…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
― George Eliot,  Middlemarch

This is the quote that appears at the end of the feature film, A Hidden Life (2019), the story of Austrian farmer, husband, father, and devout Catholic Franz Jgersttter who was executed in 1943 because he refused to serve in the Nazi army. The other night, I watched this film, artistically and insightfully directed by Terrence Mallick. It goes without saying that the cinematography is spectacular with exquisite scenes of the Austrian Alps. But the story—

In 2016, the film Hacksaw Ridge featured the life of Desmond Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist conscientious objector. Doss refused to take up arms, but he willingly pledged his loyalty and services as a medic to the United States Army. Although initially criticized and harrassed by his peers and commanding officers, Doss ultimately not only earned their respect and gratitude but that of the world after he saved 75 GIs in the Battle of Okinawa. The recipient of a Medal of Honor, Doss humbly asked that his heroism not be publicized. Still, his heroism and story became public, and the world honored–and continues to honor–his piety and courage.

Jgersttter’s story is different, though. He refused to take the oath dedicating his service and loyalty to Hitler, even when others suggested that he might serve as an orderly in a field hospital. They argued that he could help others this way, that he wouldn’t have to be a combat soldier. It was the oath, however, that prevented him from serving at all. His own parish priest, as well as the local bishop, urged him to swear allegiance to Hitler, to do his duty to the fatherland and to spare his family from persecution and suffering. His neighbors and villagers quickly turned against him and his family, shunning them publicly and refusing to help with their harvest. His decision cost him dearly even before he was imprisoned by the Nazis. And this decision continued to cost his wife, children, and mother.

When he was in a Berlin prison awaiting his execution, he wrote:

Again and again people stress the obligations of conscience as they concern my wife and children. Yet I cannot believe that just because one has a wife and children, he is free to offend God by lying (not to mention all the other things he would be called upon to do). Did not Christ Himself say, “He who loves father, mother, or children more than Me is not deserving of My love?”

A Hidden Life is nearly 3 hours long. Unlike Hacksaw Ridge, there are no battle scenes. Truthfully, there is little physical action at all. What Terrence Mallick does provide, however, is an exceptional view of the psychological, emotional, and spiritual struggles of not only Jgersttter but his family members. For me, the minutes ticked by agonizingly, and yet I couldn’t look away. There were times, I admit, that I couldn’t really see the screen because tears had so filled my eyes, and the sobs that had gathered in my throat threatened to undo me. Here was beautiful agony, the sort that takes you to the foot of the cross and leaves you there, spent and awed. Here were a man and his wife who lived hidden lives of devotion and courage amidst a world gone mad.

Jgersttter’s life may have remained entirely hidden were it not for the research and 1964 publication of In Solitary Witness by Catholic sociologist Gordan Zahn. Zahn writes that Jgersttter’s story was nothing less than a repetition of an old story, the ever-recurring confrontation between Christ and Caesar. Even hours before his death, a visiting priest, Father Jochmann, directed his attention to the document that had lain for days on his prison table, the document that contained the oath that, if signed, would save his life. But Jgersttter persisted, saying: I cannot and may not take an oath in favor of a government that is fighting an unjust war.

Jgersttter was beheaded on August 9, 1943. He died believing that his was, indeed, a solitary witness, one that would go unnoticed by all but his family. In several film scenes, he is asked the same questions by Nazi officials, priests, bishops, his attorneys and neighbors: Do you think that your refusal to pledge your allegiance to Hitler will benefit anyone? Do you think this will change the course of the war, that anyone will even know of your actions? Do you think your decision will matter at all? Jgersttter never waivered from his conviction that he could make no other decision as a Christian and that he need only worry about his loyalty to and love for God. He suffered no illusions that the world would notice or understand. He wrote:

Although people have accused me of criminal behavior and condemned me to death, be consoled knowing that in God’s eyes not everything is criminal which the world perceives to be criminal.

In 1984, the Austrian government issued Jgersttter a special posthumous Award of Honor, and in 2007, the Catholic Church beatified him. His once hidden life has now been revealed as the extraordinary life of devotion, courage, and sacrifice that it was.

I suspect that there will be many who live such hidden lives in these times of worldwide pandemic. There will be those who quietly and privately do the right things, the morally and physically courageous things. We won’t hear or read about them. Undoubtedly, these are the folks who won’t take to social media with posts regaling their actions. Still, inside their homes and neighborhoods, they will tend to those in their care. They will encourage others and affirm the gifts they have been given. They will literally keep the faith. Like Jgersttter, they will believe that their actions and decisions will go unnoticed by all but God, their families and, perhaps, their neighbors–and they will know that this is more than enough.

