunks, and lovers. Never mind that the door was repainted yearly to remove the remnants of adolescent mischief. Just never mind. We could willing suspend our disbelief, fueling our adventures another summer.

In the Sanctuary of a Park, you can find magic when you need it. Even as I grew and understood, all too well, the workings of the real world–the world in which you do not make cheerleader even though you desperately want to, the world in which you remain ordinary even though you yearn to be extraordinary–the Rock Garden in Harmon Park remained a temporary stay against confusion, a Neverland, a refuge. In the small pool at the top of the waterfall we called Wishing Well Falls, I lovingly placed coins that I hoped would bring me luck and love. It was there that unspoken words of hope found their voice. It was there that prayer found me, sustained and chastened me. And it was there that, 1/4 mile from my high school, I could be utterly alone, cocooned in rocks and leaves, the songs of water over rock as familiar choruses, and the vista of the Rock Garden ever before me.

Wishing Well Falls, headwaters, Harmon Park

While many dream of people and plots, I dream in places. Though I rarely recognize or remember the people or stories of my dreams, I am fixed in the places of my dreams. I return to them, each time more familiar than the last. I know their nooks and crannies, I feel their colors and shapes.

Harmon Park is a place I return to–in dream and in person–time after time. This is a place for time-travel. This is a place for unraveling the best stories, those tightly wound balls of narrative twine, unconsciously or subconsciously hidden from the world. This is a place for gathering, a cloud of witnesses from days of swinging, climbing, frog-hunting, and adventuring who hold your hands and your dreams. And this is a place for children and grandchildren whose stories might also find the magic of water and rock and sky.

                                                                                                    The author of a book is a voice with a new body.                                                               Don Welch

As a girl, I lived in and through my books. I read and reread both the Judy Bolton and Nancy Drew series. Even today, I carry Carolyn Keene’s voice with me: Nancy Drew, smartly dressed in a navy suit, white pumps, and a patent leather clutch bag. . .  I understood, all too well, that Nancy never went anywhere until–and unless–she was smartly dressed. Carolyn Keene’s and Margaret Sutton’s voices took on new bodies as they narrated the Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton mysteries. These voices in their new bodies became essential characters through which I grew to love Nancy and Judy. I flew through pages, eager to solve the mystery but always grieving the inevitable final page. My only solace was the fact that these were series, and I could begin a new book the very moment I finished one.

In the Sanctuary of a Book, voices do, indeed, take on new bodies. And these bodies become companions and confidantes. Although they are birthed through words, through images and rhythms, through dialogue and rhymes, they live and breathe as tangibly as your best friend, your next-door neighbor, your mail carrier. They sit beside you at the dinner table, whispering in your ear: Tell them about. . .  In the moments before sleep, they kneel beside your bed, and the breath of their prayers rustles the bed covers. And when you wake, they take your hands, pull you from your dreams and say: Come. 

Last weekend, I had the privilege to participate in a book launch event for my father’s final collection of poetry, Homing. In the midst of family, friends, colleagues, and fellow poets, my father’s book became a voice with a new body. As we read his words, giving our best voices to his voice, from beyond the grave his new body, a palpable presence, filled the room.

In the Sanctuary of a Book, there is this kind of transfiguration. On the mountaintops of our rooms, the author’s voice, bathed in searing white light, takes his place alongside the likes of William Butler Yeats and Nathaniel Hawthorne. This voice takes on a new body with arms that turn the pages of a lifetime and with eyes that fix you–helplessly, blessedly–in the moment. And then, a cloud wraps you into the translucence of consonance and assonance, and you have ears to hear: This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him. 

One of the world’s leading New Testament scholars, N. T. Wright, asserts that bodily resurrection distinguishes Christianity from other faiths and beliefs. In his book, Surprised By Hope, he writes:

According to the early Christians, the purpose of this new body will be to rule wisely over God’s new world. Forget those images about lounging around playing harps. There will be work to do and we shall relish doing it. All the skills and talents we have put to God’s service in this present life–and perhaps too the interests and likings we gave up because they conflicted with our vocation–will be enhanced and ennobled and given back to us to be exercised to his glory. 

