For my granddaughter, Gracyn

It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from the effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting any immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition.
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

I would be lying if I said that I’ve lived Merton’s words. I wish that I could say that I’ve been much more interested in being than doing, that I’ve rested in the quiet of my own being more than in the things I’ve done. If I were to score my level of being throughout my adult life, well let’s just say that my average score would be painfully low. And don’t get me started about the Christmas season. It’s a miracle, indeed, that I haven’t self-combusted as I’ve shopped, shipped, baked, wrapped, and decorated. Seriously, a D- for the season would be generous.

God asked–and continues to ask–many of his most unlikely servants to do things they weren’t especially prepared for, things that required talent and aptitude they didn’t have. And we read story after story of these folk who accomplished great things for God’s kingdom. But with Mary, God asks her to be, to become the holy receptacle into which he plants his most precious seed and knits his most wonderful work: Christ. In Luke 1: 38, we read:

And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.”

May it be done to me–not let me do. Each Advent season, I marvel at Mary’s quick consent to settle down in the quiet of her own being, to be God’s handmaiden. She is the woman I’d like to be when I grow up.

This fall, I’ve been homeschooling my two grandchildren. It goes without saying that most days are filled with doing: 2nd grade math, reading, science, social studies, penmanship and spelling AND 6th grade math, reading and writing, science, social studies, spelling and beginning Spanish. Even at my most experienced point in teaching, I never had this many preps. Each day, I hope I haven’t forgotten something. And as a veteran doer, I have folders and charts–all the teacher things that are standard tools of the trade.

A few days ago, I’d finished with Griffin who had gone to the garage to work with Grandpa. Gracyn and I worked to complete the subjects she hadn’t yet started. When we’d finished, I gathered up papers to put in her folders and cleaned up our work area. It was then that I noticed she’d moved to the kitchen bar where she planted herself on a stool. It became clear that she just wanted to talk and pass the time with me. I was struck with the fact that I had to DO nothing. I just had to let it be done to me: the sweet conversation, the time alone with an 11-year-old who—for 30 precious minutes—made me feel more like a friend and confidante than a grandma. As I sat there, I let it be done to me. I became a willing receptacle for all she wanted to give me, for I was acutely aware that this was what I was called to be.

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton explains that when he prays, he seeks a point vierge or virgin point at the center of his being. He describes this as a point untouched [by sin and] by illusion, a point of pure truth . . . which belongs entirely to God. . . . As I sat and let Gracyn’s presence wash over and through me, I realized that I’d reached a point vierge. This time belonged entirely to God who had blessed me with an experience untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth. Like Mary, I found that I could only utter, How can this be?

As the days before Christmas crowd in upon me, one day crashing into the next, the hours filled with final shopping, wrapping, and mailing Christmas cards, no doubt I’ll find myself a doer more times than I’d care to admit. But this Advent season, I vow to simply be. I will be ever mindful of those point vierges which come only when I can stop doing.

And when, in the middle of a lesson on telling time to the half hour, my grandson gasps as he reports that there are three squirrels on a one branch in the ash tree outside, I’ll let his wonder be done to me. I’ll stifle the teacher-in-me and channel Mary. For I’ll understand the futility of measuring my worth by everything I’ve done. I’ll really try to settle down in the quiet of my own being.

photo by Collyn Ware

The Way of Things
 
As the sun slips below the ridge,
the day dissolves into the tree line,
a smudge pot of coral
then the palest yellow and near-blue.
 
In the cabin, I look out at the timber.
I can barely see the white tips of his antlers
pierce the dusk.
When he moves, he parts the nettles.
He makes a way, this young buck,
his dun-slicked back like the hull of a cargo ship
pushing the night forward.
 
It’s the way of things:
this pushing the next thing forward,
the inevitable, first as a suggestion
and then as a thing of its own.
 
It’s the way of things:
the darkness on a steady course,
time its lodestar.
 
For in the blink of an eye,
the day who spent the hours with abandon—
light and color painting the world with such a broad and lovely brush—
succumbs.
 
Then the buck beds down in the cedar thicket,
and the hills tremble with coyotes.
Cold so clear it shines
crowns the world.
 
But in the blink of an eye,
the thickets stir again.
The hills simmer all golden and garnet,
and every stone is jeweled with frost.
 
It’s the way of things:
the day refusing to die,
germinating in the ash heap,
and promising—like a sleeping seed—
its return.

Photo by Collyn Ware

I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead 

These are the heartwrenching words of Reverend Robert Boughton to his son, Jack. Jack’s petty thefts and adolescent discretions have given him a certain notoriety in his small town. He’s the proverbial preacher’s kid gone wrong, the son hell-bent on sowing his wild oats right in the face of his community and his father’s church. But these crimes are small change. The big-dollar sin occurs when he impregnates a young, poor girl and leaves her with neither husband nor financial means. An unemployed college student, Jack leaves school and skips town. Horrified, his family attempts to offer both financial and emotional support to the young mother. At one desperate point, they offer to raise the child in their home, for the squalor she and her mother were living in was more than the Boughtons could stand. And later when the four-year-old child dies from an ordinary infection gone unattended, they are beside themselves with grief and remorse. Meanwhile, Jack is living hand to mouth in St. Louis. He doesn’t return for either his daughter’s or his mother’s funeral.

And yet, his father passionately and persistently reaches out with grace. He sends money and writes letters. He sends his older brother to look for him. And he prays, how he prays! There is literally nothing Jack can do–or not do–that will make his father love him more or love him less. In one particularly moving passage, he reveals that in spite of what his son may think of himself, he has been God’s grace, a miracle, something more than a miracle for him, the good child of an old man.

