Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Price of Abissinia

In 2008, I went with a group of Iowa volunteers on a mission trip to Nigeria. The children in this photo are but a few of the many who greeted us openly and wanted to hold our hands as we walked from one spot to another. I recall spreading my fingers on both hands as far as they could go, so that ten kids could each hold a finger. During our three weeks there, we visited both urban and rural areas, schools, libraries, and villages. Both this trip and my family’s year of hosting a Nigerian high school student were life-changing.

You think you know what an African country might look like, how the people might live. And then you actually go there and realize that the distance that has separated you from this place and these people is much more than geographical distance. You’ve been distanced culturally, psychologically, politically, and morally. Truth be told, you might as well be visiting another planet–heck, another galaxy!–as another continent. It’s as if you’ve been standing on a metaphorical mountain top where you’ve looked out on people that, from this distance, bear more resemblance to insects than humans. Perhaps at this distance, you’ve tried to explain things you’ve haven’t experienced, or you’ve romanticized peoples and places you’ve never known. Maybe this distance, as Samuel Johnson writes, has had the same effect on the mind as on the eye: what you can’t see is what you can’t know.

In a recent Newsweek opinion piece, Nigerian Anglican priest and journalist, Hassan John, sends a desperate warning to the West that he argues has largely ignored–and continues to ignore–the genocide in central Nigeria. He writes:

The central region of Nigeria has been trapped in a slow-motion genocide for over a decade now. More than 35,000 Christians have been massacred. Whole villages have been exterminated. Thirteen thousand churches and 1,500 Christian schools have been destroyed. More than two million have been displaced from their homes, and 304,000 are refugees. According to the International Red Cross, by September of last year 23,000 had gone missing.

According to John, the Fulani (cattle herdmen he claims are working with the Islamic militant group Boko Haram) aim to rid Nigeria of Christians. He laments that the government of Nigeria has described the massacres (the Fulani armed with machetes) as clashes between farmers and herders who are both at fault. Jonah Jang and David Mark, former high-ranking military officers and members of the Nigerian Senate, have argued that the way that these attacks were carried out bore the markings of a planned and orchestrated genocide.

Tragically, this is just one example of genocide in the world today. For me, however, it’s one I can see clearly and feel deeply because I’ve gone the distance to experience this country and love its people. Danny, our former foreign exchange student, lives in Kaduna State where there have been many such massacres. Danny who lived safely in our home for a year, who joined our small rural Midwestern community and whose biggest concern during the time he lived here was whether or not he remembered his clothes for basketball practice. Distance may literally separate us by thousands of miles now, but it can’t separate me from the horrific scenes that play out in my mind. It’s impossible to use distance to swaddle myself in ignorance. When I read reports of this ongoing genocide, for me, it’s all too real.

The former president of the University of Notre Dame, Rev. Thedore Hesburgh, writes: All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance. From an agreeable, safe distance, it’s all too easy to suggest the kinds of humanitarian and military aid we should offer countries like Nigeria, Myanmar, Syria, or the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sadly, we are experts at practicing this kind of virtue at a distance. We may argue that we can’t possibly have firsthand experiences in all of these places, that our current technology offers us a nearly firsthand experience. And all this is true. Still–and perhaps I’m speaking mostly to myself–distance serves as a buffer so that we can be virtuous from the comfort and safety of our own arm chairs. There can be, and often is, sanctuary in distance.

At times, there is some necessity in out of sight, out of mind. Our psyches would implode if we took in all the suffering of the world, if we let the buffer that distance supplies dissolve, bringing us face to face with the atrocities we only read about and experience through media. In Robert Frost’s poem, “Out, Out–” he tells the story of a young boy who suffers a fatal accident while cutting wood. As the doctor is summoned, the onlookers wait. Frost writes:

And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

There are times when we turn away because we are not the one dead. We turn away because we must create some distance between ourselves and tragedy–at least initially. Later, we often revisit and reconsider what we’ve seen and experienced. Distance in geography or time affords us a psychic respite during which we can regroup. And this type of distance is often a blessed sanctuary, too.

In the end, as novelist Zora Neale Huston writes: [a] thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it. Historically, there have been so many mighty big things that neither time nor distance have shrunk. Even today, we experience them through the printed page and testimony, in video and in film. Their impact is not lost on us. And much as we’d like to think that the world has finally matured into a civilized adult, there continue to be so many mighty big things that time and distance cannot shrink.