There will be work to do and we shall relish doing it. My father walked the streets of my hometown daily, finding his rhythm and his voice as he moved through the alleys and down the sidewalks of Kearney. And then he wrote. Sometimes he would stop to record images and lines in small notebooks he carried in his pocket; other times he would carry the images and lines in his head until he returned home. This was his greatest work, and he relished–and continues to relish–doing it. For my father’s new body and voice are enhanced and ennobled through the pages of his books. They live more urgently today than ever. Such is the glory in the Sanctuary of a Book.

In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis asks us to consider resurrection bodies that are more solid, more real, and more substantial than our earthly bodies. Through the poems in my father’s books, I hear his voice still. I would recognize its timbre, its cadence and inflection, in a room of a thousand voices. For me, like many others, this voice has, indeed, taken on a bodily presence that comforts, instructs, and inspires–a presence that is more solid, more real, and more substantial with each reading and rereading of each poem in each book.

The voices of so many great authors have taken on new bodies for me over the years. I have had tea with Kate Chopin, walked with Henry David Thoreau, cried with Elie Wiesel, sung with e. e. cummings, raged with Richard Wright, wondered with Toni Morrison, and grieved with Sylvia Plath. In my four bedroom home in rural Iowa, I have housed untold authors.

In the Sanctuary of a Book,  you can leave the light on and the door unlocked because you always have room for more new bodies. And as you welcome them in and their voices resonate, expanding to the very corners of your home and your soul, you know that it does not get much better than this.

My name is Shannon, and I am a color addict. The fact that I looked through endless images of color, searching for just the right ones and losing myself in my obsession with the next image, and then the next, is testament to my ongoing addiction. I drool as I near the paint section of home improvement stores, hiding my predilection for color from my husband as I desperately sneak paint swatches into my purse. We are not painting anything in our home or even planning to paint anything. Still, when there are perfectly good paint swatches with glorious colors to ponder? And they are free for the taking? In the Sanctuary of Color, fellow addicts understand that it is impossible to pass up those small cardstock squares of color in all their shades and tints and wonder.

And then there are the names of colors. In the Sanctuary of Color, there is legitimate sensuality reserved for color names. When one speaks mauve, amber, aquamarine, azure, cyan, cinnebar, orchid, saffron, emerald, fuschia, indigo, jade, taupe or topaz, the consonants and vowels should be rolled around the mouth, languidly like fine wine, before they emerge into the spoken air. Color addicts, like me, will always saturate their language with indigo and azure. Never just blue, which marks even the most enthusiastic color initiate as simple-minded and downright uncouth.

In the Sanctuary of Color, the newly commercialized adult coloring fad is neither new nor a fad. I will concede that because so many adults have embraced coloring, this has made it more socially acceptable for me and has–on many occasions–saved me from my granddaughter’s scrutiny and concern as I mindlessly filled up the pages of her Dora the Explorer and Disney Princesses’ coloring books with my own careful coloring. The moment when Gracyn turned to me and said, Grandma, you need to stop coloring. I mean it–you just have to stop, was the moment I knew I had a coloring problem. It is humbling, indeed, to be confronted by a six-year-old who has staged an intervention, hiding your newly purchased box of crayons who-knows-where. . .

Those who live in the Sanctuary of Color scoff at the displays of 12 count crayon and colored pencil packages. Twelve? What a joke! Twenty-four? Seriously! Seventy-two? Now, you’re talking. More is definitely better. It doesn’t get much better than spreading your colors out before you, a panoply of such marvelous pigments, all yearning for white space.

Color obsession has not been contained only to the confines of my home. No, it has reared its ugly head as I have created power point presentations for instruction and professional development. This is not a great color scheme, I would think as I created. No, this will never do. I’m going to try this combination. And given the multitude of colors and combinations from which to choose, I would create, recreate, and recreate, looking for the perfect colors. Minutes would pass–sometimes a half hour–and I would be bent over my computer, trying on better-still color combos. Who does this? Sadly, the type of color addict who also has to limit herself to looking at five (not six, and certainly not seven!) wallpaper books lest she enter an alternate color universe never to return again.