Good? What of Jack’s sins and seemingly unrepentent nature? Undoubtedly, he feels shame and guilt. And repeatedly, he vows to be a better man, to stop drinking and carousing, to clean up and secure a real job, to be able to walk down the street and return to his family home with some dignity. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, German pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Bonhoeffer claims that grace is cheap without repentance and, above all, without the cross. Over the years, Jack struggles with what he can and can’t believe. Ultimately, he can’t believe in the God to whom his father has devoted his life. He knows about God. He intellectually understands the cross as God’s great gift, but he can’t find his way beyond head knowledge. Again and again, he turns inward, convincing himself that he must press on alone. In the end, he passes on the true grace that God offers and can only accept the heartfelt love that his earthly father gives. If one considers his father’s unconditional, unmerited love as a form of grace, Bonhoeffer would contend that it is cheap grace at best.

For Jack remains lost, wandering alone in the desert of his own effort and skepticism. American philosopher and writer, Dallas Willard, would have some words for those who are bent on working their way out of the wilderness. Willard writes that [g]race is not opposed to effort; it’s opposed to earning. I can imagine that he’d like to sit down with Jack over a cup of coffee and help him understand the difference between effort and earning. He’d have much to say about the fact that none of us–no, not one–can ever earn God’s grace. Still, our good works in response to the gift of grace are pleasing to our fellow humans and to God.

Along with Willard, Christian author, Philip Yancey, has written much about grace. He writes:

Grace is shockingly personal. As Henri Nouwen points out, ‘God rejoices. Not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering have come to an end, nor because thousands of people have been converted and are now praising him for his goodness. No, God rejoices because one of his children who was lost has been found. [What’s So Amazing About Grace?]

Perhaps it is just this shockingly personal nature of grace that frightens and confuses Jack. The Creator of the universe, the Savior of the world sets out on a rescue mission to bring one raggedy, wretched man into the fold? Really? The intensity of such relentless pursuit and personal attention is, indeed, shocking and ultimately beyond what Jack and many of God’s children can accept.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. So writes author and theologian Frederick Buechner. Jack’s father desperately wants his son to know that the party hasn’t been, and won’t be, complete without him. He longs for Jack to show up in the only way it really matters–before God. Only here can he lay his burdens down. In the end, perhaps grace comes down to just this: showing up before God who meets you in prayer, who stands with you in all of life’s trials and joys, and who says:

You have been a miracle, something more than a miracle. . . If I only had the words to tell you.

Love is holy because it is like grace–the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

The last two books I’ve read, Jack and Home, are novels written by American author, Marilynne Robinson. Both novels explore the role of grace, that life-giving presence that moves with and through us, in and out of the most sublime and the most terrible circumstances. And though the word “grace” may sound like such an elusive and ephemeral thing, a lovely wisp that is subject to whatever winds may carry it, Robinson reveals it to be more like a bulldog whose tenacious nose tracks down subjects whose worthiness is never really what matters.

In both novels, Robinson’s character, Jack Boughton, is a man in desperate and perpetual need of grace. He begins his life in Gilead, Iowa as a rebellious teen, then impregnates and abandons a young woman with their child who dies tragically as a toddler, and finally survives prison and the streets of St. Louis. Sometimes through a haze of alcohol and other times through the stark loneliness of sobriety, this is a man who ultimately meets and falls in love with a black English teacher in an age when interracial marriages are impossible. Della, the daughter of a Memphis preacher, sees through Jack’s self-deprecating humor, cynicism, and alcoholic lapses into his tender, searching soul. She is grace personified, God’s indiscriminate love and unwavering assurance in female form. But much as he’d like to—and certainly as much as he needs to—Jack can find no way to cross the chasm into the open hearts of those who reach out to him across the widening expanse of his shame. Nor can he find his way to God. For Jack, there is no balm in Gilead—or anywhere else for that matter.

The more I read, the more I became smitten with Jack, both as a complex character and as a fellow sinner. Is it really wise to say that you’re smitten with a sinner? I think so. At least In the sense that you find in this sinner a kindred soul, one whom you truly understand and with whom you empathize.  Long after I’d closed the book, I found myself planning the conversations I’d have with him and pondering how I might save him from himself when everyone else had failed. That should have been my first clue that I really understood little about grace. Oh, I had the prerequisite Christian head knowledge that allows me to talk the talk. But truly, the more I read and thought about Jack, the more I became convinced that I would be the last person who could ever save him. It would be like the blind leading the blind.

In her collected essays, The Givenness of Things, Marilynne Robinson devotes an entire essay to grace. In it, she suggests that prayer “opens on something purer and grander than mercy” and that the “residue of judgment makes mercy a lesser thing than grace.” Generally speaking, when we think of mercy, we often think of a pardon or a reprieve that comes after a judgment. Mercy operates in the realm of justice where transgressions and their consequences are the natural order of things. In this realm, you get what you deserve. Unless, of course, mercy blessedly interjects itself into the process.

Grace, however, has little to do with justice and everything to do with love. If there was a hierarchy of unmerited acts of generosity, grace would most certainly be at the top. It supercedes any consideration of the law, any causal relationships, any human explanation or expectation. Robinson writes that “[t]here is no justice in love . . . it is only the glimpse or parable of an incomprehensible reality . . . the eternal breaking in on the temporal.” Jack and I struggle with the notion of grace precisely because it is incomprehensible and divine. Though we both have lived much of our lives in the world of abstractions—words and ideas—we often lose ourselves in the mire of tangible, temporal earthly reality. We think in terms of faults. We labor over I-should-have-known-betters. We lay awake at night and count our sins, lining them up like canned goods on the shelves of our dirty souls. We play judge and jury as we try our many transgressions, and the verdict is always guilty. We are on a first-name basis with shame, who is our constant companion.