For much of my life, I’ve struggled with the compulsion to do more, to be more than who I am. For who I am and what I’ve done seem so small and petty. I’ve looked to others whose lives and works seem so large by comparison, their contributions so noteworthy. And I’ve found myself striving to walk in their footsteps, ones that I’ve discovered are clearly much too big for me to follow. Just the other day, my church issued an invitation for volunteers to deliver groceries in our community. As a retired person with the benefit of time, I was happy to volunteer until I read the qualifications for volunteers: between the ages of 18 and 59. I’m simply too old to help. I’m relegated to the age group whose job is to self-quarantine. To best serve others, I can’t literally serve many of them at all.

Years ago, I remember reading a devotional by Oswald Chambers in which he addressed those like me who lamented their seeming helplessness in the face of the world’s needs. He wrote that he often heard people say things like I can’t really do anything. All I can do is pray. And then he admonished us by claiming that prayer is the real work. Largely hidden work, I’ve come to understand that prayer is–as Chambers insists–the real work.

This is good news for those in the 60+ age group who, like me, currently find they can’t serve on the front lines. Hidden in my rural Iowa home, I can pray. For the growing good of the world, I can, like Jgersttter, turn my eyes to the only One whose allegiance ultimately matters. And I can find solace and solidarity in the knowledge that there are so, so many others who are praying, too.

In 1971, David Vetter was born with severe immunodeficiency. Known as the Bubble Boy, he lived his entire life of 12 years in a plastic bubble.

Imagine, if you will, the life of David Vetter, Bubble Boy. As I write today, some may argue that it’s all too easy to imagine this under the quarantine conditions of our coronavirus pandemic. It’s like living in a bubble, some say, cut off from life as we’ve known it. No socializing in groups larger than ten, no concerts, sporting events, school, etc. Bubbled in our homes, our worlds are shrinking before our very eyes. Like David Vetter, we’re dependent upon those with whom we live for whatever socializing and human contact we can get. Unlike David Vetter, however, our worlds are not so small that we can’t touch each other–or walk outside to touch a tree or stand, unencumbered, under the sun or stars. Our worlds are small, but not that small.

For his eleventh birthday, David Vetter wanted nothing more than to see the stars. And so his family wheeled his bubble and all its accompanying life-saving equipment into their yard where for twenty minutes, he gazed into the night sky. The following year, he would die at the ripe age of twelve. His world and his lifespan were, indeed, small.

Even before the pandemic and quarantining, I’d been thinking about the size of my own world, how it has shrunken as I’ve retired. Once, I stood in front of as many as 150 students a day and interacted with faculty and staff in my schools. My world seemed relatively large and my influence upon this world equally large. There were more days than I can count after which I worried about my influence on so many people. Was I teaching the right things in the right ways? Had I said anything that wasn’t right, wasn’t true, wasn’t relevant? What legacy–if any–was I leaving my students and colleagues? To be sure, this was heavy baggage, and like Sisyphus, I pushed this boulder up the hill of my days (and nights).

There is something thrilling and daunting about such large worlds. They spread out before us in continents of opportunities. They dazzle treasures yet to be found. They tease and cajole us with pastures that are greener. In these worlds, bubbles have blessedly burst into more glittering panoramas!

And yet, small worlds have much to teach us. Inside our bubbles, we can examine our own pastures with new eyes. Mine is pretty green, I must admit. Give me a good book, a walk in the countryside, a good Netflix series, a pan of cookies in the oven, a phone call with a friend or family member, and an afternoon with my grandchildren (who live 50 yards away!), and I’m happy enough to live bubbled in with these riches.

I’m not, however, diminishing the real seriousness of the pandemic and its implications for those who aren’t as fortunate as I am. And I’m not romanticizing this time. I am, however, taking the time to personally consider my life as it is today and as it may be going forward. Could I really live in a smaller world? And, perhaps, should I live in one?

For years, I’ve read much historical fiction and nonfiction regarding WWII. Clearly, the themes of oppression and genocide drive most of these works. Still, the overwhelming themes of hunger and isolation are right there as well. The lives of many Jews who went into hiding were exceptionally small. They lived in attics, crawl spaces, haylofts, cellars–places so small and so uninhabitable that most of us could never imagine them. They lived on turnips and acorns and scraps we wouldn’t give our animals. And their benefactors, those who risked their lives to hide their Jewish brothers and sisters? Their lives were necessarily small, too. They may have lived in their own homes and had some occasions to leave, but they lived painfully close to home–out of fear and necessity. For both the benefactors and the hidden, their worlds and lives were smaller than they’d ever been before.

As I’ve read about their lives and struggles, I’ve often asked myself if I could have survived under such conditions. Could I live on a half turnip a day? Could I survive lying in a crawl space without the ability to even sit up–for months? Could I handle the isolation of not being able to talk with or be with anyone? Could I handle the fear of putting myself and my family at risk by hiding someone or an entire family? I would like to think that, given these extreme circumstances, I would rise to the occasion and do things that I couldn’t normally do. I would hope that I could be a person who lives small so that others might live at all.