Perhaps the best we can do is to bear witness to those big things we’ve experienced directly and to listen well to others who bear witness to those we haven’t. We can also check ourselves on the solutions we offer, often from a distance that should call our proposals into question and subject them to scrutiny. Finally, we can pray that there will be fewer and fewer of these mighty big things and that when they do occur, we will respond with more than virtue at a distance.

Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world.
― Joseph Campbell

I think it’s safe to say that most people cringe when they hear the word zealot. It conjures up violent images of righteous indignation propelled by blind hatred and use of force. It just sounds bad. And if someone were to call you a zealot? For a few, this might be a badge of honor, but for most, this would be a terrible insult. Reasonable people aren’t zealots, they might say. Thinking people just don’t resort to such extreme measures, they might argue. And yet–

History is peopled with zealotry. The term has its origins in a Jewish sect that refused to compromise with the paganism of Rome (AD 6). This sect was a political party with deep concern for the national and religious life of Jews, a concern that caused them to despise even fellow Jews who sought peace and ccompromise with the Roman authorities. But there were clearly violent, single-minded individuals and groups who refused to compromise before, and after, the original Jewish Zealots. Zealotry is a force that knows no boundaries regarding people, time, or place.

That we should see zealotry all around us today shouldn’t really surprise us. We may believe that we’re too civilized, too educated for zealotry, but sadly, this a pipe dream. Any age can be the right age for zealotry, and ours is no different. Some may even argue that ours is exactly the type of age during which zealots flourish. Israeli writer and journalist, Amos Oz writes:

As the questions grow harder and more complicated, people yearn for simpler answers, one-sentence answers, answers that point unhesitatingly to a culprit who can be blamed for all our suffering, answers that promise that if we only eradicate the villains, all our troubles will vanish.

Undoubtedly, we are living in an age in which the questions we have grow harder and more complicated, in which we turn to one-sentence answers–to tweets and sound bites–and in which we desperately want a culprit–preferably a political figure–who can be blamed for all our suffering. Truth be told, we’d prefer that life be a melodrama in which the good guys are resplendent in white, and the bad guys are wicked in black. Melodramas are psychologically and morally so satisfying. How cathartic to cheer for the hero and boo the villain! To feel so righteous in your cause, so vindicated in denouncing evil is pretty heady stuff, indeed.

Robert H. Jackson, American attorney and judge who served as a former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, had much to say about zealotry. Even though Jackson died in 1954, his words ring true today:

In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds—that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.

Read any news feed or tune into any news program, and you’ll find those who write and speak as if all thought is divinely classified into two kinds: their own (which is true and good), and the other which is false and dangerous. Depending on the news source, the other–that is, the false, dangerous group–will vary. What will not vary, however, is the presence of fanatical conviction. Progressive or conservative, secular or religious, fanaticism and zealotry abide. It would take an exceptional leader to rise like a phoenix from the ashes we’ll inevitably leave the next generation and proclaim: Look folks, we’re all zealots! We’re all using the same tactics! You want unity, a better world? Start by clearing your own heart before you try to clear the world!”

Norman Finkelstein understands that the line dividing current moral and political tribes is ideological–not tactical. Finkelstein is an American political scientist, activist, and author whose primary fields of research include the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He writes:

Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse.

Some may argue that really every -ism is religious in the sense that its devotees defend and promote it with something akin to spiritual ardor. I recall spending two hours with a colleague who defended Scientism with such ardor that I grew exhausted simply watching him proselytize. If you ignored what he was saying and simply listened to the pitch and rhythms of his speech, you might’ve thought that you were listening to an evangelist. The same could be said of many politicians, as well as all types of scientists: political, social, environmental, biological, educational, etc. Flip sides of the same coin.

I remember past years during which feeling or professing anything too passionately was uncool and unwise. These were years during which it was culturally and artistically vogue to be indifferent and cynical. Anything that reeked of sentimentality or ardor was to be, at best, laughed at, and at worst, scorned. At this time, the prevailing tone of all forms of art and entertainment was flat. Even the discourse of politics and social activism seemed relatively level-headed in contrast with the zealotry of today. This isn’t to say that this trend was necessarily preferable–just markedly different.

As different, perhaps, as the discontent of common people versus intellectuals. American academic Richard Pipes specialized in Russian and Soviet history and understands the particular zealotry of intellectuals throughout the ages:

When the so-called masses are discontented, they are inspired by specific grievances that are capable of being satisfied within the existing system. Only intellectuals have universal grievances: only they believe that nothing can change unless everything changes.