Perhaps most foolishly and tragically of all, we cling to the notion that it is our humility that prevents us from accepting the grace we don’t deserve. With such a keen awareness of our flawed natures, we humbly insist that we move aside while others deservedly step up to receive their grace.

      If Jack were a real person, I believe that he’d have a particular fondness for a scene in an older feature film, The Mission, starring Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons. Prior to this scene, Robert DeNiro’s character, a Portuguese slave trader has killed his brother whom he’s discovered with his lady love. Stricken with grief, he languishes in prison for months until Jeremy Irons, a Jesuit priest, visits and challenges him to accompany the priests to the mission that serves the very natives he’d previously sold into slavery. He agrees but only if he’s allowed to choose his own penance: to literally drag his former weapons and armor behind him for the entire trip. In one scene—the scene Jack would undoubtedly rewind and watch again–DeNiro loses his bundle of weapons and armor, and they slide down the mountain in the mud. He reattaches them and tries several times to climb the slippery slope, dragging the bundle behind him. Each time, he fails. Finally, a native pulls out a knife and cuts the rope attaching the bundle to DeNiro. His penance clatters down the mountain and disappears over the falls.

Jack would understand and empathize with DeNiro’s penance, for he, too, bundled his faults and dragged them over decades and miles. But he would marvel at DeNiro’s quick acceptance of the grace that freed him from a prior life of violence and greed. He would marvel but fail to see that it is just this simple acceptance that separates those who lug their penance around and those who have been freed.  

Grace works in a world where those in need seem to have Teflon souls which repel any act of unmerited love, protecting the emptiness inside them. In her book Gravity and Grace, French philosopher and writer Simone Weil writes:

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.

Those resisters-of-grace often have active imaginations which work diligently to fill up all the fissures through which grace might pass. The grace-shaped voids in their souls stay empty. They refuse to let grace be an exceptional act; they refuse to let it in. Instead, they set about the task of mixing more mortar for fissure repairs.

     As I learned more about Jack, I discovered how well-read he was, how articulate and charming. And polite, a man of impeccable manners. He was keenly aware of how far these attributes could take him—and where they could not. Like many of us, he grew to regard living as solitary, human work. Keep your nose clean, put it to the grindstone, sniff out temptation, and breathe as deeply as your circumstances will allow. In her book, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, author Anne Lamott writes about grace:

It is unearned love–the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

Grace sweeps us out of our isolation into a communion of others who are just as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as we are to find a way out of the darkness and into the light.

Grace can only sweep us into the light, however, if we know the source of it. Sadly, in spite of having grown up in a God-centered home with a minister as father, Jack can’t honestly acknowledge God as the source of this light. He can quote scripture and theology, as well as play beautiful hymns on the piano, but he can’t find his way to faith.  There are moments where he stands just at the edge of the light. And then he retreats into the shadows of skepticism and shame.

     In the end, all this lugging around penance, tallying faults, armoring up, and hiding in the darkness is human folly, not God’s work. And God, Robinson argues, is so much bigger than all of this:

To think that only faultless people are worthwhile seems like an incredible exclusion of almost everything of deep value in the human saga. Sometimes I can’t believe the narrowness that has been attributed to God in terms of what he would approve and disapprove.

I confess that I’ve often attributed this kind of narrowness to God. I know better. Still, I find myself deciding what God would approve and disapprove of, forgive and not forgive in regards to my own soul. For others, I see God’s extravagant, unlimited grace. Even as I write this, I understand how utterly foolish this sounds. Foolish and arrogant. For if I believe that God wouldn’t offer grace to me, doesn’t this suggest that I see myself as somehow exceptional, set a part from my fellow mortals? Clearly, I’m not. Clearly, I’m a mere mortal, a sinner in need of grace.

The more Jack struggled with his past, with his unbelief, with his sin and pain, the more I wanted to reach into the novels and pull him out of all of it. Just take my hand, I’d say. But then, Jack would first have to acknowledge that there was a hand extended to him and then accept it. He would have to see that his worthiness doesn’t matter. He has no eyes to see this, though.

We live in a world that is increasingly marked by blame and shame, by accusations and quick judgment. I think it’s safe to say that, as a whole, we’re not very good at either offering or accepting grace. We’re too consumed by the worthiness (or unworthiness) of ourselves and our fellow humans. Too often, we regard the whole lot of humanity as just one big gene pool of faults, flaws, and failures. Our capacity for grace-giving and receiving is narrow, and so we assume that God’s, whose scrutiny is infinitely sharper than ours, is even narrower. Like Jack, we have no eyes to see the true nature and source of grace.   

All of us have failed. One wishes to be punished. One is willing to assume all kinds of penance, but do you know, my daughter, that in love — I scarcely dare say it — but in love our very mistakes don’t seem to be able to last long?
― Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

photo by Collyn Ware

for my children and grandchildren, my family and friends

When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters. There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. And I believe they may be the things that mean most to you, and that even your own child would have to know in order to know you well at all.
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Most of my life has taken a rather ordinary course. When I die, a Lifetime movie crew isn’t going to rush to rural Iowa and begin filming my life story. My story just doesn’t have the luster, intrigue, or sensationalism of a Nielsen-rated drama.

And yet, it’s had–and continues to have–luster enough for me. I’ve been blessed with an exceptional family and wonderful friends. I’ve taught and learned from hundreds of special students. I’ve seen and experienced so many things that have moved me, and I have a list of things I’ve yet to see and experience. I’ve felt exquisite joy and profound pain. I’ve loved and lost.

