What do you want your students to understand today in this lesson? It was a simple enough question. Wasn’t it? And yet, having asked it many times to many teachers, I realized that it wasn’t simple at all. It was daunting. It was humbling. It produced deer-in-the-headlights’ responses.

Like most teachers, I was clear on the types of skills that I was expected to teach; I understood what my students should be able to do. But to understand? Now, this was the million dollar question.

Before educational specialists and publishers coined the term learning targets (statements designed to clarify daily learning), I was using them to guide my lesson planning because my teaching mentors had used them. In the 1970s, my best teachers were clear about what they expected their students to know and to do. They didn’t post these targets on the board (chalk, not white board). They didn’t have fancy wall charts with special boxes to showcase them. But each day, they taught purposefully with these targets in mind. Early on, I saw the difference that such clear-headed lesson design made in my own learning. And I wanted to emulate this in my own classrooms.

Years later, as I attempted to help other teachers identify both what they wanted their students to know and to do, I became painfully aware that I was asking many to enter foreign territory. What do you mean “to know”? I want them to answer the questions at the end of the chapter. or I want them to takes notes today. Sadly, our skill-driven era had blinded many to the reality that doing alone was not enough.

Sadder still was the reality that teachers and administrators were eagerly checking off skills on lists created to ensure that they were meeting state and/or federal regulations. Identifying main idea? Check. Citing evidence? Check. With horror, I witnessed how such check-lists gave educators the false assurance that all was well.

As a consultant, I once visited with a group of teachers who were explaining how they measured their students’ mastery of the skills identified in our state standards. I asked how they determined proficiency in students who cited evidence to support a main idea, one of many Iowa educational standards. They explained that if their students cited evidence from a text, they met this standard. I smiled politely. Here was living proof that the check-list was alive and well. It didn’t seem to matter if their students cited the wrong or weak evidence. They just had to cite something, and they were proficient. These students didn’t need to deeply understand the idea they were supporting or that there were passages in the text that supported it much better than others. They didn’t need to know this because their teachers measured success by doing rather than by knowing.

In all good conscience, I can’t really condemn such efforts, for I know that they were well-intended, at best, and compliant, at least. Most teachers in the educational trenches are simply good foot soldiers. Even if they are confused or disgusted by what initiatives and guidelines come their way, in the end, they dutifully give their best.

I can, however, condemn those who all too willingly push the educational pendulum from one side to the other, leaving time-tested practices and philosophies in their wake. These are the folk who literally throw the baby out with the bathwater. Skills are in, everything else is out. Forget what you learned professionally last year–or ever! If you care about your students, you will change!

Certainly, change can be necessary and good. But change for the sake of change hurts us all. I have lived too long in the educational world not to notice that about every 7-8 years, text book companies roll out new editions. Which schools are persuaded to buy because they are new and different, because they are much better than the previous editions, because they are more closely aligned with current guidelines and include the latest educational research, etc. In this world, change is often about money and little more. And companies who have embraced the skills’ market are cashing in.

The majority of the professional work I’ve done in the past 10 years is to help teachers create concept-based units that intentionally marry skills with ideas. In a nutshell, I’m in the forest and the trees business these days. When teachers are lost in the undergrowth of discrete skills, I throw them lifelines. Together, we work to identify the ideas worth learning. Then, and only then, do we work to achieve this end by choosing the best and most relevant skills. And we do all of this in hopes that students will be able to see the forest for the trees, that they will come to see how skills are a means to an end: to learn the kinds of ideas that have lived–and continue to live–beyond a single lesson, text, or unit.

This is the legacy I hope to have left for my students: that they will remember the big, enduring ideas from the best thinkers. Like those from Nathaniel Hawthorne, who taught me that one’s intellect must always be balanced with one’s heart. Or from Ernest Hemingway who helped me see the heroism in grace under pressure. I want them to remember lessons learned from history rather than to recall specific dates and names of battles. I want them to have drawn well-considered conclusions after they have considered opposing views rather than to proudly admit they’ve mastered a particular skill.

And this is the legacy that I hope I can help other teachers leave to their students. Undoubtedly the educational pendulum will swing again for the next generation of students. But for this generation, we have an obligation to do much more than teach skills.