Claude Monet, perhaps the most influential Impressionist, wrote: Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. Monet has a permanent seat in the throne room in the Sanctuary of Color. He gets it. The obsession that skips along the line between joy and torment, flirting with bliss–at one moment–and with suffering at the next. In his later years, Monet’s sense of color took on a characteristic reddish tone, a common result of cataracts. For a self-professed color addict/aficionado, I cannot begin to imagine the sense of loss he must have felt when he realized that he was not seeing color as it really was. Some have wondered if he could actually see ultraviolet wavelengths of light–wavelengths that most cannot normally see–after he finally had cataract surgery. They propose that he may have perceived colors differently after surgery, for he returned to earlier paintings, imbuing his water lilies with even bluer pigments.

By Wikipedia Loves Art participant “shooting_brooklyn” – Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8947762

I like to imagine Monet with his new set of eyes, sans cataracts, sitting on a veranda, his easel before him, as the best morning light washes over his canvas. I like to think that he, like me, would be so enraptured with the marriage of light and color, that he would speak to the canvas and to himself. More cobalt. And more opaque here–use the full force of the pigment, Claude. Make it right. Make it true. In the Sanctuary of Color, those like Monet would never tire at looking critically at color, finding its truest hues. This is the sacred work they were called to, and all else pales, pitifully, in comparison.

In contrast to the Impressionist’s juxtaposition of color to color, dabs of maize alongside dabs of saffron, I have seen the meticulous work of single-haired brushes that unload the smallest bits of color on the wings of mallards and other water fowl. Watching my husband paint this way, his eyes and hands extensions of the drake’s wing, minutes becoming hours, and color unfolding slowly but surely from the breast to the wing to the tail, I have understood how inclusive the Sanctuary of Color truly is. Paul knows the anatomy of a mallard in ways that only an artist and a life-long hunter can. Each brush stroke, each color comes from a primeval and wholly personal place. For him, like other artists, color matters greatly. Neither technique, subject, nor style matter as much.  The noble pursuit of color makes all welcome in the Sanctuary of Color. If you can talk color, if you live and breathe color, you’re in.

When I visited Yellowstone Park, I remember standing in something close to rapture at the edge of Morning Glory Pool. While others were snapping photos, the names of colors were rushing through my mind. It was a kind of Rolodex-of-color moment, and it was essential for me to name what I saw before me. I would like to say that after collecting thousands of paint swatches, buying yearly big boxes of new, pointy crayons, and studying color palettes for decades that I would have been able to name the colors of the Morning Glory Pool. But I could not. These were colors yet to be named, colors that defied naming and yet longed for it. I decided that it was more than enough to have seen these colors and to have pocketed them, as only a color enthusiast can, in my soul’s treasure chest.

Morning Glory Pool, Yellowstone National Park

Those who live in the Sanctuary of Color understand that they can return to their treasure chests and admire a lifetime of colors.  Meticulously packed and sorted, one can remove them, love them, and speak their names. Crimson, cerulean, cerise, and celadon .  .  .

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

My first foray into the Sanctuary of Elegance came through my maternal grandmother, Shirley Margaret Zorn. My cousins and I were visiting and playing in her living room when Grammie entered and told us to take our feet off of the davenport. When she could have said couch, Grammie said davenport. With a single word, I was momentarily transported into a world less common and unspeakably fine.

Years later, I recall my grandmother describing a home in her community as elegant. Even as she spoke the word, I took note. This was an event, not a passing moment. Elegant. From the mouth of Shirley Margaret Zorn, each syllable emerged, equally rich and wholly unrushed. In the  ceremonial hush that followed, I became a willing initiate into the Sanctuary of Elegance.