Pipes’ claim that intellectuals believe that nothing can change unless everything changes may describe the current climate of our own country as well as anything. This is the crux of the matter: the argument that we desperately need change, but that this change must be as comprehensive as a catastrophic forest fire which burns everything in sight, leaving the earth barren of any vestige of what once was and ready for new growth. And there is genuine fear on both sides of the political aisle and in diverse ideological groups. One side fears that what they have and love will be destroyed, and the other fears that it will not. It’s an all-or-nothing, apocalyptic kind of fear which leaves any real chance for compromise or working within the existing system unlikely.

Amos Oz argues that [m]ore and more commonly, the strongest public sentiment is one of profound loathing. Zealotry thrives on profound loathing, and today’s climate is rife with it. We’ve become zealots who are masterful loathers, killing with kindness or destroying with expletives. One sort of loathing may pass as more civilized, while the other reeks of vulgarity. Still, behind all of the rhetoric lies profound loathing.

How do we level the loathing, temper the zealotry? We might consider Campbell’s words carefully. We might consider clearing our own hearts as a necessary prerequisite for clearing the world. For much zealotry is fueled by hypocrisy, by our inability and unwillingness to see the logs in our own eyes. Turning attention away from the specks in others’ eyes and back to our own is hard work, though. Still, I’d like to think that we could take on this internal work with as much fervor and devotion as our own brands of zealotry.

They say that you can’t go home again. But thank goodness that the natural world pays no heed to such adages. Everything on my acreage testifies to the glorious return of birds and plants. They’ve come home again–the rose-breasted grosbeaks, the gold finches, the honeysuckle and wild raspberries, and the orioles. Oh, the orioles!

I set out my first bowl of grape jelly the last week of April and waited. Would they remember where the good stuff was? Would they come home to the faithful supply of grape jelly? Would they like the new feeder made especially for them? Would they return?

Yes. Within a week, a slew of orioles swooped onto and off of our deck. It was a veritable landing strip with orioles hovering, waiting to land. After landing, they ravaged the small bowl of jelly and relished the new feeder with its multiple-oriole capacity. They came home with a tangerine flourish.

There is a quiet assurance in the return we see in the natural world. Here, you can come home again. Here, perennialism is golden. Here, your reappearance is both ordinary and extraordinary, your homecoming wishfully anticipated.

In a world in which many things–and people–never return, there’s something particularly sacred about all this reemerging and reblooming and restoring. Sacred and hopeful. Every great story is founded on this archetype of leaving and returning (with a whole lot of searching and overcoming challenges in between). No matter how dark the journey may seem, how long the metaphorical–or literal–winter is, the hero returns in the end. Just as we wait expectantly for the return of our prize clematis, we wait expectantly for the hero’s return. Then, there is that moment when all seems right with the world. It may be just a moment–one brief but blessed stay against the confusion and despair of the world–but there it is, nonetheless.

Danish author Isak Dinesen wrote:

Nobody has seen the trekking birds take their way towards such warmer spheres as do not exist, or rivers break their course through rocks and plains to run into an ocean which is not to be found. For God does not create a longing or a hope without having a fulfilling reality ready for them.

This is it exactly: God does not create a longing or a hope without the assurance of a fulfilling reality ready and waiting. Herein lies the miracle of return in the natural world: that the long migration, the intervening seasons and unnatural intrusions finally culminate in the return to a fulfilling reality.

In this postmodern age, it’s often risky to talk about heaven as that fulfilling reality. It may be risky because there are some who’ll argue this is just foolish, wishful thinking. They’ll explain that we’ll return to the earth, period. That, they’ll assert, is our only reality. Others may cast us lovingly aside as sentimental, needy folks who must have something to long and hope for, something to keep us on the straight and narrow. Either way, if you talk of heaven, you may find that some respond cynically and some condescendingly.

Still, as the orioles’ almost-fluorescent orange backs flash through the leafed-out trees, I can’t help but think that this is one of God’s excellent ways to create a longing for a more fulfilling reality. And as these orioles return year after year, I can’t help but think that this is God’s assurance that there is, indeed, a fulfilling reality ready and waiting for us.

Undoubtedly, some will consider me a Pollyanna with all this talk of bird-watching and heaven. So be it. When I lose my way, when I find myself slogging about in perpetual winter, and when I long for something better, I’ll rest in the assurance that my journey will not end in a warmer place or in an ocean that doesn’t exist. No, I’ll find fulfillment in the place I was intended to be.

for Gracyn and Griffin

I actually did the math: I’ve been teaching for 70% of my life. And in all those teaching years, there have been many seasons. Seasons of teaching assistantships; seasons of community college, university, middle and high school teaching; seasons of teaching kids, young adults, adults, and seniors; seasons of salaried and volunteer teaching; seasons of classrooms in three different states.