For all the bounty of my outward life, I’ve had an equally bountiful internal life. I’ve tried on and wrestled with new ideas there. I’ve rehearsed things I thought I might say or wished I could say. I’ve held new discoveries up to the light of wisdom and gasped in sore amazement. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how rich this internal life has been for me and how I’d like to share much of it with those I love. Like Marilynne Robinson, I believe that these are the things that truly mean the most to me, the gifts of a life lived and the fruits of many contemplative and imaginative hours. And yet, I realize now, in retrospect, that so many of these things I didn’t think to speak aloud. So, I’d like to share a few of these things.

It doesn’t get much better than this. How many times have I spoken this internally, repeating it to myself as if it were the chorus of a love song or a line from a cherished poem? Feeding one of my children in the middle of the night, the full moon flooding the room, and the sweet baby weight against my chest. Laughing with my grandson whose joy escapes in waves that carry us so far from the shore of ordinary life that we lose sight of it, if only for a moment. Walking to the mail box with my granddaughter as she tells me big things and small things, trusting me as a confidente. Sitting around our big kitchen island as my children and grandchildren scheme to buy up Park Place and Board Walk or gamble one last role of the dice to win a holiday Yahtzee tournament. Driving into town through a tunnel of autumn glory, trees so red and golden that they look photoshopped. The smell of baking bread, the first bite into a slice of watermelon, the scent of fresh-cut lilacs, the warmth of a towel straight out of the dryer. I could go on. I should acknowledge these things more, and I want my children and grandchildren to know this. For moments like these deserve all the verbal accolades that we can give them.

I wish I would have said/written this. Words move me. They always have. Whether spoken or written, the power of a single word or the artistry of a string of words never fails to bring a I wish I would have said/written this to my internal lips. I’ve spent so many hours grading student essays, pouring over their words, my red pen hovering over their papers. And there have been times when I’ve found myself rereading a sentence or paragraph and thinking, Wow! I wish I would have written this. Momentarily, my critical faculties dimmed in the light of insights written so well that I struggled to find suitable words of praise. I’ve also been moved by words spoken with such eloquence, such acuity and wisdom, such humor and playfulness that my initial envy of their speakers was quickly dwarfed by sheer joy. Regrettably, while my inner voice exclaimed I wish I would have said this, my outer voice was reverentially silent. If words–spoken or written–are this wonderful, I should say so. Aloud and with conviction.

I’m struggling right now. Who wants to admit this, let alone say it aloud? Struggle implies weakness, and weakness is best kept inside. It’s acceptable for your inner voice to say I’m struggling right now. But your outer voice, your public this-is-who-I-want-you-to-see voice? Not so much. But these are words I wish I would’ve said when my smile and chipper small talk were just a facade. When I failed to speak these words, I also failed to create a safe space for others to speak their pain. Who wants to share their troubles with someone whose life is perpetually sunny? We want real shoulders to cry on, fellow sufferers with whom to commiserate. Phony, plastic people just don’t fit the bill. I wish I would’ve had the courage and insight to say I’m struggling right now. If I’d spoken my humanness on more occasions, undoubtedly I would’ve found a place in the communion of sufferers.

This is so wrong. I’m ashamed to admit that there have been too many times when my inner voice was filled with righteous anger, but my outer voice was largely silent. I may have voiced my opposition to a few trusted friends in the parking lot or over the phone, but when it mattered in the public arena, I deferred to others. I didn’t want to appear rash or uncooperative. I didn’t want others who held opposing views to think less of me. I didn’t trust my ability to express my anger without losing control. I was embroiled in an internal debate in which I argued both sides of an issue and found myself genuinely conflicted. Regardless of the reason, I didn’t give a public voice to my opposition to ideas and systems that were dangerous and wrong. Clearly, there are times when it’s your moral responsibility to speak up. When I look back on my life, I can see times when I did just this. But there are other cringe-worthy times when my outer voice failed to say This is so wrong. I want my children and grandchildren, my family and friends to know that I regret these times and vow to do better in my remaining years.

His mercies are new every morning. My inner voice has repeated these words so many times, coaching myself to embrace forgiveness, to look forward, not backwards upon my transgressions. But alas, there were too many times that I pushed God aside and stepped in as my own judge and jury. Too many times, I lived as though I were unforgiveable. My inner voice may have been quietly reminding me that His mercies are new every morning, but my life showed far too little evidence of this promise. I need to say it aloud more, sharing this grace with those I love. Above all, I need to live it as though my life depends upon it, for it does.

You make the world a better place. I could never count the number of people whose presence has made the world a better place for me. It goes without saying, though, that my children and grandchildren, my family and friends top this list. So many times as I’ve shared a cup of coffee, cleared the dinner dishes from the table, sat around a campfire, or talked on the phone, I’ve been overcome with a gratitude that defies simple description. My inner voice says Oh, how you make the world a better place! while my outer voice dutifully offers something relevant to the conversation. I should speak up. I should affirm how blessed I am to be a mother, daughter, sister, grandmother and friend. In this lifetime, is there any better refrain than You make the world a better place?

There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. So many of these things are those that define us and give voice to life’s greatest blessings. I’m putting my inner voice on sabbatical, so my outer voice is going to have to step up. Big time.

When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.     —Samuel Johnson

When I was much younger, I associated civility with a lovely British accent and a nice cup of Earl Gray tea . The truly civilized would never swill instant tea from jelly jars or pinch their vowels. They would extend their pinky fingers ever so gracefully as they held their bone china teacups. They would make polite conversation using the finest Queen’s English. Never any elbows on the table, never an impertinent question or laspse into lewd gossip. Once upon a time, I defined civility largely through television and movies that took me far from my middle class, midwestern life into the drawing rooms and rose gardens of the rich and royal.