Elegance is rarely–and not necessarily–opulence. It lives in the clean lines of Jacqueline Kennedy’s pillbox hats, and not in the spectators of British royal women, hats that sprout exotic feathers and that sport bedazzlements crafted in the workshops of Willie Wonka. Although most Americans preferred to call their First Lady Jackie–a name that warmly bridged the gap between American political royalty and the common folk–card-carrying members of the Sanctuary of Elegance deliberately deferred to Jacqueline–a name that sounded just as elegant as the woman herself.

Those who truly understand the nature of elegance, however, know that it must not be confused with simplicity. The messages in commercial greeting cards are simple. Their rhymes and verses are simply sentimental, leaving their saccharine residue on the soul. One would be hard-pressed to ever call these verses elegant, comforting and well-intended as they may be. But the rhymes and verses in the Sanctuary of Elegance? They defy simple description or definition. They suggest something profound: fine and lasting.

In my father’s poem, “Listening to a Pavane by Gabriel Faure,” he writes:

The flowers of a pavane turn                                                                     slowly in the wind.

In a world filled with killings                                                                     they offer you their petals.

The voices of the flowers                                                                               are ocher and umber,

the voices of the flowers                                                                                 are vermillion and rum.

Sometimes it is like this when                                                                     you listen to a pavane,

the petals of the flowers,                                                                             their sounds in the wind,

amaryllis, sweet william,                                                                         vermillion and rum.

Amaryllis, sweet william, vermillion and rum. Now these are rhymes for the likes of Shirley Margaret Zorn and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. And these are sentiments from the pure maple sugar, the deep tap root of the heart. These are words of elegance that will stand the test of time, returning as a soul-chorus like words of scripture stored away for just a time as this.

I will admit that I am a fan of kitsch. Those who know me well have seen my penchant for the tacky and utterly uncivilized. At any given moment, I can make a kitsch impulse-buy (my collection of early 1960s American Whimsie Dolls is more than enough evidence to support my claim here). Still, I am equally a big fan of elegance. Black and white photography from those who have an artistic eye for compositions that suggest–rather than announce–is powerfully elegant to me. Just a square of fine, dark chocolate or a single cup of perfectly-brewed Brazilian coffee is elegance extraordinaire. And the eyelashes of my sleeping granddaughter and grandson? The personification of elegance, to be sure.

Shirley Margaret Zorn ushered me into the Sanctuary of Elegance. Although my cousins and I will most remember the games we played in her ordinary basement and ordinary yard, the comfort food she lovingly fed us (caramel cinnamon rolls and magnificent pie), and a lap big enough to hold all of us, I remember and revere those moments during which I could see beyond our commonness into elegance.

If she were here today, I would ask her if she wanted to go furniture shopping with me, for I wished to buy a new davenport. She would understand that, in the Sanctuary of Elegance, you should never settle for a couch.

Indeed a picture is often worth a thousand words, and this photo of my son and his buddy, John, defines buddy in ways that words fail.

According to Merriam-Webster, a buddy is a companion, a partner, a friend.  I look at the way that John’s arm encircles my son, how he leans into Quinn, and how his eyes say I’ve got you, buddy. I see how Quinn rests his head on John’s shoulder, how he gives himself fully to John’s embrace, and how his eyes return with I trust you, buddy. All of this seems so much more than mere companionship, partnership or friendship.

In the Sanctuary of a Buddy, there is so much more. In John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, he presents us with a picture of more through the relationship between George and his mentally-challenged and wholly dependent buddy, Lennie, single men who are traveling in northern California to find ranch work during the 1930s.  As they camp one night and cook their beans over an open fire, Lennie asks George for ketchup to smother his beans. When George tells him that they have no ketchup, Lennie says: “I was only foolin’, George. I don’t want no ketchup. I wouldn’t eat no ketchup if it was right here beside me.” George returns with: “If it was here, you could have some.” Lennie’s final response in this scene epitomizes how much more a buddy truly is: “But I wouldn’t eat none, George. I’d leave it all for you. You could cover your beans with it and I wouldn’t touch none of it.”