But nothing could have really prepared me for this final season of homeschooling my grandchildren. Most of my teaching seasons have been spent on larger, more public stages on which I delivered lessons to hundreds, actually thousands, of students. This year, however, I spent my teaching days in my own home–sometimes in the office, sometimes at the kitchen table or on the couch. There were no bells or bathroom passes, and many times, snacks were involved. Some days, I dressed up and wore jeans (my best ones), and some days, I wore sweatpants (my respectable ones).

Each day, however, I wore my heart on my sleeve. I couldn’t help it. I’d been gifted with an opportunity to spend my days with two of the people I love most. When they burst through the door, kick off their shoes, and hang up their coats, I know that it can’t get much better than this: sitting side by side, learning together, laughing together, wondering and trying on new ideas together. This is a very small, intimate stage, perhaps the most precious and crucial one of all. And I’ve desperately wanted my years of experience to culminate in my best teaching performance.

I’d be lying if I said that each lesson came off without a hitch, that I remembered percentages, ratios, and algebraic equations, that I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the number of lesson plans I had to prepare every day. I worried nightly about all the things I’d never taught: phonics and lower elementary reading, science and math (at any level!), ancient world history. The list could go on, but these are the big ones. And if the truth be told, I cried more times than I can count, blessedly never in front of my students. I just wanted Gracyn and Griffin to genuinely learn, and I wasn’t sure that I was delivering the goods.

We have seven official school days left until summer break. Seven mornings of final math, science, social studies, language arts and spelling lessons. Seven afternoons of wicked UNO and Yahtzee matches, time on the swingset and pedal boat trips around the pond. We’ll probably eat the last cans of Spaghettios and the last box of Fruit Roll-Ups in my cupboard (admittedly, not every “school” lunch here is wholly healthy). And we’ll probably go to Dairy Queen to celebrate the end of the year.

What can I say as this teaching season comes to an end? I can say that it’s been one of the greatest privileges of my life. I can say that my grandchildren are truly wonderful people with tender hearts and glorious souls. I can say that packing up all of our books and school supplies will leave me bereft–at least until we fill our backyard pool, and the summer fun begins.

If you’ve never heard of a Squishmallow, this was me three months ago. Fast forward to today, and I’m a grandma-on-a-mission. That’s right, I’m continually on the hunt for the elusive Squishmallow, the Beanie Baby of 2021, the equivalent–ounce for ounce–of stuffed animal gold. I know all their names. I know the rare, hard-to-find ones. I know a good deal on Ebay when I see it. In short, I’m actually kind of a Squishmallow expert (or lunatic, whichever title you prefer).

My granddaughter is amassing quite a collection, thanks to her Squishmallow savvy and my persistence. Squishmallows have taken over her bed, and recently she admitted to sleeping in a corner, so as not to topple the precious pile she’s lovingly organized. She’s since moved some to a floor pillow (never on the bare floor, Grandma!) These days, she’s talking about some kind of organizer, so she can reclaim a legitimate spot on her bed. And I should help her out, should care more about the quality of her sleep, should just say NO and stop looking for/buying them. But . . .

Few retailers carry them, which means most collectors must visit online sites like Ebay and Mercari. The Squishmallow folks know how scarcity drives such a market. And they’ve capitalized on marketing through Instagram influencers who post amazing photos of their Squishmallow “finds” and curated collections. A clerk at our local Walgreens admitted that a family had driven 45 miles and waited in the parking lot as the truck was being unloaded. They actually snatched some right out of the truck and rushed to check out. After hearing this, my granddaughter and I just looked at each other in resignation. There were clearly people in-the-know, and we weren’t part of this privileged group. Did they have an inside source which gave them an unfair advantage? We were certain that they did.

You know that you’ve probably crossed over from interest to obsession when you admit to your granddaughter that just once, you’d like to see shelves of Squishmallows on display in a real store. This weekend, our Walgreens received a considerable shipment of Squishmallows. It was the mother load! So, who could blame a Squishmallow afficianado for driving to town. My daughter said that she saw me fly down the lane and turn towards town. I think fly is a bit of an exaggeration (or not).

Walking briskly–not running, mind you–I entered the store and went straight to the aisle I knew that they’d be in. And there they were: five shelves of Squishmallows in a variety of sizes and styles. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see other collectors crowding in, reaching in front of me and snatching up entire rows. But I was alone, gloriously alone. I limited myself to three. On the first trip into town, that is. I went back the next day and bought two more. I boasted to my family that I didn’t want to become one of those hoarders who buys all of them and resells them for huge profits on Ebay. Five shows restraint. Five is reasonable, I thought.