Martial artist Bruce Lee claims that training is one of the most neglected phases of athletics. Too much time is given to the development of skill and too little to the development of the individual . . . We would do well to take these words to heart in our schools, as well. When we spend too much time on developing skills, we have too little, if any, time to spend on developing individuals, which has always required a strong foundation of ideas.

And so, I’ll continue my forest and trees work. It’s a good fight, perhaps one of the only fights worth fighting these days, and I’m in it for the long haul.

for all teachers, past, present, and future

The book itself–a teacher’s manual that accompanies a middle school reading series–weighed more than the collective weight of all of the paperback novels I read during my undergraduate and graduate English work. Too large for my computer bag, I had packed it under one arm and walked, lop-sided to my car. At home now, I cracked the crisp spine (no easy task itself) and opened it to survey the contents.

The heft alone could not have prepared me for the real weight before me. Each page was gleefully packed with as many notes, strategies, and general teacher-stuff as was logistically possible. I say gleefully because I can just imagine the contributors and editors pouring over each page spread, saying There’s space here for one more assessment recommendation! And look–if we edit this differentiation suggestion, we could add a multiple-intelligence note here! If you’re tempted to laugh at this point, most teachers who are required to use these manuals and texts won’t join you.

Educational, like political, pendulums swing wide. When an idea or practice falls out of favor, the pendulum swoops decisively to the other side. And those along for the ride are often directed not to look back. I remember visiting with a teacher during the whole language era. Her principal had sent a directive to box up all of the current reading texts and set them aside for the janitor, who would take them away. To the district storage unit? To the burn barrel? She said that she didn’t know. With fire in her eyes, though, she turned to me and whispered, But I hid one copy in the back of my file cabinet! Phonics out, whole language in. The violent swing of the reading pendulum left desperate teachers conspiring to save resources that had fueled the last decades of their professional lives.

When No Child Left Behind marched upon the educational scene, it presented lofty, but unrealistic, expectations that no child would be left behind their peers and below the standards by which we measure what is grade-level proficiency. Gone were the warm, fuzzy days of inventive spelling and if you think it, it must be so. There were new sheriffs in town, and they rode in on the backs of common assessments, wielding measuring sticks that were more formidable than any six-shooter.

I admit that the aims of NCLB were commendable. As a nation, we had become educationally flabby, resting on the laurels of past eras while the rest of the world–developed and developing–caught up. This law was a wake-up call that caught many schools unprepared. And just as schools were reeling in their attempts to meet new federal guidelines, along came the Common Core State Standards in 2010, the work of the National Governors Association for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. These standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics identified grade-level skills and practices. Many states adopted these or modified forms of these standards, and assessment companies rushed to create new tests that aligned to them.

Again, I applauded–and continue to applaud–these standards’ design and intent. I have used them, have helped others use them, and still believe that for many (not all) students, they define the right work. They were never intended, however, to be the curriculum. Instead, they were intended to provide students with the skills and practices to learn a particular curriculum. The standards do not dictate what content I must teach or even how to teach it. They do identify the types of language and mathematical skills that students should use as a means of learning the essential ideas in a lesson or unit of study. That is, the standards were not intended to be ends in themselves, but rather a means to these ends.

But in an attempt to sell more books and to keep up with the times, text book companies have often been short-sighted. They have packed their texts with skill work, so much so that even for a veteran teacher like me, it’s difficult–if not downright impossible–to see the forest for the trees. Visiting a high school classroom, I once asked a student what she was learning in her lesson that day. She responded, We’re interpreting symbolism.

In another classroom, I asked the same question. A student pointed to his paper and said: We’re filling out this graphic organizer. When I followed up by conceding that I could see what they were doing but that I was interested in what they were learning (what they were to understand that day), I got sheepish looks and shoulder shrugs. They were clear on the means they were using but had absolutely no idea as to what end. They could name the skills but not the ideas they were to uncover.

So when I opened the hulking teacher’s manual I was given as a resource for my consulting work, I immediately felt sick, dizzied with all the text and text-boxes before me. I didn’t know where to look first. I couldn’t determine what was a priority. Or was everything a priority? Was I supposed to do it all in one lesson? Was this humanly possible, even if I put my nose to the grindstone?