Today, my pantry is full enough, and I’m blessed to have my daughter, son-in-law, grandchildren and a couple neighbors nearby. I don’t have to get in my car to be with them. I can literally walk out my door and within yards, be at their door steps. Ours is a small rural world in southeastern Iowa, but what a wonderful small world it is! And how genuinely grateful I am to live in it.

As our worlds become smaller for the foreseeable future, we might all take the opportunity to think about what this can mean for us personally and for our world collectively. We tend to discount anything small as being less than desireable. But for centuries, the greatest writers, artists, theologians, and leaders have shown us the treasures that await those who embrace the smallest things. For generations, our grandparents and great grandparents have lived much smaller than we have, and their lives continue to bless us in surprising and lasting ways. All of these individuals are far above my pay-grade, so I feel complete assurance in making the claim that small worlds may be paradoxically large, indeed.

I’m hoping that I can be one who lives small, so that others may live at all. Like many, I’m staying home, refusing to hoard groceries and supplies, and praying. And I’m hoping that we can all take solace in the fact that when our worlds become larger again, we will look upon them with fresh eyes, with newfound wonder and gratitude. This alone is no small thing–pun intended.

Bubble Boy
for Griffin

 Decades ago before you were born,
 a boy spent his entire life in a plastic bubble
 because the world threatened to take him out
 with an arsenal of parasites and plagues.
 From his bubble, he could see children, like you, 
 who ran barefoot in the sun, 
 their fingers slicked with dirt,
 their tongues testing the wind. 
  
 Today, you dip your wand into a bucket of solution
 and a bubble big as a porpoise takes the air.
 It floats several exuberant feet off the grass,
 an Aurora borealis here in our own yard.
 You step to meet it, 
 but from the driveway where I stand, 
 it looks as if you’ve stepped into it—
 or perhaps it’s caught you.
 And once inside, your face opens in wonder 
 at a world glazed with color. 
  
 Soon you’ll poke it and it will burst, 
 coating your hair with soapy film.
 And then you’ll come running
 through the grass, you’ll laugh 
 and throw yourself, soapy and sweaty, 
 into your mother’s arms.
  
 At six years, suited up like an astronaut,
 the Bubble Boy stepped out of his plastic world 
 into his mother’s arms for the first time,
 arms that had pined for flesh—skin-to-skin love,
 one eager heart pressed to another.
 On his eleventh birthday, he asked to see the stars
 and they wheeled him into the yard 
 where—for twenty miraculous minutes—he gazed at the sky.
 At twelve, even the bubble couldn’t save him.
  
 Tonight, you’ll sit under the stars
 by the fire where we’ve roasted marshmallows.
 And later when you fall sleep, your sticky face against your mother’s shoulder,
 you’ll dream of all the things you want to see
 and touch. 

A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. John Ciardi

There’s something particularly satisfying and reassuring about tightening a bolt into place. The mere act–at the very least–gives the illusion of security: everything is locked down, everything has its rightful place, everything that needs fastening has been fastened. Although I admit that I’m not handy with a wrench, I’ve watched enough home improvement shows to know that there are those who wield wrenches with confidence and ease. These are the men and women who tighten bolts with a few definitive turns of the wrist, the folks who strengthen and secure.

Poet John Ciardi claims that a good question is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted. If Ciardi were alive today, I fear that he’d be pretty discouraged about all the bolt-tightening that we do in response to the big questions regarding the human condition and the state of the world today. We appear to use our wrenches too automatically, battening down answers quickly. I fear that we’ve come to regard such speed and strength with certainty. Those who answer promptly and forcefully are those who command respect. Those who respond post haste are those who often teach, lead, and inspire confidence. Regardless of the question, they have the answer.

Every era has faced its share of serious questions, and ours is no different. The increasing threat of the coronavirus comes with a host of its own big questions: How will we contain it, treat it, prevent it? How will it affect our economies, our governments, our educational and other systems, our very lives as we know them? We scour the news daily for answers to our questions. We argue that we just don’t have time for seeds to be planted; in the face of growing fear–and in many cases, panic–we need some competent bolt-tightening.

In his Holocaust memoir Night, Elie Wiesel writes about a conversation he had with Moshe the Beadle, a poor scholar of the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism who lives in his town. Moshe asks the young Elie why he prays. After Elie claims that he doesn’t know why he prays, he and Moshe meet often to discuss man’s relationship with God. Wiesel writes:

He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. “Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him,” he was fond of repeating.