And why not? The hours I’ve spent with my granddaugther–researching, planning our next hunt, comparing and contrasting our favorites–are priceless. I’m painfully aware that this phase won’t last long, that she will grow up and out of Squishmallows. But while it lasts, I’m all in.

P.S. If anyone can hook me up with an Archie, the axolotyl, that I could buy without mortgaging my home, I’d undoubtedly be the coolest grandma ever.

A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.
― Alice Munro, Selected Stories

“Why is Mom just sitting in her car?” my daughter once asked her dad. Having just returned from a work meeting (a 10-hour round trip) I was idling in the driveway, desperate to finish my book on Audible. In the past, I’d actually driven around the block several times to finish chapters, but on this particular night, I really didn’t care who saw me or questioned my time in the driveway. The book was that good. It was–as Alice Munro writes–a house that was opulently furnished, a magnificent, magnanimous shelter from the grind of 500 monotonous miles and countless cups of gas station coffee.

I would be a great story realtor. I have so many houses to show you, I’d say. Then, I’d guide you through all the rooms, stopping to view the world outside through their windows, commenting on the furnishings and foundations. You’d want to stay awhile, to give yourself to each experience, to return again and again. And the best part is that I wouldn’t even charge commission; I’d just do it for the love of it.

English author Sir Philip Pullman claims that [a]fter nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world. I’d go so far as to say that often stories are the best nourishment, shelter, and companionship. At least, they’ve been all this for me. I’ve inhabited lives and worlds that nourished me in ways that my real life and world couldn’t; I’ve sheltered with characters who provided fine companionship. And when these stories ended, I grieved the loss of such friends and their worlds. I’ve sought out their sequels and eagerly checked to see if Netflx renewed their series. For there’s not much that is lonelier than the white space at the end of a good book or the silence after a movie’s credits have rolled. I always find myself lamenting that there isn’t just one more chapter, one more scene.

For the last week, I’ve been listening to Madeline Martin’s novel, The Last Bookshop in London. Inspired by the true history of the few surviving bookstores in WWII London. Martin’s protagonist, Grace Bennett, works at the Primrose Hill Bookshop by day and reads to fellow Brits in the bomb shelters at night. As the Blitz rages on, Grace reads through one novel after another, transporting them all from the horrors of war to the English countryside and cozy drawing rooms, to times and places far removed from the Nazis’ reach. There have been so many times when good stories have taken me out of some dark places in my life. As I’ve read, viewed or listened, I’ve been swept from my own troubles; I’ve been given a front row seat to others’ trials and tribulations, loves and losses. This respite–escape, if you will–has been invaluable and worth far more than the price of a book or movie rental. And if I had to live through a Blitz, I’d like to think that I’d be a Grace Bennett, paying it forward with the best stories I could find, raising my voice against the chaos and destruction.

For me, there’s nothing grander than reading aloud. I love the rhythms and sounds of good stories, the way they ebb and flow, build and drop, leaving audiences breathless. This is perhaps the thing I miss most about teaching, for I often read aloud from great texts, so that the language could do its magic, pulling students into stories they may have never read. For years, I fantasized about becoming an Audible reader when I retired. I could think of no work more glorious than reading aloud (if this could ever be considered work!) But having become an Audible aficianado, I’m painfully aware of the qualifications for such roles, which include, but aren’t limited to, being able to read with a variety of accents–French, Spanish, German, Russian, etc.–as well as in a variety of dialects. Outside of a strong Midwestern twang, I’m sorely lacking. So, I’ve decided to leave it to the professionals who are truly wonderful at bringing characters and stories to life.

In John Connolly’s novel, The Book of Lost Things, he writes:

Stories come alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth. Or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.

If stories need to be read, we also need to read them. If they want us to give them life, we also want them to give us lives we don’t have and never will have. If they lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge, we, too, lay dormant, hoping for the kind of transformations that the best stories bring us.

One of the greatest gifts of retirement is the time for more stories. I generally have a print book, a Kindle book, and an Audible book going at the same time. Lest I be a glutton, I limit my Audible books to driving and working out on the elliptical machine. Otherwise, I’d burn through them too quickly and have to take a part-time job to fund my Audible addiction. Because when it comes to books, I have been gluttonous in the past. I actually walked into a parked car in the school parking lot when I was trying to read and walk simultaneously, to squeeze in a few more glorious pages before work. Blessedly, it was early enough in the day that no students–and only a couple teachers–had arrived. My pride was intact for another day, and I’d successfully gotten to the end of a crucial chapter. Gluttony does have its rewards.