When I could finally focus, I saw that each page was peppered with skill work. In this paragraph, students should draw this inference, while in this section, they should make predictions. Later, they should be able to identify point of view, and even later, interpret metaphor. After doing all these things, what were they supposed to understand about this short story? Sadly, there were no notes about this. Had these notes been edited out under the weight of so many skills or simply forgotten in this new age of skills?

Like most, I learn equations to solve problems, and I learn how to make inferences to uncover what authors want me to understand. Solving quadratic equations and making inferences are two of many, many tools in my learning tool belt. The tool is not the thing, though; what I create with it is the thing. But how are today’s students supposed to see that their work is not just to amass more tools? And how are teachers today supposed to help their students understand that it’s not either skills or ideas, but both? 

I once asked my father, an English professor, why he decided to become a literature teacher. He said this: Because teaching the greatest ideas from the greatest writers is the most moral thing I could ever do. My father taught me how to read closely and write critically so that I could understand, reflect upon, and challenge great ideas from great writers. He didn’t teach thesis writing in isolation; he taught it in the context of understanding great works. In his classrooms and around our supper table, I learned the lessons of both/and. From my father and through my own reading and reflection, I have learned how crucial it is to see the forest for the trees.

And so while I value the importance of skill work, I lament its current reality. In many classrooms, students are doing, but they are not understanding. And when legislators, educational specialists, text book companies, and well-meaning but misguided others champion such skill work, those of us who value understanding as well are often dismissed as old school.

World renown cellist, Yo Yo Ma, writes: Mastering music is more than learning technical skills. How right he is–about music and about much more. Learning technical skills is clearly important, but it is not, and never should be, everything. I’ve heard musicians play technically and fail to make me feel and understand a piece of music. And tragically, I’ve heard many students read, perfectly decoding each word, and fail to understand or appreciate what they’re reading. Learning, like mastering music, is so much more than learning technical skills.

I fear that schooling with skills will result in neither the type of students nor citizens we desire. And worse yet, when we put all of our eggs in the skills’ basket, we risk producing an entire generation of students who don’t aspire to more than mastering the skills required for passing grades. An African proverb warns: Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.  Will our students wish to know? Or will they sleep well enough with their tool belts hanging from their bedposts?

for my mom on her birthday

My Mother's Raincoat

was nothing but a 2-ply, black 
plastic garbage bag
with a single hole punched through
for her head.

And huddled in the McCook High School bleachers,
beside another mother
who, too, had grown into such a poncho,
she watched the Girl's District Trackmeet
below.

It was spring in Nebraska,
and the northwest wind blew in sleet from Wyoming,
pelted the garbage bags
and the cotton sweatsuits of runners
in the infield.

Beneath green sun visors
keeping drizzle from their eyes,
my mother and her friend looked on
and waved.

And standing alone 
at the start of the 440 yard run,
I fumbled to undo the string of my sweatpants.
The lucky beads I always wore around my neck
were not there, and there was nothing
but cold to hold me up.

Until I saw my mother's garbage bag
and remembered that tucked beneath it,
she kept graham crackers and Hershey bars,
chapstick and peppermints.
Underneath all that wind-whipped plastic
were hands that would rub out the cold
and drive me home.

Underneath it all--
and in spite of the sneers from other runners
who laughed long at the sight of two women in bags--
was the mother who, years later, would stand on the front terrace,
curbside, who would wave at me as I drove away
to newer homes.
The mother who would wave until
I turned the corner, and she could see me
no more.

Will she ever know the times I circled the block,
hoping that she hadn't yet gone inside,
remembering hands and cold
and that blessed slant of light 
through her visor?

Shan

The Gleaners, Leon Augustin Lhmermitte

Until recently, the only time I had ever used the word glean was in reference to something I’d taken from a text, film, or conversation. That is, I gleaned such and such information from something or someone. This, of course, is a secondary definition, one that has its roots in an ancient practice of gathering grain or other produce that reapers have left behind. This was a common–even sacred–practice that gave the poor access to the grain fields, vineyards, or orchards after they had been harvested.

