for all those grandmothers and grandmothers-to-be

Every house needs a grandmother in it. —Louisa May Alcott

In a new research paper, ecologist and lead writer Zoe Muller stated that after reviewing more than 400 existing studies on giraffes, ecologists discovered that, like elephants, giraffes have complex social dynamics. Muller explains that giraffes benefit from the grandmother hypothesis: the idea that the presence of grandmothers increases a populations’ chances of survival because of the authority, knowledge, and resources they contribute to the group’s young. This matrilineal pattern can also be seen in elephants, orcas, and humans. Those who have studied the grandmother hypothesis contend that older matriarchs create a bank of generational knowledge.

According to the hypothesis, in our earliest years as humans, grandmothers helped gather food for their sons’ and daughters’ children. This made it possible for their daughters to have more children. Consequently, the strongest, most evolutionarily-fit grandmothers would have the greatest number of grandchildren who, in turn, would inherit their good genes.

Since retirement, I admit that I’ve often struggled to define my purpose beyond a lifetime of teaching and mothering. But this is good news, perhaps the best news for those who, like me, may feel a bit out-to-pasture. I question my evolutionary-fitness, but I’m giving myself the benefit of the doubt here. I can still get down on the floor to play board games and get up (albeit with some effort and the aid of nearby furniture). I can still run across the yard to fetch a ball (run might be too generous—it’s probably more like a jog, but it’s definitely more than a walk). I can still speak the language of my grandchildren (hey, I know what Tik Tok is and that mom jeans are once again fashionable!) So, I’m giving myself a pass on evolutionary-fitness, and I’m encouraging other grandmothers to do the same.

I’ve begun to contemplate the bank of generational knowledge that I could pass on to my grandchildren. I know that they like my brownies and that over time, I perfected a pretty decent slime recipe, so there’s always this. But I’ve come to see that my greatest generational gift may be more in the realm of love than knowledge.

I’d be the first person to admit that my bank of knowledge is limited at best and woefully lacking at worst. What we know changes so rapidly that few of us can keep up with this pace. But loving?

In his novel, The Guermantes Way, French novelist Marcel Proust writes:

My grandmother had a love which found in me so totally its complement, its goal, its constant lodestar, that the genius of great men, all the genius that might ever have existed from the beginning of the world, would have been less precious to my grandmother than a single one of my defects.

It goes without saying that there is much knowledge that grandmothers might gift their grandchildren, but Proust’s words get right to the best stuff: the abiding love that says you are loved—unconditionally, warts and all. This is, indeed, a constant lodestar, a gift which keeps on giving through thick and thin. This is what grandmothers are most fit for. Long after they’re not physically fit for bending and running, they’re just coming into their stride for constant, unconditional loving.

I take heart in the whole concept of the grandmother hypothesis. I’m both humbled and privileged by the role I might play in my grandchildren’s lives, a role that has much less to do with passing on good genes and so much more to do with passing on an abiding love. This is a purpose I can wholeheartedly claim.

The lilies say: Behold how we preach without words of purity. –Christina Rosetti

I just like to say it: Behold! This is a word that commands attention, calls us to reverence. It’s a word of sacred proportions, a soul-shivering word. Behold is a word that should be in everyone’s vocabuary, and it should be used more frequently.

The Lakota Sioux people understood the power of the word behold. Lakota medicine man, Black Elk, writes: The song and the drumming were like this: Behold a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling. Another Lakota, Chief Sitting Bull, writes: Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love! Both men use the word as a kind of invitation. Father Richard Rohr, Franciscan spiritual guide and writer, shares his insight into this invitation. He recounts how he borrowed a strategy from wilderness guide, Bill Plotkin, who suggested that we draw a symbolic line in the sand and expect things on the other side to show themselves as special, invitational, or even a kind of manifestation (Rohr, Just This, 2017). The Lakota clearly expected their world to be special, expected that the sacred would be manifested in the physical. They expected to hear a sacred voice and to see the results of the earth’s and sun’s love. Black Elk’s and Sitting Bull’s words testify to how these expectations were met, time and time again.