In the Sanctuary of a true Buddy, you would “leave it all” for another: the ketchup, the last piece of cherry pie, your time and your love. A buddy’s mantra is It is not all about me. Moment by moment, day in and day out, a buddy hands you the ketchup bottle, serves you the last piece of pie, gives his time and her love away. Selflessly.

Buddies understand the glorious bond that defies companionship or partnership. George reveals that “Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place.” He continues, “With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us.”

This is the story that Lennie has heard and longs to hear again and again from George, the narrative bond that defines them as buddies. While there may be other lonely guys drinking their sorrows away, Lennie reminds George that “I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that’s why [we are not like the other guys].” The truth at the heart of the Sanctuary of a Buddy comes quite literally out of the mouth of a man-child here: I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you. This sincere and constant looking after another is the best of buddidom.

In the children’s classic, Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White writes:

“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing.”

In a world in which we tend to complicate relationships, often missing the proverbial forest for the trees, Charlotte understands that the real value of being a buddy is, in itself, a tremendous thing. You may enter the Sanctuary of a Buddy empty-handed. No tangible gifts or entrance fees are required. You may wear your favorite, holey Rolling Stones or Willie Nelson t-shirt, your go-to sweat pants with little elastic left in the waistband, and refuse to comb your hair or brush your teeth. Seasoned buddies go without make-up and never check to see if they have matching socks. Come as you are takes on deliberate and pure meaning in this place, for you offer yourself in sacred friendship to another. That is enough. That in itself is a tremendous thing. 

The Sanctuary of a Buddy is often a place of pleasant, soul-sustaining surprise. C. S Lewis writes that “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'” I remember a sleepover that one of my young daughters had with a friend. When her friend opened a small suitcase, revealing a pull-up that had been carefully, lovingly packed just in case of an accident, my daughter burst into genuine buddy glee: You too? I thought I was the only one. In a world of grilled cheese lovers, I  thought my family members and I were the only ones who professed to love grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Until I found a true buddy who confessed that she, too, had grown up eating and loving grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You too? Our buddy bond began with that simple exchange. It grew, through many such moments and realizations, over years.

The Sanctuary of Buddies often requires patience. Aristotle claimed that “Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.” True buddihood may grow slowly, green experiences deepening until, saturated with the pure flavors of friendship, they ripen fully. And ah, when they do! The sanctuaries they create are those in which buddies never feel compelled to fill silences in the presence of their best buddies. Over time, they dream their buddies’ dreams and sing their life songs. Over time, their buddies’ narratives become second-nature, well-worn, comfortable stories woven inextricably into their own narratives.

In the Sanctuary of a Buddy, no one loses. In the classic film, It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey plans to kill himself. Through divine intervention, two angels send an angel-in-training, Clarence, to save George’s life. Ultimately, Clarence is successful in receiving his official angel wings by showing George that he has lived a life of purpose. And he writes, “Dear George: Remember no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings. Love, Clarence.” By their very nature, buddies cannot fail, for they are never, never alone.

I have lived much of my life in the Sanctuary of Buddies. Blessedly. I plan to live the remainder of my life there. And if my residence there grants even one angel apprentice her official wings, so much the better.

Ottumwa High School Principal, Mark Hanson, at 2015 graduation

If I were to devote every waking minute for the remainder of my life to reading all of the books, listening to all of the audio tapes, and to watching all of the videos marketing leadership, most certainly, I would not live long enough. But then again, I don’t have to. In the Sanctuary of True Leadership, it is more than enough to live and work alongside a genuine leader. For the past five years, I have had this privilege in working with Mark Hanson, Principal of Ottumwa High School.

True educational leaders have little time to market themselves or their work. While others are consulting their publicists or editors, true leaders are rolling the large garbage cans around the cafeteria–during three lunches, mind you–to pick up student trash. They are standing at the door when students arrive, greeting each student by name; they are listening, always listening, to those who have questions, comments, concerns; they are leading cheers at student pep rallies and acknowledging teacher efforts during staff meetings; and they are humbly professing their own mistakes before those whom they lead.