The Bible contains explicit references to gleaning, the most notable in the story of Ruth, a poor Moabite woman who asked for permission to glean in the fields of Boaz so that she might help support her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi. The book of Leviticus (23:22) identifies God’s provision for the least of these:

“And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.”

Gleaning has continued to be an essential practice in many rural societies, even today. In his 2015 article, “Gleaning: An Ancient Custom That May Return In The Future,” Ugo Bardi writes that gleaning:

is an extremely smart idea simply because it is so inexpensive. First of all, gleaners didn’t need tools, nor needed special skills. They would simply walk in the fields, equipped with nothing more than their hands and a bag, collecting what they found on the ground. Gleaners didn’t need to be trained in harvesting, nor to be in perfect physical shape. Women could do it, just as older people and youngsters could. Then, it was a totally informal operation, without the costs of bosses, of hierarchies, of organizations.

In her 2000 documentary, The Gleaners and I, French film director, Agnes Varda offers a portrait of contemporary gleaners–both those who glean from the leftovers that the rest of us throw out or ignore and those creative souls, like herself, that make art from what they have gleaned. In a 2001 interview, Andrea Meyer said that gleaning might be a metaphor for so many things, even filmmaking. To which, Varda responded: It is true that filming, especially a documentary, is gleaning. Because you pick what you find; you bend; you go around; you are curious; you try to find out where are things.   

Varda also referred to gleaning as getting things that are abandoned. She explained that she didn’t abandon her earlier works–films and photographs–but rather, she returned to them, a body of work as something I can pick from.

Meyer and Varda may be on to something, for gleaning may certainly be a metaphor for so many things, particularly for returning to words, images, and things that have been set aside or forgotten in hopes of fresh pickings. As a thrift store connoisseur, I can testify to the adage: One man’s trash is another’s treasure. Oh, to explore the land of the misfit toys, clothes, and books! And to think that others have already harvested what they wanted and left these treasures behind!

Artists are exceptional gleaners. The entire world is literally at their fingertips, ripe for the picking. And contemporary artists, in particular, have often turned to the leftovers or the ignored for their subject matter. Andy Warhol gleaned Campbell soup cans and Heinz Tomato Ketchup boxes as the perfect subjects for his paintings. Poets often find poems in the most unlikely places: obituaries, advertisements, news stories. Choreographers, novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers glean stories from people and places that the world has largely ignored or forgotten.

Take, for example, a novel I recently read. Steven Heighton’s novel, afterlands, is a fictional account of the 1871 Polaris expedition which was intended to be the first trip to the North Pole. Who knew that Charles Francis Hall and 19 members of his expedition would be separated from their ship and have to survive for 6 months on an ice floe? Reading the account of their desperate attempts to survive on a chunk of ice that continued to shift and break was excruciating–not to mention the fact that there is not much food to be harvested on ice! Or who knew that, months later, Captain Hall would accuse these members of poisoning him and that would be a naval investigation into his death? I had never heard of this expedition or these people in any history class, and if it weren’t for the artful and historical gleaning of Steven Heighton, I would have died without knowing that if you are ever stranded on an ice floe, it’s best if you are stranded with a few Inuits who have some mad seal-hunting skills.

Lately, I have turned to some fruitful gleaning. Having inherited many of my father’s notebooks and books, I have been foraging through the margins, the end sheets, the single pieces of paper folded and stuck into places that may–or may not–have any significance. I have looked at entries my father had written and crossed out. Like Varda, I am returning to them as a body of work one might pick from. And the pickings have been far greater than I could have imagined.

From a small blue pocket notebook he carried when he walked the streets of Kearney, Nebraska:

“I am so slow in learning,” she said. Why did I praise her for that?

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

Think of E.T.’s glowing finger and its magical touch. It is nothing compared to the touchstone that you get from the best reading.

From a brown, tooled leather journal:

When I wrote
     I walked on.
When I walked on
     went farther.
And, here, in this 
     worn pocket
is the book
     of my returns.

I live on inclinations
heart's knowings
two good twins.   
 