Perhaps this is why we often cower in the presence of the big questions: they possess a particular power that doesn’t lie in their answers. Even when we arrive at reasonable, researched answers, this power persists. It plagues us–as it should, Moshe the Beadle argues. This is the power of the seed bed that Ciardi speaks of. The power of questions that continue to germinate long after they are answered, the power of questions whose answers refuse to be tightened with a few turns of the wrench.

Do we raise ourselves towards God by the questions we ask? Moshe the Beadle repeatedly claims that this is so, and I suspect that many will agree with him. It’s our persistance and willingness to see quick bolt-tightening for its limitations that propels us towards God and towards better, more refined questions. And these questions, in turn, lead us towards better, more refined answers. This is not a quick or definitive process, though. It takes time; it requires doubt and speculation. Sadly, we’re not a people who are especially good at either patience or uncertainty. Give us handymen and women with strong grips and big wrenches, and we sleep much better each night.

In his New York Times best-selling book, Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in the form of a letter to a his fifteen-year old son, an African American boy who is trying to make sense of the racial injustice he faces in his world. Coates writes:

My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers—even the answers they themselves believed. I don’t know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But every time I ask it, the question is refined. That is the best of what the old heads meant when they spoke of being “politically conscious”—as much a series of actions as a state of being, a constant questioning, questioning as ritual, questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty.

Like John Ciardi and Moshe the Beadle, Ta-Nehisi Coates understands that questioning is a necessary state of being, a ritual, an exploration rather than the search for certainty. He is painfully aware of how we are tempted to accept secondhand answers, even the answers we ourselves have believed and may continue to believe. As a beginning teacher, I recall how I was often tempted to give immediate answers to student questions even when I was genuinely uncertain of their validity. To falter–or worse yet, to offer nothing–seemed like blood in the water to adolescent sharks who seemed poised for a feeding frenzy. Trip up the new teacher, ask her something she can’t answer, and watch her die a slow, agonizing death of shame. Mine was the legitimate fear of every new teacher, and much as I hate to admit it now, I may have offered answers that were, at best, incomplete, and at worst, simply wrong. Gratefully, I learned quickly that being certain was a luxury I could seldom afford. Better to live unabashedly with the knowledge that all questions possess power not generally found in their answers. Better to live humbly in exploration rather than a search for certainty.

German physicist Albert Einstein writes:

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.     

The father of the theory of relativity, one of the two cornerstones of modern physics, Einstein was a brilliant man who successfully answered some seemingly impossible theoretical questions. And yet even a man who offered such incredible answers understood the greater value of constant questioning. And even more importantly, he understood that it is enough to merely comprehend a little of this mystery [of the world, eternity, life] each day.

We live in a universe of big questions, and I often find myself dwarfed by the sheer size and ferocity of questions which keep blasting through my personal force field like eager meteors. If I focus too long on their strength and number, I begin to drown in the futility of my predicament. If, however, I pledge to comprehend just a little more of this mystery each day, I find that I am willing and capable enough for the task. As are those who work daily to ask better, more refined questions about diseases and environmental hazards, as well as economic, political, social, educational, and philosophical issues. I find solace in their unwavering patience and persistance and take heart that their seed beds will ultimately bear more seed towards the hope of greening the landscape of idea.

Faced with difficult questions, as a teacher I learned to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll see what I can find out.” It was a good response then, and today, it seems like an even better one.

There is only one art of which people should be masters—the art of reflection.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I have nothing to write about. My life is ordinary, without event. This is just a story (or poem, essay, article). What do you want me to say? I’ve got nothing. Really. So argued countless students over my 40 year teaching career. And they spoke with sincere conviction: they couldn’t write because there was nothing of any relevance or significance to say. Nada. I did have students who practiced–and may have even mastered–the art of reflection, who were unwilling to shut the door on a life event or literary work before they reflected upon it, giving it time to percolate and resonate. As you might guess, however, these students were rare birds, their colors and plumage too bright for much of the world.

Reflection is more than drive-by consideration. You don’t look out of your window and, finding nothing initially interesting, drive on without even checking your rearview mirror. You don’t stay in your car at all. Instead, you get out, pocket your phone, take your shoes off and walk through the grass. Reflection really loves those who are willing to feel the earth beneath their feet and walk without regard to time.

Many of my students were drive-by readers and thinkers. They raced through literary works, only to find that at the end, they could offer little more than a plot summary. This happened, then this happened, and then this happened. And when asked to do more, some sheepishly shrugged their shoulders as if to say: What you see is what you get. Others were more direct and defensive: This is boring, irrelevant, a total waste of my time. And still others–the ones who were reluctant to make eye contact–fearfully confessed that I guess that I don’t really know what you want.