When I first met Mark Hanson, I was working as a literacy specialist at the area educational agency. As I was presenting during a professional session one day, I spotted an unfamiliar administrator. The session finished, I approached a colleague and asked, Who is that guy? The one sitting in the middle table with some of the Ottumwa teachers? My colleague said, That’s Mark Hanson, the new principal of Ottumwa High School. Why do you ask? To which I responded, I just wanted to know the name of the best listener I’ve ever seen. 

Many leadership books and seminars peddle talk and actions, but few give more than lip service to listening. And this is where they get it so wrong: true leaders are true learners. To learn, really learn, they understand that, above all else, they must listen to other leaders and to those who will follow them. Mark Hanson is the type of listener who listens with every fiber in his being, eyes locked on the speaker, pen in hand, his upper body bent forward lest he miss one thought. For true educational leaders, the speaker may be a fellow administrator, a teacher, a custodian or cook, a student, or a parent. It matters not who the speaker is, but rather, what can be learned.

After 40 years in education, I’ve had my share of leaders, some better than others. In truth, most were so far removed from the real work of the classroom that they could only spout the latest educational theory or drop the name of the latest educational guru in response to my questions and concerns. As if merely mentioning Robert Marzano’s name would magically make the boys in my fifth period class write the argumentative essays that were due two weeks ago. As if thrusting a copy of Vygotsky’s work on the zone of proximal development would cure all of the challenging behaviors in my freshman English class. Years from the authentic work of the classroom, many educational leaders flounder in the face of real school with real issues and real students.

In an educational world in which many principals have taught but a few years, Mark Hanson’s 13 years of classroom teaching make him an anomaly. Yet, these are crucial years. The fact that they were spent teaching students to read and write makes them all the more crucial. I recall Mr. Hanson relating an anecdote from his classroom years. Having collected a group of student essays, he worked long into the night until he had graded all of them, so that he could return them the next day. As one who has prided herself on timely feedback, I must admit that this anecdote gave new–and impressive–meaning to timely. True educational leaders can draw upon their own classroom experience, which gives them much-needed credibility in this age of anyone-can-lead-with-proper-training. 

In the Sanctuary of True Leadership, leaders talk the talk and, more importantly, walk the walk. They understand that walking the walk requires constant soul-searching: Am I modeling the kind of words, acts, relationships I wish for others? What should I do differently and better? How could I be a solution to this problem? This kind of soul-searching is not simple reflection; rather, it is the down-and-dirty type of introspection which often raises more concern than it does self-satisfaction. In short, this is not for the faint of heart. Mark Hanson has demonstrated his continual willingness to ask the tough questions and to look, first and foremost, to himself before he looks elsewhere. I don’t think there are many chapters on soul-searching in most leadership manuals, but there should be.

In the Sanctuary of True Leadership, it is not nearly enough to be a good building manager. The task of management–although necessary–pales in comparison to the tougher work of creating and sustaining a culture in which all can safely learn. This culture is carved from crucial conversations with students, staff, and parents. It is nurtured through continuing conversations and teamwork. And it is sustained when all players buy into a vision of what a school could and should be. Mark Hanson has never been one to settle for a statement I’ve heard far too often in my 30 years in Ottumwa: You have to understand–this is just Ottumwa. 

No. Not just Ottumwa. This is Ottumwa: the Ottumwa we want to be, the Ottumwa we can be. In spite of the circumstances, the history, the naysayers, true leaders are missionaries. They forge into unknown territory, the vision always before them. And they lead with clarity, as well as a type of contagious passion that, like a snowball rolling downhill, builds mass as it moves. Over the past seven years, Mark Hanson has built critical mass. His passion for the vision of THE Ottumwa High School will be, perhaps, his most valuable legacy.

To say that Ottumwa High School will miss Mark Hanson is one of the grossest understatements I can imagine. He will be sorely missed–as a leader, as a colleague, as a visionary, as a change agent, as a friend and as a human being. When I think, however, of all those he has mentored during his lifetime, I take solace in the knowledge that there will be other leaders who will take up the mantle of true leadership. In the Sanctuary of True Leadership, there is certainly room for more members. Many, many more.