Behold is also a word that many associate with the Bible. In the original King James version of the Bible, behold appears a whopping 1,298 times. In today’s King James Bible, however, the word appears only 586 times; in the New Revised Standard version, it’s used 27 times, and not at all in The Message. When the angel appears to the shepherds on the night of Jesus’s birth, the proclamation Fear not! For behold, I bring you news of great joy seems so much more befitting this miracle than Don’t be afraid! I bring you good news. Some contemporary translations just don’t seem to offer the same expectation to imagine and revere. They don’t seem to have much use for beholding.

I fear that many of us may be losing–or have lost–these expectations. I suspect that we don’t wake enough to the day’s invitation to behold. Too often, our expectations are low, very low. We don’t draw a symbolic line in the sand because we can’t imagine that what’s on the other side is any different or more special than the same-old stuff that weights our days. We plow through our lives like work horses, one steady foot in front of the other. I suspect that the invitation to behold may have been drummed out of us.

I can recall working with several groups of elementary students in a creative writing workshop. We often opened our sessions with language warm-ups, and one day, I asked the students to fill-in this blank: Too many _____________ are dancing on the ______________. One of the fifth-graders responded quickly: Too many dancers are dancing on the stage. She looked up at me quickly, hoping for affirmation that she’d gotten the right answer. Contrast this response with one I received from a first grader later in the morning: Too many moons are dancing on the water. This first-grade boy was already an expert at beholding. He talked openly about how he saw this when his family was camping, how the moon just wriggled across the lake. I remember lamenting the fact that by fifth grade, the power of beholding had largely been drummed out of many students. By age 11, they were all about filling in blanks with correct answers.

I admit that I’m a much better beholder now that I’m retired. I have eyes to behold because I have time. A coneflower that’s naturalized along the edge of the timber can make my day. More days than not, I step out of bed and cross the symbolic line in the sand, expecting something special, expecting that what I experience will, as poet Christina Rosetti claims, preach without words of purity. A lone coneflower, a stand of Queen Anne’s Lace, a single word from my grandson as it floats across the yard–all are worthy of beholding. Father Rohr suggests that [b]eholding happens when we stop trying to “hold” and allow ourselves to “be held.” I like this a lot. We can–if we will allow it–be held by moments, by sounds and words, by places and things, by the manifestation of the sacred into the profane, the extraordinary into the ordinary.

In “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tinturn Abbey,” poet William Wordsworth writes that [a]ll which we behold is full of blessings. See how the trees frame a perfect opening in my daughter’s magnificent photograph above, how this leafy aperature reveals river and hills. Behold the greens, the golds and distant blues! Behold the vista beyond! In the end, to behold is to be blessed. We would do well to draw our symbolic lines in the sand and expect to be blessed.

Etty Hillesum

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. –Mark Twain

It will always be both blessing and curse, my father said, as, minutes before bed time, I confessed the turmoil that continued to ravage my inner life as surely as acne was ravaging my adolescent face. My father was referring to my sensitivity which–even on my best days–reached hyper-levels the moment I stepped out of bed. If a single paradox could define one’s life, then my father’s insightful words would be my lifesong.

To say that I’ve lived in my head would be an understatement. I’ve lived in my head, dreamt in my head, argued and speculated in my head, grieved and celebrated in my head, died in my head. And, as my father proclaimed, this inner life blessed–and continues to bless–me in many ways. My inner life has made me wildly empathetic, so much so that I’ve often found myself wearing the lives of others–at least to the degree that one who is determinedly empathetic can. Ironically, this has often helped me to get out of my own head, to act compassionately, and to treat others as broken and beautiful beings. Paradoxically, my inner life has also cursed me with self-doubt and indecision. It’s also cursed me with the same acute pain of those with whom I’ve empathized. I’ve walked a mile in their shoes–internally, that is–and I’ve got blisters to prove it.