In his collected essays, English philosopher Francis Bacon writes:

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

Those prone to drive-bys, however, are unfamiliar with weighing and considering. If they read at all, they spend their time on the surface of the work, reluctant or unable to push into the deeper reaches. The same is true of viewing and experiencing, all of which makes for empty writing, speaking, and–saddest of all–living.

Students aren’t alone, however, for adults from all walks of life are also prone to drive-by reading, viewing, and living. We blame our reluctance to weigh and consider on our busy lives. No time for even a whole cup of coffee, we say, as we rush to the next person, place, or event. And regrettably, busyness trumps reflection almost every time. Because busyness is a surface activity where others can see what and how much we’re doing. Reflection is a subterranean endeavor, which may be mistaken for lollygagging or wasting time. Its yields are not immediate, and, as we’ve been told, time is money.

Classrooms with helpless, uninvested students, political debates during which questions are never answered and statements never directly addressed, entertainment designed primarily for shock and titillation–all are products of a world without reflection. Of course, there are many more examples, and this is the real tragedy. We’ve come to expect the shallows and, as such, have forgotten how to swim in deeper waters.

Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful, writes author and management consultant Margaret Wheatley. Going blindly on our way seems to be the way of it now. Because we claim to have no time and demonstrate no inclination to reflect, we press on without seeing ourselves and our world. And the consequences? At best, they result in passable essays and trashy television that we can take or leave; at worst, they take us all hostage through ill thought policies and practices.

In The Dubliners, Irish writer James Joyce writes:

He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense.

Lest reflection become self-indulgence, we might consider stepping outside of ourselves, so that we can objectively think about ourselves and so that we might consider our lives as if they’ve already been lived. If we did this, if we lived at a little distance from ourselves, regarding our own thoughts, words, and actions with doubtful side-glances, we might have a shot at real reflection. For in doing so, we would have to look at ourselves and our lives as though they belonged to someone else. And then we might be more likely to ask the tough questions: Why did you do that? What did you think might happen? How did you think this might affect others? What do you truly want to do and say? How do you really want to live?

I recently worked with a group of middle and high school students. During my time with them, I admitted that I’d heard the same lament for years: I have nothing to write about, nothing to say. I confessed that I may have felt similarly when I was younger, believing my life to be altogether uneventful and ordinary. Still, I grew to see the small moments of my life as treasures. I grew to realize how significant their yields were. Through these moments and my subsequent reflection on them, I learned about what it means to be human and live in this world. These were small moments that mattered. But, I cautioned, it’s all in how you look at and reflect upon these things, people, and experiences. You recall them–months, years later–for some reason. What is it? Why do you continue to hold these moments as keepsakes? If you can reflect upon these questions, you may come to new realizations about yourself and your world. And, I told them, developing this kind of reflective practice may be the biggest treasure of all, for it will equip you to look upon your ordinary, uneventful lives, as well as upon literary works, news articles, social media posts, and more, with fresh eyes. What you see through these new lenses will astonish, trouble, comfort and perplex you. You won’t be the same. You’ll be a reflecter, someone no longer content to drive-by.

I can’t help but think that most of us may need a shot to our reflective souls. Some of us may even need a transplant. Whatever it takes, though, reviving a reflective spirit is essential if we are to flourish. We have to do better than be a drive-by people. Our world depends upon it in more ways than we can imagine.

photo by Collyn Ware

 
 Cardinal in Late Winter
  
 The day breaks over a monochrome world
 where there is only the memory
 of color.
  
 I’ve had enough of gray:
 of pasty trees too weak to shoulder the sky;
 of hills, like lumps of coal, that clot the earth;
 of skies that slather the sun for weeks.
  
 Even my dreams plod through the nights
 dragging their shrouds across the land.
 They sober in the company of stones
 as their eyes are sealed and their tongues 
 removed.
  
 Outside, the world writes Its obituary-- 
 line by leaden line--
 and the snow is a hearse through the streets
 of my days.
  
 But in the linden,
 a solitary cardinal.
  
 And suddenly, 
 it’s as if the world remembers its better self,
 as if it can sing in scarlet again.
 Here is red resurrected:
 we sink our teeth into it,
 and sweet juice runs from our lips;
 we breathe it in, and languid moments blossom;
 we look into the eyes of vermillion and rose
 and smile.
  
 The monochrome world presses in,
 but a single cardinal takes the day. 

The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.
― Annie Dillard,  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

A penny is a throw-away coin, one that can roll under the sofa, and no one stoops to retrieve it. A penny is an afterthought–the clerk pressing it in your hand as change. A penny is a nuisance, which, when multiplied, sits like dead weight in your change purse. A penny is a trifle, a scant teaspoon of hot fudge on your sundae, a descant without a melody. And yet. . .

What if a penny could literally make your day? What if you genuinely valued your pennies and thereby cultivated a healthy poverty that bought you a lifetime of days? Well, then, you might look at your bulging coin purse with new eyes, and you might mine the floor under the sofa for riches.