Civility comes from the Latin civilis: relating to a citizen, relating to public life, befitting a citizen; popular, affable, courteous. The very soul of civility is founded in citizenship–our responsibilities to and treatment of others. Broadcast journalist and television anchor Ted Koppel wrote:

Aspire to decency. Practice civility toward one another. Admire and emulate ethical behavior wherever you find it. Apply a rigid standard of morality to your lives; and if, periodically, you fail ­ as you surely will ­ adjust your lives, not the standards.

Historically, civility embraced a set of standards, a moral code. Anyone who didn’t live up to these standards understood that it was the individual–not the standards or code–who failed. Aspiring to be civil was a higher calling, one we collectively embraced as a necessity if we were to maintain and improve our society. Contrary to how I defined civility as a child, it has much less to do with social or economic status and everything to do with ethical and moral behavior. As Koppel wrote, civility in its stripped down form is really about decency.

After the most recent presidential debate, I lost count of the number of social media posts and news stories in which writers grieved and raged over the spectacle of two presidential candidates rhetorically ripping each other apart. As with all such presidential debates, the moderator, the candidates, and the audience were given the rules of engagement. But these were quickly and summarily dismissed.

Caught in a vortex of angry noise, I felt myself being pulled further and further into the darkness. Within minutes, I turned off the television. I couldn’t hear what either candidate was saying anyway, so I stood to gain nothing by suffering through an hour of incivility.

Although many argue that this recent debate revealed a new degree of incivility, most agree that this display was really nothing new. We’ve become accustomed to people talking over others. We’ve come to regard personal attacks as acceptable. The end really does justify the means which have become less and less civil with each passing decade. Tragically, civility seems to have gone the way of high tea. If you want a civility fix, you might want to watch a hour or two of Downton Abbey. That’s about as good as it gets, I’m afraid.

In his book, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up, James Hoggan writes:

The most pressing environmental problem we face today is not climate change. Rather it is pollution in the public square, where a smog of adversarial rhetoric, propaganda and polarization stifles discussion and debate, creating resistance to change and thwarting our ability to solve our collective problems.

I think Hoggan is right about our most serious environmental issue: our public square is polluted. It stinks to high heaven. If we devoted a tenth of the time, talk, and energy to this issue as we do to climate change, civility might gain a foothold. But perhaps, as author Michael Austin contends, this is difficult, if not impossible. He argues that [w]e treat others badly not because we don’t understand how people should be treated but because we don’t really consider them people.

It’s easy to be disrepectful to those we see solely as opponents–not fellow human beings. Politics is rife with this type of incivility. So is social media. We feel justified in promoting ourselves and our agendas by canceling our opponents. After all, these opponents really aren’t people–at least not people we care about, not people who will obstensibly stand by us, care for us, perhaps even love us. And so, fueled by righteous anger and strong conviction, we rarely give civility a second thought. And herein lies the problem: we don’t just relegate civility to the back burner; we don’t give it any burner at all.

In his book, We Must Not Be Enemies: Restoring America’s Civic Tradition, Anybody, Michael Austin writes:

Anybody who spends any time at all talking about things like civility, civic friendship, and the quality of our political discourse had better be prepared to talk about Nazis. Call it the ‘argumentum ad nazium,’ or the ‘dicto simplicihitler,’ but people seem compelled to let it be known that they have no intention of trying to make friends with Nazis. This is often asserted as a decisive blow. ‘Don’t talk to me about civility. I don’t talk nicely to Nazis; I punch them in the face.’ …

Most people who want to carve out a ‘Nazi exemption’ to the requirements of basic human decency – or any exemption based on a proposition-testing outlier instead of lived experience – are not really trying to to decide what to do in the unlikely event that they run into someone doing ‘sieg heil’ salutes in the checkout line. They want to create an exempt category and populate it with anybody they can force into the definition. This phenomenon happens across the political spectrum.

Austin’s assertion that most of us want a Nazi exemption hits too close to home. Most of us prize a category that exempts us from being civil because, of course, we don’t talk nicely to Nazis. It’s our moral and ethical responsibility to punch them in the face. We’re all too eager to make Nazis of any and all opponents. For who can be civil when the barbarians are at the gate? Why should we listen to and entertain the ideas of jack-booted thugs? Why should we show an ounce of civility to such brutes? We eagerly make exemptions that allow us to hate in the name of righteousness, for we can see our foe’s sins so clearly. So much for acknowledging and removing the planks from our own eyes.

When we can justify incivility through this exemption–or by any means at all–there remains little hope of return to kindness and decency (Samuel Johnson). Don’t get me wrong. Most of us love to hate a bad guy or girl and take solace in the moral ease of drawing a definitive line in the sand, one that clearly separates good from bad. Life is so much better when we stand with the good guys in solidarity against a common enemy. It’s such a rush to feel the type of moral clarity that eclipses any inclination to understand or any compulsion to empathize with an enemy. And when we give into this rush of certainty, we often can’t find our way to kindness and decency. Our new moral GPS may reroute us towards destinations that are neither humane nor civil.

It is true that some may argue the case for genuine Nazis in our midst. That is, some may insist that there are those so despicable that we must exempt ourselves from civility if we are to face and defeat them. They’re hateful, so we must be just–if not more–hateful if we are to restore goodness to our land. In short, we must be incivil if we are to restore civility. Although historically there have always been a few individuals who were genuinely evil through and through, there have been–and continue to be–many more who aren’t.