My journey with my own inner life brought me to another woman whose inner life was also both blessing and curse. Etty Hillesum reveals this paradox in the diaries she left with housemate Maria Tuinzing before she left the Jewish transit camp, Westerbork, for Auschwitz in 1943. In her teens and early 20s, Etty’s inner life was tumultuous, often tortured. She wrote:

I still lack a basic tune; a steady undercurrent; the inner source that feeds me keeps drying up. Worse still, I think much too much. My ideas hang on me like outsize clothes into which I still have to grow.

I think too much? Preach it, Etty. There’s something to be said about a continuous loop of thoughts (the unexamined life not being worth living and all), but the relentless presence of ideas–old and new–can be exhausting. Like Etty, when I desperately desired a basic tune, I often got a cacophony of independent notes and rhythms which was anything but a steady current.

Etty confessed that her inner life was often too complex, too indulgent. At times, it was marked with self-doubt–even self-loathing. She explained that she suffered from a bacchanalia of the spirit and lamented that she was taken in by everything she read. Someone like Dostoyevsky still shatters me, she said. Yet, at other times, her inner life was marked with the exquisite joy of experiencing the world around her. Whenever I saw a beautiful flower, what I longed to do with it was press it to my heart, or eat it all up. To be like a lily of the field, she said, would be the right way–the best way–to live. Etty Hillesum’s inner life was, indeed, a paradox.

Always, however, it was marked by her desire to know and serve God. In her diary, she wrote:

Something I have been wanting to write down for days, perhaps for weeks, but which is sort of shyness—or perhaps false shame?—has prevented me from putting into words. A desire to kneel down sometimes pulses through my body, or rather it is as if my body had been meant and made for the act of kneeling. Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge, head deeply bowed, hands before my face. 

It has become a gesture embedded in my body, needing to be expressed from time to time. And I remember: “The girl who could not kneel,” and the rough coconut matting in the bathroom. When I write these things down, I still feel a little ashamed, as if I were writing about the most intimate of intimate matters. Much more bashful than if I had to write about my love life. But is there indeed anything as intimate as man’s relationship to God? 

She confessed that she had been the girl who could not kneel for much of her life. A host of physical ailments, as well as sexual desires and struggles, tormented her. But in spite of these and in spite of her impending deportation to Poland, she ultimately discovered a peace that she claimed was neither indifference or helplessness in the face of suffering and evil. For in Etty's inner life, she claimed that she would be with the hungry, with the ill-treated and the dying, every day, and yet also with the jasmine and with that piece of sky beyond my window. Every day, she discovered there is room for everything in a single life. For belief in God and for a miserable end. 

In the end, Etty Hillesum’s inner life led her to the conviction that all must turn inward with sharp, humble eyes if the world was ever to recover from the current hatred. She conveyed this passionate conviction to friend and former lover, Klaas Smelik Sr.:

Klaas, all I really wanted to say is this: we have so much work to do on ourselves that we shouldn’t even be thinking of hating our so-called enemies. . . And I repeat with the same old passion, although I am gradually beginning to think that I am being tiresome, “It is the only thing we can do, Klaas, I see no alternative, each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate we add to this world makes it still more inhospitable. And you, Klaas, dogged old class fighter that you have always been, dismayed and astonished at the same time, say, “But that—that is nothing but Christianity!”

That is nothing but Christianity. And that, I believe, is everthing. Turning inward, facing our own real and present demons, and destroying all we seek to destroy in others is a curse because it’s hugely painful. It’s also, perhaps, the greatest blessing because it’s hugely redemptive. As Klaas Smelik proclaimed, this attitude and subsequent act is what it means to be real Christians. That is, Christ calls us to love our enemies as ourselves, to see and love their brokenness as He would. Etty came to understand that this would only be possible if we all lived inner lives that invited this kind of self-destruction, the kind that obliterated every atom of hate.

Ultimately, the magnificence of Etty Hillesum’s inner life was birthed from and sustained with a paradox, and her life and death gave testimony to this. She could love herself and the world, yet criticize both. She could find refuge in her inner life and also find pain. She could live gloriously in the sanctuary of her neighborhood at the same time that she projected herself into the concentration camps. She could be righteously indignant and yet at peace.