Like Dillard, I like the notion of healthy poverty. Too often, we think ourselves poor and lament the fact that we don’t have enough time, enough money, enough love, enough recognition, enough possessions. Poor, poor, poor! In our contest to keep up with the Joneses, we find our lives lacking. We believe that we are natives of scarcity, condemned to wander the land in want.

Claiming to be poor is one thing, but actually being poor is another, much more serious matter. According to the 2018 U.S. Census Bureau, 38.1 million Americans were classified as living in poverty, which for a household of four meant living on $25,465 annually. Worldwide, Action Against Hunger reports that 780 million people live in extreme poverty on less than $1.90 per person daily. Most of us Americans aren’t poor–not by a long shot. Even if we claim to use the term “poor” relatively, comparing ourselves to others in our income bracket who seem to have more, we must concede that we aren’t poor. And by doing so, we must understand that, ironically, it’s our unimpoverished living that often makes us unhealthy.

Generally speaking, we don’t experience genuine poverty, the likes of which we only read about or view on television. Our lives are often so full–of food, money, opportunities, possessions–that we suffer from all sorts of ailments, not the least of which is the inability and unwillingness to see the pennies in our lives. So if someone were to offer us guidance in cultivating a healthy poverty, we would probably turn them down, politely of course, and then roll our eyes as they left.

Dillard is on to something here, though. She’s not suggesting that we all pledge to live on less than $1.90 per day, but she is advocating that we live differently. That we live better lives as penny-lovers who find the small, ordinary things and moments of our lives as extraordianary day-makers.

I like this a lot. Sadly, I confess to many days during which I couldn’t be bothered to retrieve a missing penny–or to even notice that a penny was missing. But there were other glorious days during which the smallest, most ordinary things and moments literally made my day. My family and I lived a good portion of our early lives in the lower-middle class income bracket. I didn’t know this, though, because my parents lived in healthy poverty. They taught us the value of Sunday afternoon drives in the country (with no particular destination and no treat at the A & W), the value of thrift stores and used books, the value of evenings in lawn chairs as the fireflies came out, the value of conversations around the dinner table and Marcia’s Mess (my mom’s wonderful casserole which is as close to hamburger heaven as you can get). In short, they taught us to value pennies in all their forms, and because of this, I thought we were rich.

As I get older, I find that I have more time for and take more interest in the pennies that have been cast broadside by a generous hand. When I stop by the side of the road to examine a patch of bittersweet, my life is the richer for it. When I hear a word or phrase that is just right and make a mental note of it, my day brightens. When my grandson and I scout the yard for the best autumn leaves, I count my blessings. And when my granddaughter takes her brother’s hand as they walk home, my heart skips a beat. In the whole scheme of things, these things and moments are pennies. But they are pennies which buy a lifetime of days, days lived with purpose and joy, regardless of income bracket. These are days of heathy poverty.

Who gets excited by a mere penny? Dillard hopes that we will answer with a resounding, We do! For a moment, imagine an entire nation, an entire world of penny-lovers. Imagine people everywhere whose days are literally made by ordinary things and moments which make them smile and take pause or which stop them in their tracks and take their breath away. Imagine if healthy poverty was not just a generational fad–here today and gone tomorrow.

I can imagine it. Heaven knows that I lack the power to transform the entire world, but I can transform my own life. Which I intend to do, one penny at a time.

In the long months of winter, we can all use a shot of unadulterated joy, one brought to you through the stunning photography of my daughter, Collyn, and the beautiful spirit of my niece, Zarah.

 So this is joy:
  
 your silk skirt alive,
 a deep red river running at your feet;
 the gilded grass;
 the cottonwood bough which lowers
 an unexpected crown;
  
 and a distant tree line squeezing the sun
 to the center of the clearing 
 where it settles into a buttery pat 
 of light.
  
 So this is joy:
 the switchgrass lit with birthday candles
 a fiery party for one;
  
 while above, the late afternoon sky pales,
 an afterthought. 
  
 So this is joy:
 arms which open
 with minds of their own;
 such bounty, such unculled charity,
 as if to pull the whole world in—
 all its toadstools and troubles—
  
 and you, twirling in the twilight, 
 your silk cyclone such a magnificent sight,
 daring the world to sulk. 

There is a time for action, a time for “commitment,” but never for total involvement in the intricacies of a movement. There is a moment of innocence and kairos, when action makes a great deal of sense. There is [also] a time to listen, in the active life as everywhere else, and the better part of action is waiting, not knowing what is next, and not having a glib answer. Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Minutes after my freshman composition class had dismissed, I pushed open the door to my father’s university office where he was scribbling notes in the margin of a text. I barged in without knocking because I had a real crisis. I was going to have to change my college major, and my father was my advisor (academically and familially). I don’t know what I was thinking, I gasped. I can’t possibly be an English major any more. I dropped into the straight-back chair he kept for visitors and put my head in my hands.