Catholic writer and theologian Peter Kreeft advises that we should [b]e egalitarian regarding persons. Be elitist regarding ideas. That is, while we must treat others as we would like to be treated, we should look critically at their ideas. It goes without saying that some ideas are clearly superior to others. These ideas are often the foundations of systems that affect our lives and livelihoods. We must consider them critically and carefully. If we find them weak or harmful, we should agressively expose and counter them. We can, as Kreeft insists, be elitists regarding ideas. This, however, is a far cry from being elitists regarding human beings. When we can’t make this distinction, we often fail to be civil. We attack and destroy individuals as if they are no more than the sum of their ideas. If their ideas are worth nothing, then they, too, are worth nothing.

For years, I’ve watched incivility creep into classrooms. Nothing on the scale of the recent presidential debate, mind you, but notable nonetheless. I heard students turn to a peer who’d just gotten her hair cut and say, “Why did you cut your hair? You looked better before.” As I lectured or modeled new skills, I watched students roll their eyes so dramatically that I thought they’d be blind for life. As a professional development provider, I cringed as colleagues literally turned their backs to me as I presented. On many days, the level of civility in my educational environment was a 2 or 3 on a scale of 10. On one particularly painful occasion during a public speaking class, I had to tell an entire class of seniors that working on homework, looking out the window, or secretly texting while one of their peers was speaking was impolite. I had to explain that their failure to make any eye contact with and sincerely listen to the speaker was genuinely rude. They were shocked, and many failed to understand my concern.

I would like to believe that something or someone might return us to civility. Not the type of civility that Mahatma Gandhi identifies as the mere outward gentleness of speech cultivated for the occasion, but an inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good. This is a tall order, I know. But our failure to address this growing problem and to begin a course of healing is unacceptable. We can–and must–do better.

Thistle Seed
 
Off the corner of the cabin,
a large stand of thistle has gone
to seed
 
and when the wind blows,
downy heads explode
in an exclamation of joy.
Oh, what can they say to a world
that browns a bit more each day?
 
And how will they pray?
Will their gossamer souls sing in first light,
their praise growing lighter and lighter
as filaments come together
into a single cloud of witnesses who cry
Now, Lord!

Could I join them?
My bones catching the wind
like silken threads,
like hundreds of hollow reeds thrust
into the updraft.
Would I find the air a kinder home,
the yoke of all my earthly expectations
released?
 
All summer long,
the happy flowers have opened themselves
to birds and bees, but today
they are colorless corpses.
 
I reach for a thistle seed,
but it will not be held.
Moment by moment, the dead rise
from the ash heap.

photo by Collyn Ware

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Did you know that the Titanic had a sister ship?” my grandson, Griffin, asked. “Did you know that lots of the dads and grandfathers died because they let the moms and kids get on the lifeboats first? And did you know that there’s a Titanic museum in Branson?” He looked up at me in earnest, waiting for my response, eager to tell me all he’d learned about the Titanic. His curiosity about all-things-Titanic was simply too much for the confines of his morning of online schooling. It was foaming over the top of our prescribed daily lessons as if it were a carbonated beverage shaken up and finally upcapped. There was no stopping it.

But truthfully, who would want to stop the ardent curiosity of a 7-year-old? As Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, this raw curiosity is a most useful gift. From my experience as both student and teacher, it is certainly the foundation of most genuine learning. Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher wrote:

Learning is by nature curiosity… prying into everything, reluctant to leave anything, material or immaterial, unexplained.

I hated to tell Griffin that we had to turn our attention towards his online social studies lesson about maps because it was all too clear that he wasn’t at all interested in maps right now. Today, he could barely contain his insatiable curiosity about the Titanic. If I could have loaded him up in my car and driven him 6 hours south to Branson, Missouri, I would have earned the title of Best, Most Amazing Grandma in the World. I would have been golden and could have rested on these laurels for weeks–maybe years–after our visit to the Titanic museum. If I could have harnessed his curiosity towards learning, the world may have tilted on its axis! At the very least, the morning would have flown by.

Working with Griffin has made me painfully aware of how traditional schooling has failed students like him. In traditional schools, we are required to teach language arts, math, social studies, science, physical education, art, and music to 2nd grade students. As such, we could never afford to spend an entire morning studying the Titanic. No time for such single-subject luxuries! And we could never afford to spend too many days studying the Titanic. Too much to cover in a year!

For 40 years, I was a public school teacher. I understand–all too well–the curricular and instructional expectations and requirements of any given day of school. If your curiosity and interest is peaked by something, you probably have, at best, 40 minutes to satisfy it. Then the bell will ring, and you’ll be off to the next class. I understand the challenges of letting every student pursue those things about which he or she is most curious. That would mean, of course, that each of your 25 students could conceivably study something different. Juggling this many instructional balls would require more courage and stamina than I ever had. And so, I did the best I could to make a one-sized-fits-all curriculum as palatable and relevant as I could. As do many teachers.

Still, working with Griffin has made me really think about many things–things I’ve known for a long time and things I’m just beginning to understand. I’ve known that the vast majority of my high school and college students had lost most, if not all, of their passionate curiosity years before I ever had them as students. Most were compliant enough, anxious to know just what they had to do to pass. Some wanted better grades, but few were actually willing to do much thinking or investigating on their own. Their curiosity had died roughly about the same time they stopped playing on the playground equipment at recess. From this point on, their educational lives were more about figuring out what the teacher wants than passionately pursuing any natural course for their curiosity.

In Walden Two, psychologist B. F. Skinner writes:

No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn’t die out, it’s wiped out.

This tendency to explore, to take curiosity’s route to its glorious destination, is wiped out. Sadly, we are the restraining forces, those who wipe out the kind of curiosity that fuels Griffin’s days. We do it in the name of educational efficiency. We do it in the name of tradition and, paradoxically, in the name of progress. Perhaps most tragically, we do it because we can’t see any other way. Having lost our own curiosity, we can’t imagine educating our youth and young adults in new and different ways.