Etty’s diary has had a profound impact on me. I find myself thinking about her inner struggles and marveling at her wisdom often. As I read, I couldn’t help but think that I wished I could be more like her, that we all could be more like her. As she was packed into a cattle car to be taken to Auschwitz, witnesses reported that she was singing. As I consider our present troubled world, I believe that her words have as much value–perhaps more–than they did in 1943:

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. John 16: 33

photo by Collyn Ware

 
It is a serious thing—just to be alive—on this fresh morning—in this broken world.                                                                                                                                            – Mary Oliver, “Invitation” 

Oh, I know that there are some who may roll their eyes when I couple morning with sanctuary. These are the I’ve-never-been-a-morning-person folks. As the sun breaks and its first rays cut through slender openings in their room-darkening curtains, they squint, cover their eyes, and deep-dive under their blankets where they hide like vampires in protective darkness. But if I can bring even one of these folks over from the dark side, I’ll consider my efforts successful.

Consider the final stanzas of the poem "Invitation" by Mary Oliver:

 And if your spirit
 carries within it
  
 the thorn
 that is heavier than lead—
 if it’s all you can do 
 to keep on trudging—
  
 there is still
 somewhere deep within you
 a beast shouting that the earth
 is exactly what it wanted—
  
 each pond with its blazing lilies
 is a prayer heard and answered
 lavishly,
 every morning,
  
 whether or not
 you have ever dared to be happy,
 whether or not
 you have ever dared to pray. 

Oliver is clearly a morning person who embraces each pond with its blazing lilies as a morning prayer, whether or not you have dared to be happy or dared to pray. Morning is a tight tangle of petals that every bud yearns to unfurl. For there, in its center, the good stuff lies, the sacred pocket of possibilities. What will the day bring? What will I choose to do–or not do? If this, then what? These possibilities may be exhilarating and enticing. Or they may be–at times both expected and unexpected–foreign and forbidding. Such is the nature of morning. It is wildly original, lavishly dependable. It arrives, as it must, whether the sun shines or not on this broken world.

For much of my life, I spent the minutes (or hours) before sleep reliving the day, often worrying myself into the kind of heart-pounding anxiety that seriously delayed any real chance of sleep. I tortured myself with what-ifs, and in the quiet dark, I let myself imagine worst-case scenarios, each one a thorn that is heavier than lead. But eventually, blessedly, I’d fall asleep and wake to a morning where mercies and possibilities were new. I never tired of this gift, nor took it for granted, for there is something miraculous about this light that teases you from doubt and dares you to be happy.

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau writes:              

Morning brings back the heroic ages. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world.

I like this so much: a standing advertisement of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. Even for us foot soldiers, there can be a genuinely heroic element to the morning. That feeling of proudly brandishing your pitchfork as William Wallace rides up and down the line, urging you forward, reminding you of your cause, and validating your humble effort. That feeling of daring to believe–if even for a moment–that you are the protagonist of an epic story in which you handily overcome every challenge you meet. As you look over your cereal bowl, you can see yourself save the day. The world is vigorous and fertile. And so are you.

I’m painfully aware that by now the eye-rollers have undoubtedly written this post off as rubbish. Just as I’m painfully aware that there are mornings, that there will always be mornings when you can’t hit the snooze button enough, when you desperately want to extend the night, when you long to burrow back into dreams. In his Book of Hours, German poet Ranier Maria Rilke writes that [e]ven when we don’t desire it, God is ripening. (I, 16) Even in our dread and reluctance to face the day, God is ripening our souls. If we let it, morning can be a generous reminder of this ripening. No matter our circumstances, it can nudge us on, one painful moment at a time until we ripen into something less painful, less dreadful.

The photo above that my daughter took while she and her family were camping in McGregor, Iowa testifies to all that is right in our broken world. The ribbon of gold that hugs the horizon, the wash of coral and violet above, the water that reflects the sky at dawn–what a sublime reminder that just to be alive on such a morning is a serious and sacred thing.

So, if you’re not a morning person, you could try one on for size. Grab your beverage of choice and find a good spot for watching the sun rise. And who knows? You might come over from the dark side and join those of us who can’t get enough of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world that each morning brings.

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]