I remember that my father closed his book and used his teacher voice: So, do you want to explain why you believe that you can’t major in English? Tears filled my eyes as I started in: Well, a guy in my class read his essay aloud today, and there were words–so many words–that I didn’t even understand. It was like his mom read the dictionary to him when he was in the womb! So you see, I have to change my major because I don’t use words like that, and his essay sounded so incredibly articulate.

After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, my father asked, Did you understand his essay? Incredulous, I said, Well, no, of course not. I mean, he’s obviously so intelligent that someone like me couldn’t possibly understand. My father just shook his head and said, Did you ever consider that this young man may be saying nothing, that he may be just putting makeup on a pig?

Of course I hadn’t considered this at all. At 18, I believed that there simply must be valuable ideas to support all his fancy language. Surely, he had something worthwhile to say, and because of my own limitations, I’d failed to discover it. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I’d just looked squarely into the face of glibness, a pig with lacquered lips and painted eyes. At the time, glib was a word I didn’t really understand or use, but all too soon, I’d come to know it well.

Today, political debates are glorious arenas for the glib. The political gladiators line up, shielded by their individual podiums, prepared for battle. We suit them up and send them to slaughter, shouting: May the glibbest man or woman win! It matters little–or at all–if they don’t respond to a moderator’s question or a competitor’s statement. Armed with polished words and manufactured statements, the glib march into battle, fearless and proud. For they know that, in the end, glib wins the day where the victors rest on their silver-tongued laurels.

Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton cautions that the better part of action is waiting. He even argues that not knowing what is next is better than offering a glib answer. For there are, indeed, times for action and times for waiting, times for speaking and times for listening. In my dreams, I have conjured up politicians (or teachers, physicians, attorneys, etc.) who pause for more than a few seconds and then stun their audiences by stating: Honestly, I don’t know the best answer to that question right now. I want you to know that I’ve been thinking about this, though, and I’ll continue to think about it until I can give you my best response. Be still my heart! What courage, what authenticity, what firm refusal to capitulate to glibness! But mind you, this is all in my dreams.

In the cold, hard light of reality, however, I understand that such a candid and thoughtful response is not a glib one. Falling short of any true measure of glibness, it would generally condemn its speaker or writer to oblivion. Because today, refusing to answer, refusing to offer up the expected politically, economically, and socially-charged buzzwords of the day is simply suicide, and those poor glibless souls are surely destined for burial in unmarked graves.

I admit to having fallen prey to the glib-trap. Standing in front of a classroom, faced with a challenging student question, I’ve glibly pushed on with words intended to, at the very least, fill the dead space. When I should’ve waited, when I should’ve refrained from offering such a glib answer, I blathered on–and on. For many of us, the allure of glibness can be all too real. Even when we know better, we may give into temptation and push our loquacious selves forward.

Some of this is not entirely our fault, though. We live in a world where appearance matters greatly, and quick-response times are expected. Sadly, many of my public speaking students delivered canned speeches whose content was glibly puffed up and then memorized. They believed that if they were to speak more naturally and to even pause occasionally, this would be certain and instant death. Faced with audiences who often smirked–or yawned–when speakers bobbled and wavered, they glibly pressed on. For ultimately, they’d come to accept that their delivery was far more important than their content.

Although I don’t dispute much of the research on reading fluency, I do object to the over-emphasis on fluency as a reading assessment. I’ve known too many children who could read fluently but failed to understand anything they were reading. Early in their school experience, they’d learned to compete for words-per-minute scores that topped the classroom leaderboards. Even in the world of reading, glibness often trumps understanding.

Styles, preferences, and expectations do change, though. What’s in today may be out tomorrow. I’m really hoping that this will be true of glibness without substance. I’m hoping that earnest, thoughtful speech will come in vogue. It goes without saying, though, that this isn’t entirely up to speakers and writers. Listeners and readers must also be willing to change their habits and preferences; they must be much more patient and much more invested in what is being said than how it is being said. In this brave new world, the glib will take a back seat to the truly articulate, and the best speech will grow consciously and carefully from the best thinking.

Photo by Collyn Ware

                                 

 Night Sky 
  
 Honeyed ribbons of the day hug the horizon
 where embers smolder along the ridge.
  
 It’s dark, you say,
 as you open the barrel of your flashlight
 to check for batteries before you walk the path
 from the campsite to the lake.
  
 But already I stand at the lake’s edge
 where constellations of pebbles flicker in the airglow
 and waves lap the shore in lunar time.
  