Polish-born American writer and social scientist, Leo Rosen, claims that while many people use the term idle curiosity, [t]he one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle. Being curious is an active and interactive venture. There is a real sense of urgency about it, a compulsion to learn more, to solve problems, to discover how and why things work as they do or why things happened as they did. It requires that individuals invest themselves in the study of something, and that as they do, they shape and use the information they find to answer questions and draw conclusions. Curiosity requires this kind of give-and-take, which makes it utterly impossible to remain idle. For this reason alone, we should pay it more heed. Most of our students have grown flabby with mental inactivity. They have been idling too long.

Currently, Griffin’s synapses are firing wildly, ignited by curiosity. If he follows suit, in a few years these synapses will have burned out. I’d like to arrest time, to stoke the synaptic fires as long as possible, prolonging the innate curiosity that drives him and other children. I’d like us to find ways to ensure that our schools are not restraining forces that wipe out curiosity. I’d like us to imagine a society of more curious individuals, those who aren’t satisfied to idle through their lives, consuming only what they need to pass, to make it through each day.

If we are to do this and if we truly value the kind of thought and innovation that comes from this type of curiosity, then we are going to have to do better. I don’t have all the answers, but I can imagine a world in which there are more educational choices and more incentives to embrace curiosity in all areas of life. The very thought of a world like this is just about as exciting as it gets.

Somewhere over the rainbow, blue birds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Oh why, oh why can't I? 
--Harold Arlen, E. Y. Harburg

Over the rainbow, into the glorious field of sunflowers–somewhere, anywhere beyond. This is our collective dream: to leave the current fear and pain of Covid19, racial and economic struggle, violence, wild fires, hurricanes, and derecho winds, public and private shaming of all sorts from any and all sources. To transport ourselves to the Great Beyond, to the sunnier days of life after the virus, after the protests, after the destruction of lives, livelihoods, reputations, and after the horrors of natural disasters. Somewhere beyond all of this there must be something better. Right?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote that [w]e have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon. Like many, I remember thinking that beyond the challenges and sleepless nights of adolescence, I would finally reach adulthood, that shining city on the hill of life, that splendid destination that made all the angst and acne worth it. As a teacher, I remember clinging to the promise of summer, of days beyond school bells, beyond 20-minute lunches and piles of student papers that covered my desk and grew exponentially, eager to consume every inch and minute of my life. If I could just make it until Memorial Day, then I could sleep and read any book I wanted to read. Then I could bury my watch in the bottom of a drawer and take a 2-hour lunch–in a quiet place that serves adult food–with a good friend. The lure of beyond is the proverbial carrot in the great race of life. It’s just in front of you. It tempts you with rewards that have eluded you. It’s out there somewhere.

I’ve heard and read inspirational words that are intended to sustain us and pull us through these trials. This, too, shall pass. This can’t last forever, so keep your eyes on the prize. After we have a vaccine for this virus, everyone can return to work, to school, to life as we’ve known it. When we elect new leaders, they will solve all our problems. After we destroy the terrible systems of our past and establish better systems, the current pain and strife will disappear. These are battle cries of sorts, words of those like Scottish warrior William Wallace as he led his countrymen and women to rebel against the tyrannous King Edward I. Or the words of Winston Churchill who rallied the Brits to defend their country, to never, never surrender.

After reading a recent biography of Churchill, it struck me that Churchill’s voice, like Wallace’s, was largely a single, unifying voice. Times were desperate, and yet one rallying cry lifted the British people from devastating nightly bomb raids and paralyzing fear of burgeoning Nazi forces. Carried into homes through radio waves, one voice rallied the country to stay the course because the very future of what could–and must–lie beyond this horror was at stake.

I’ve thought a lot about the power of this kind of unifying voice. Churchill was brutally honest. He didn’t offer platitudes or sugar-coat the dire reality of Nazi power. He spoke to the British people as adults capable of hearing of the truth and then he asked them to think and act beyond what they believed they were capable of. He warned, he cajoled, he encouraged and inspired. In the end after much great sacrifice, Churchill’s vision and voice helped moved Britain–and the world–beyond the death and destruction of WWII.

Today, however, our nation has no Churchill or Wallace, no single unifying voice to lead us through the wilderness. In truth, we have many voices, and the chasm between these voices and visions of how to make our nation better is growing just as quickly and awfully as my piles of student essays to be graded. It’s a Grand Canyon division. With each passing day, it becomes more and more impossible to see the other side or to even begin to imagine a Great Beyond.

People are hunkering down and digging in. They may have once believed that a visionary warrior would ride his horse up and down the batttle lines, unifying our nation to responsible and right action. They may have hoped beyond hope that one such figure would emerge and that, one day, we’d all hold hands and sing Kum-Bah-Ya. They may have risen each day with the hope that life would return to normal as their mantra. But not so much these days. These days, more and more people find themselves in survival mode driven solely by what they need to do to get through this day. Their dreams may be smaller: eating indoors in a favorite restaurant or going to work or school in person, maskless. When you’re in survival mode, you drool over small pleasures and normalcies. When we get beyond the threat of the coronavirus, I’ll order the largest plate of appetizers at Applebees and eat them all with my best friend as we sit in a corner booth for hours and visit.

And all this begs the question of what life beyond our current pain and challenges offers. There are many who argue that there will be a new normal, one that is, at least, different than the old normal and at best, much better. They maintain that what lies beyond all of this is not a comfortable return to life-as-we-knew-it, but nonetheless, they offer hope for the Great Beyond. There are others who believe that what lies beyond is forbidding. The Great Beyond, they warn, will be a darker age. Systems will necessarily crash and burn, and we will muck around in the rubble for a long time.