In her novel, The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy writes:

The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in.

I can’t count the number of times I reread the Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton series when I was a teen. Of course, I knew how each book ended. I even knew the smart outfits Nancy Drew would don as she solved each mystery! But that wasn’t the point. The point was that I wanted to read these stories again because they truly were as familiar as the house I lived in, a place I could inhabit comfortably. There’s something to be said about this kind of comfort and familiarity, particularly when the world outside is so chaotic and unpredictable. When the world is spinning out of control, you can just inhabit a great story, a snug home with a hearth by which to warm yourself.

My love for stories is so great that I’ve become choosy about the television series and movies I watch. If there’s only one season, or the movie is only 75 minutes long, I’ll generally pass. I want an eight-season series, an epic film of several hours, a story that I can really sink my teeth into. I want to feel as though the characters are my friends and acquaintances, to revel in their triumphs and weep at their losses. I know that these stories will end. But the journeys to get there–the rising action and conflicts, the crises and resolutions–are so worth it. I may have grieved (for days) when Downton Abbey came to an end, but I don’t regret a minute of the journey. Now, if Julian Fellows would just renew it, I’d do a happy dance the likes of which you’ve never seen!

So bring on the stories! Let them be read, viewed, and heard. Let them carry us beyond our ordinary days, beyond our dark times, beyond uncertainty and fear into worlds both familiar and unfamiliar. For as novelist Cormac McCarthy writes:

Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place. [The Crossing]

It is all that is created.
― Julian of Norwich, on holding a hazel nut in her palm

 
 All The Best Things
 are smaller than we imagine.
  
 Think of acorns with their wee brown caps;
 pieces of bottle glass hidden in the gravel,
 their edges worn smooth enough to pocket;
  
 of snowdrops and their paper white blossoms—
 but think smaller still
 to the embroidery of green that hems
 each petal.
  
 Think of wrinkles that run like tributaries
 from your grandmother’s eyes:
 such rare, fine lines spilling into
 the delta of her life;
  
 of all those frothy seeds that catch the breeze
 and how silently they travel,
 how they make a way
 without fuss.
  
 Think of the moment inside a moment,
 the nucleus of your time here.
  
 Think smaller than you’ve ever dared—
  
 and even smaller still.
  
  
  
   

If I had a flower every time I thought of you. . . I could walk through my garden forever.
― Alfred Lord Tennyson

Throughout my life, I’ve been blessed with a garden of best friends. Brilliant blossoms, each one of them. And how much richer, how much lighter my life has been because I’ve taken counsel from and found refuge in them. Tennyson is so right: if I had a flower each time I thought of these friends, I could walk through my garden forever.

In Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved (1987), Sixo, a slave at Sweet Home plantation offers his feelings about a woman he walked 30 miles to see:

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. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

Someone who gathers up all your messy pieces and gives them back in the right order, who is a friend of your mind, is a best friend, indeed. In some of the lowest points in my life, I can recall the remarkable comfort of knowing that my friend would gently put me back together again. Because she knew me–my past, my dreams, my mind. My best friendships have always been open invitations, guarantees that the door would always be open and compassion just a phone call away. How do you measure such gifts?

And when a child becomes a young woman, when she evolves from one being cared for into one who cares, this is a friendship blossom of rare distinction. My granddaughter, Gracyn, will turn twelve in a few weeks. For eleven years, she has been my granddaughter, but recently, I’ve come to know her also as a best friend.

How do I measure this gift? I hope that I’ll have years to walk through this garden, for each bloom here is more extraordinary than the next.

 
 Why I Am Without Words
         --for Gracyn
  
 Rooted to the kitchen floor, I stand before you
 as sobs crash against your tight-lipped resolve,
 your tongue useless to stay the flow
 of something dark and cold that rises within
 and threatens to undo you.
  
 I’m leaving for three weeks,
 and you’ve just helped me load my suitcases for the trip. 
 We can’t bear to look at each other,
 and shoulder to shoulder as we close the car door,
 we quake, our fragile souls quiver.
 It’s not for long, I say, just a couple weeks.
 But the March wind seizes my words 
 and whips them away like chaff.
  