 And above—oh, the too wondrous above—
 the sky is a feast of light.
 Cassiopeia, Ursa Major and Minor, and stars
 which stud the heavens with opal and moonstone.
  
 The universe really puts on a great spread, I say
 and take your hand as we walk towards the boat landing.
  
 This is the hand that held the flashlight, long since pocketed,
 the hand that now holds mine as if to say:
  
 Let meteors shower the hills 
 and comets blaze in the treetops.
 Let dark become light
 and the moon on the lake our lodestar.
  
 For there is galaxy enough, 
 here and now, 
 when even the sand is celestial.
  
 
   

Photo by Collyn Ware

She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child’s perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here–the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.
― Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

Oh, the extortionary rent you have to pay to live in the twixt time, the nether world of adolescence! As one who has already passed through and emerged on the other side, Dillard is painfully aware of the dues you must pay to live in a world that appears first as a glorious beacon on the horizon of adulthood but then inevitably loses some–if not much–of its luster. The smiles tinged with fear, the furtive glances at others who seem so perfectly made, the nail-bitten obsession to fit in. To survive, you must pay rent to the world’s landlord for whom you are just another boy or girl mucking a way through adolescence.

Poet Sylvia Plath describes this coming-of-age process as doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up, step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world.  Isn’t it enough that adolescents must pay extortionary rent? How doubly brutal, then, that these dues “entitle” them to leave the land of childhood for an anxious and unsettling world.

My granddaughter, Gracyn, will turn eleven soon. This summer, I witnessed the fragile walls of childhood’s cocoon begin to crack. As the cracks began to widen exposing a new and different creature, it was almost more than I could bear. There were so many moments during which I wanted to tell her to burrow in, to just wait for another month (or year) before taking flight. I found myself desperate to sell the attributes of cocoon-life. I lay awake at night and imagined the anxious and unsettling world into which she would soon emerge. And too many times, I realized that I was crying.

In her photo, she is backlit by a soft ochre sun and framed by the foilage and berries of summer. Her face is guileless, the face of a child. Her eyes– fixed on her mother behind the camera–sing from a light source within. Here is the garden before the fall, the female unblemished and open.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes:

Woman must come of age by herself. This is the essence of “coming of age”—to learn how to stand alone. She must learn not to depend on another, nor to feel she must prove her strength by competing with another. In the past, she has swung between these two opposite poles of dependence and competition, of Victorianism and Feminism. Both extremes throw her off balance; neither is the center, the true center of being a whole woman. She must find her true center alone. She must become whole.

To stand alone, to achieve balance and find one’s true center, to become whole–these are serious dues, indeed. As much as I yearn to keep Gracyn in childhood’s cocoon or an Edenic garden, I, too, know that she must pay these dues in her own way and in her own time. She will suffer through periods of imbalance and dependence. She will compare herself to others and find herself lacking. She will wake to find that her world is not fair and that the happiness that came so easily in childhood eludes her. She will love and lose. And she will be reminded that there is always, always more rent to pay.

Bildungsroman is a literary genre that focuses on a character’s psychological and moral growth from childhood to adulthood. How we love a good coming-of-age story or film. We laugh and cry with Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield, and Scout Finch. We settle in with a bucket of theater popcorn and spend a couple hours living vicariously through the characters in Dead Poet’s Society, The Breakfast Club, and The Outsiders.

For adults, this is familiar–albeit frequently painful–territory. We paid our dues and pioneered through adolescence’s seemingly endless frontier. Having reached the promised land of maturity, we are often too quick to dole out smug advice and platitudes, guaranteeing teens that they, too, will survive heartbreak and acne and the worst that social media can dish out. Perhaps we do this because we really don’t know what else to say or do, for if we were being honest, we would simply sit and suffer with them. Coming-of-age themes may make such great movies and books because generally speaking, we are confident that their protagonists’ struggles will end and that we will leave the theater or close the book with some genuine sense of catharsis. But as many of us know too well, real life may not be as generous. The cathartic release we long for may be tortuous months–or years–away.

I’m certain that every generation has claimed an even darker, more challenging world than the generation before them. Still, I can’t help but wonder if the world into which my granddaughter will step is genuinely darker and more challenging than many earlier ones. There is much more shouting over people and drawing lines in the sand. The images of males and females that many youth regard as ideal–and therefore to be painstakingly emulated–are photo-brushed, digitally-edited gods and goddesses. The old adage that you can be who you want to be if you work hard and keep your nose clean persists, even though it sounds sadly more like fiction now than ever. And the talk of climate change, extinction, and environmental disaster confidently heralds the end-of-times.

I’m certain that Gracyn will pay her dues and dish out her allotted rent as she moves from childhood into adolescence and beyond. As her grandmother, though, I’m respectfully asking the Grand Landlord of the Universe for a much, much reduced rate.