I don’t want to be one who sticks her head in the sand or one who unnecessarily borrows trouble. I would be lying if I said that I don’t lie in bed at night and worry about what lies beyond. At times, I distract myself with over-the-rainbow fantasies. I imagine myself standing in a field of sunflowers, my face to the sun, the day stretching gloriously before me. At other times, I imagine myself in some kind of dystopian world, hoarding toilet paper and fearful to say or write anything that may get me canceled for good, the remants of my life being literally flushed away.

I realize the urgency of addressing those things that threaten to undo us–personally, nationally, and globally. If our Great Beyond is to be a place of health, unity, and general well-being, I understand that this will not come without a cost. The greatest leaders have always understood that the world is–and would always be–a troubled place in which all people would struggle in one way or another. Churchill knew and refused to ignore this. As their cities were nightly bombed, the British held fast to the knowledge that their leader truly saw their sacrifice and pain and that their fellow countrymen and women were also sacrificing and suffering. They were not alone.

More and more, I’ve realized that I, too, rest in the comfort and promise that I’m never alone and that, in the midst of trouble, I can find peace and joy. Jesus told his followers:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. John 16:33.

The chasm between our current selves and our best selves may be great. Our troubles may seem insurmountable and our pain too chronic. We may not have a political or military leader whose voice can successfully rally and unify the people. Ultimately, though, a better beyond begins when, amidst all the trouble, those who’ve found genuine peace and joy reach across the chasm and work relentlessly to bring everyone to the table. And then, even if the food intolerable or the place settings mismatched, all will leave knowing that the fellowship was good, that the fellowship was everything, and that beyond this meal, an endless number of invitations and opportunities lies before them.

—for all teachers, past, present, and future

I’m standing at the door of my classroom on the first day of school. My hand is on the door handle, and my school bag is slung over my shoulder when I realize that I’m scantily clothed. Actually, I’ve come to school wearing only my underwear (and they’re not even professional-looking underwear at that). This is but one of the many pre-school nightmares that ravaged my sleep for 40 years in the weeks before school started. I’d wake up sweat-drenched. My heart would race until I’d remember that I didn’t have to go to school that day, that I had two precious weeks to prepare until school started. And then the next night, the nightmares would begin again.

If I were to make a top-ten list of these nightmares, they’d include things like agreeing to teach a section of advanced music theory (I quit taking piano in 1967!) or trigonometry (I maxed out in geometry, 10th grade!); showing up to teach on the wrong day or in the wrong building/classroom (What? This isn’t Tuesday? This isn’t Room 159?); and wearing an awful pair of slippers I’d received as a gift and should’ve immediately donated to Goodwill (Shark slippers, Grandma? Really?)

Actually, I did once return from a break during a night class at the community college, inadvertently entered the classroom of a colleague, and began teaching a group of students who didn’t recognize me from Adam. And I did once teach an entire day with blue mimeograph ink streaked across the left side of my face. Not one student or colleague revealed this to me, and I had to discover this painful reality when I checked my rearview mirror to back out of the college parking lot at the end of the day. These experiences–and others–confirmed that my nightmares were real forces to be reckoned with and that they could (gasp!) come true.

Today’s teachers, however, may experience pre-school nightmares that I never once imagined. I could conjure up some attempts at humorous ones: sneezing violently onto your face shield and peering at your students through a smattering of your own snot; discovering that you have no fingerprints after weeks of using industrial-strength cleaning supplies to disinfect your classroom; struggling to make any real conversation unless it includes an in-depth discussion of social distancing. I could attempt to laugh at potential scenarios like this, but I won’t because these scenarios are more probable than possible. Sadly, face shields/masks, disinfectants, and social distancing guidelines will NOT be the stuff that foolish nightmares are made of; they will be the real stuff that makes up “ordinary” school life.

And so it goes without saying that the dread that ravages the nights and days of most teachers is legitimate dread. As if creating and delivering excellent, relevant lessons weren’t enough. As if developing and maintaining positive relationships weren’t enough. As if attending to the educational, social, emotional, and psychological needs of students weren’t enough. As if preparing a welcoming school environment (largely with your own funds) weren’t enough. As if mentoring new colleagues and collaborating with others weren’t enough. Now, add to this list a guarantee that you will protect your students from a virus that persists and shows no real signs of leaving.

In the past few months, I’ve listened to those who’ve argued passionately about the real need to reorganize law enforcement agencies, who’ve suggested that we might use other professionals to assist in addressing social, emotional, medical, and psychological issues. We often ask law enforcement officers to perform tasks and take responsbility for scenarios that most have never been trained to handle. So, too, our teachers. We ask them to be content, instructional, and assessment specialists. We ask them to be social workers and mental health experts. We ask them to be counselors, friends, custodians, leaders, team-players, fundraisers, make-doers, role models, mediators, and all-around upstanding citizens.

And now–the pièce de ré·sis·tance–they are essential workers on the pandemic front lines. The fact that most will assume this role with grace, conviction, and courage shouldn’t go unnoticed, but I fear that it will. Perhaps my greatest dread today is that this role will quietly and permanently join the burgeoning list of teacher responsibilities and that we won’t have a national conversation about what teachers should reasonably be responsible for and what they should not.

School will go on, as it must. Whether it’s in-person, five days a week, hybrid, or online, teachers will lead the charge. But I’d like all the teachers out there to know that there are those of us who understand that this season’s dread is real and that we can only reminisce about the good ol’ days when our worst nightmares were those of showing up to school in our skivvies.