 Today, you’ve sent me a photo of the hyacinth
 blooming in my garden.
 Because I know you were waiting for them to bloom, you say,
 because they might die before you get back.
 Miles away, you think of how I’ve waited for these first blossoms
 and how I might be missing you as much as you miss me.
 Best friends do such things.
 For eleven years, you’ve been my granddaughter,
 but now—
  
 Now, I’m without words.
 I have no language to speak this mercurial joy that washes over me
 each time I think of you thinking of me.
 What can I say but that the blossoms here are lovely enough;
 that time crawls on as it must;
 and that even if all the hyacinth wither and die,
 my best friend is watching the road
 waiting for me to come home.
  
  
  
  
  
   

  I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
 Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.
 “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” The Animals
    

One of the most complex moral positions I can think of is balancing good intentions with humility. Because our good intentions tend to elevate our self-importance. And because armed with good intentions, it’s too tempting to rationalize that the end really does justify any and all means. We have a penchant for knighting ourselves and climbing onto our moral high horses, intent on vanquishing the enemy and saving the land. For as Ralph Waldo Emerson argues, a good intention clothes itself with power.

As in any age, there is no shortage of good intentions today. Choose any political, social, economic, spiritual, or cultural ideology, and you will find individuals of good intent. At one time or another, these individuals have probably paid lip service to Samuel Johnson’s claim that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But clothed in moral power, they may not have the eyes to see that they’re traveling a a deceptively dangerous route.

Whether we canonize ourselves or villanize our enemies, both come too easily for many of us with good intentions. To keep our moral fervor burning, we frequently fuel the fire with a tried and true accelerant: a big, fat, decisive battle line. As long as we can keep the bad guys solidly on their side of the line, we can rally the troops, most of whom really want a well-defined common enemy. Threatened by ambiguity, we argue that we must be clear-headed and single-purposed if we’re to do the good we intend.

English Nobel Prize Winner Sir Ralph Norman Angell writes:

Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right.

We go to war with so many enemies, real and abstract. And, as Angell writes, we do it paradoxically in the name of peace and righteousness. If our intentions are miscarried or frustrated, we want it to be known that we acted for good. I’ve been reading Dr. Kristian Niemietz’s book Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies. Dr. Niemietz is the Head of Political Economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs and formerly taught economics at King’s College London. Whether you advocate for or against socialism, it’s hard to argue with his claim that intellectuals have historically praised each of the world’s socialist experiments at their conception and throughout their infancy (the Soviet Union under Stalin, China under Mao Tse-Tung, Cuba under Castro, East Germany under the SED, to name a few). Later, after each failed–some more tragically than others–these same intellectuals claimed that this was because these socialist leaders had gotten it wrong. That is, they weren’t doing socialism right. Even though they may have begun with good intentions, ultimately they miscarried and botched the real ideology.

I wonder if generations to come will look back at our current political, economic, and social battles through the same lens: that we just weren’t doing it right. And this goes for advocates and activists on both sides of the political aisle, for those who hold very different views on how to make the world a better, safer, more sustainable place. Most speak and act with passion for the greater good, but in the end, many of their good intentions are still miscarried. By whom? Too often by themselves.

Hindsight is 20/20, and it’s certainly easier to look back on any battle with clearer heads. But consider those who have remarkably clear heads during the battle. When I think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leading civil rights’ advocates through the streets of Birmingham and other southern cities, I am amazed at his clear head in the midst of a terribly complex moral situation. How do you fuel the fire of your cause without these fires burning uncontrollably and damaging everything? That is, how do you keep your righteous passion from erupting into violence? While your eyes are fixed on the final prize, how do you also keep your eyes fixed on the means by which you win it?

King, a minister as well as civil rights’ activist, adopted the model of Christ’s civil disobedience. In doing so, he worked tirelessly to temper passion with humility. If police arrested you, King modeled that you were not to resist but go willingly to jail. If someone spit at you, cursed you, struck you, you were not to respond in kind. He instructed his followers to treat others, especially those who intended to hurt them, as they would like to be treated. To gauge King’s success using the model he’d adopted, I’d argue that King worked with good intentions for a good end, which was realized through good means.

Professor and novelist Shanti Sekaran writes of good intentions in her novel, Lucky Boy:

And good intentions? These scared him the most: people with good intentions tended not to question themselves. And people who didn’t question themselves, in the scientific world and beyond, were the ones to watch out for.

Our world moves fast. We can send our well-intended views digitally to a global audience in the blink of an eye. We can do this so quickly and so automatically that we often don’t question ourselves. To ask ourselves for restraint, for more time to consider, for greater understanding–particularly of our opponents–seems so counter cultural. Still, if we don’t ask these things of ourselves, what will keep us from clothing ourselves with unchecked power?

If I could write my own epitaph, I’d like it to be something like this: She was one who lived her good intentions with humility. Considering I’m not dead yet, I’m hoping to have some time to work on this.

photo by Greg Rosenke

  
 
 
There is nothing to save, now all is lost,
 but a tiny core of stillness in the heart
 like the eye of a violet.
 ― D.H. Lawrence       

                      

Google stillness, and you will find a multitude of sites dedicated to the practice and benefits of stillness. Stillness is cool now. It’s the thing to do–or more aptly, to be–the stuff in which yoga masters, gurus, meditators, counselors, and wellness entrepreneurs find their bread and butter, their strong foundation, their core (choose your favorite metaphor).

Most people define stillness by negation. It’s not movement, it’s not doing something, it’s not noisy. But ask others, and they’ll tell you that stillness is our most intense mode of action (Leonard Bernstein), the still small voice of God (Annie Dillard), the most beautiful of all trees in the garden (Thomas Merton), the dancing (T. S. Eliot), the eye of the violet (D. H. Lawrence), the most profound activity (Rainer Maria Rilke). Where some see what stillness is not, others see what it is and what it can be.

There’s something romantic and spiritual about stillness. It conjures up images of Henry David Thoreau tucked away in his cabin at Walden Pond, communing with nature–and only occasionally with people. Or William Wordsworth tramping through the Lake District of England, lonely as a cloud. Or St. Therese of Lisoux, the little flower, who lived her short life as a cloistered Carmelite nun. It seems almost other-worldly, a practice reserved for special people, perhaps reserved for those upon whose unique genetic code has been written all the secrets of stillness.

It goes without saying that for most of us regular folk, stillness seems exotic, exceptional, and exclusive. Even as we sit at our desks or kitchen tables, as we wait in line or in the car, our thumbs and eyes move rapidly as we text, scroll, and search. And our brains? It often seems that they can’t–or won’t–land. They’re swallows without roosts, stringless kites being whipped about in the March wind. And so it’s no wonder that stillness has become a business. Too often, we’ll buy what we can’t do for ourselves (or what we won’t do for ourselves). We’ll order the stillness how-to books from Amazon. We’ll attend weekend seminars. We’ll listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos. We’ll download apps. Because we can’t turn off the noise in our heads, we turn to those who’ve made stillness look possible.

In The Angle of Repose, Amercian novelist Wallace Stegner writes:

[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead.

Here’s the rub: our age knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. If to be still means that we must be isolated and silent–at least for a time–then we’re up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Many of us work actively to never be alone and to fill any silence we encounter. And we have such easy access to information and entertainment right at our fingertips. We can stream it all 24/7. So, to intentionally isolate ourselves from others and to turn off all of our devices seems so counterintuitive. And downright tough.

Once again, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to attend an artist’s residency for several weeks. With the exception of an introductory meeting with the other two resident artists, I’m alone with my books and computer. And because there have been near gale-force winds the past couple of days, I’ve been relatively still (as in physically inactive because it’s too challenging even to walk). The only sound in my apartment is the furnace going on and off, as well as the persistent wind in the trees. I’d like to say that this isolated, quiet environment has made it much easier to still my thoughts and my fingers that continually search for something to hold or to do. But that would be a real stretch.

Still (pardon the obvious and horrible pun!), there have been moments. In his Letters on Life, German poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes:

I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.

In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.

I’ve realized that my moments of authentic stillness have come from a confidence in, a devotion to, and a joy in being idle. Away from my real life, I find it easier to be rather than to do. After all, that’s the point of a residency like this. It’s my job to be still, to set myself apart from all that might interfere with creating. Like Rilke, I have found that the most profound activity has come in these moments of stillness. And I don’t take these moments for granted.

Author, activist, and spiritual leader Marianne Williamson cautions us to slow down, to learn how to go deep. She writes:

The world we want for ourselves and our children will not emerge from electronic speed but rather from a spiritual stillness that takes root in our souls. Then, and only then, will we create a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it.

I don’t believe that many of us would argue with Williamson’s claim that the world we want won’t emerge from electronic speed. Some of us will agree that this world must come from a spiritual stillness that takes root in our souls. And most of us hope for a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it. But how do we cultivate a spiritual stillness in our souls? How do we carve out the solitude in which this stillness can take root? And how do we teach our children?

Good questions, all. Perhaps we can start with the recognition that stillness gives more than it takes, that it’s profoundly active, and that it matters deeply. I’m sure that I’ll leave this residency with a greater appreciation of and deeper devotion to stillness. But I realize that this isn’t enough. It’s the continued commitment to the practice that will truly make the difference between paying lip service to stillness and living it. I hope to live it.