From margin notes following the poem, “How I Met My Muse” in An Oregon Message, Poems by William Stafford:

–so uncommonly common

Following Stafford’s poem, “Waiting Sometimes”:

This is Stafford at his best.
--"Hands" said, "Your attention, I need it"--and Stafford gives it
--Would Yeats? Would Heaney?
--Somehow hands would seem beneath Yeats's idea of poetry--not dramatic or noble enough
--Heaney would probably write about a specific person's hands, a bogger's, a turf-cutter's, or a thatcher's--but Stafford writes about generic hands and makes them human
--his style: to humanize the most ordinary things and people

From the end sheet of Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats:

Subjects for possible papers:
--Idea of dying into life--how does Yeats handle this old theme--what dies?
--Is Yeats's great poetry a literature of despair, hope, or neither? Is it a literature of realism? How realistic is it?
--Does Yeats reconcile Art and Life? Is Art greater than life? Is this an aristocratic point of view?
--What, if anything, assuages man's powerful thirst in Yeats's poems?
--Does art for art's sake lead to escapism, then to fatal irrelevance? As a way of life, who wants to follow a golden bird to Byzantium?

As a way of life, who wants to follow a golden bird to Byzantium? The birds of my father’s life were neither golden nor destined for glory in Byzantium. They were homing pigeons, blue bars, reds, and grizzles, all indistinguishable from common barn pigeons to the untrained eye. But if I have learned anything from my father–and from what I have I gleaned from his books and notebooks–it is that the ordinary is so uncommonly common, that it is seldom ordinary if we have but eyes to see and hearts to feel, that to humanize the most ordinary things and people is, perhaps, the most virtuous thing one to which one might aspire.

I have learned that to be slow in learning, a notion so tragically foreign to most classrooms and boardrooms, is to be praised. I have learned that to walk on, and then to walk farther, is often one of the best forms of prayer. And I have learned that inclinations and heart’s knowings are, without a doubt, two good twins.

And if gleaning may be a good metaphor for many things (and I believe it is), I have learned that my life has been filled with so many conversations and experiences during which some of the best stuff was left unharvested, lying in the fields to wither and, perhaps, to be forgotten altogether. Left there, unharvested, this is often the uncommonly common stuff that has the power to transform or, at the very least, to enrich lives.

Gleaning, as Varda claims, is about getting things that have been abandoned, and returning to a body of work, a conversation or experience, just like the hungry return to a field, as something to pick from. As I am looking forward into the new year, I will also look back to things I have abandoned, neglected, and overlooked. In the final line of his poem, “Birches,” Robert Frost writes that “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” If my initial gleanings from my father are any indication, one could also do worse–much, much worse–than be a gleaner of things.

The Virgin Mary, Mikhail Nesteroz

As a Protestant, my view of Mary was a relatively sanitized one for much of my life. First, I saw her as the wholly submissive teen who offered up her life with Behold I am the servant of the Lord; may it be done unto me according to your word.  I imagined that she uttered these words with her head bowed, her hands clasped in prayer, and her heart in peaceful consent. Second, I saw her as the flushed, bright-eyed mother–the pain and mess of childbirth altogether gone– the Madonna who gazed wondrously into the eyes of the swaddled son of God. Certainly, I regarded Mary as an essential character in the Christmas story, but for years, sadly I had consigned her to the role of a flat, two-dimensional character. Mary got a supporting role, and she looked really good playing it.

A month ago, I spent three mostly silent days at an Ignatian retreat during which I lived, worshipped, read, and prayed as one of few Protestants among a group of about 60 Catholic women. One day as I heard their unison voices pray the traditional prayer to the Blessed Virgin, the Hail Mary, I joined them. And as I prayed these words, I began to find it difficult to regard Mary as the pretty blue-robed woman who often got thoughtlessly shoved into the corner of my nativity set. I began to think about Mary as a woman of genuine dimension. I began to see her as so much more than a supporting character.

Consider the Magnificat (Luke 1: 46-55) And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
 and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
 from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
 and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

In a recent Washington Post article, “‘Magnificat’ in the Bible is revolutionary. Some evangelicals silence her,” D. L. Mayfield writes that the Magnificat is “the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the New Testament (and a poor, young, unmarried pregnant woman at that!).” She cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer who claimed that this prayer is “the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary hymn ever sung.” And although many have found strength and solace in these words, there are countries such as India, Guatemala, and Argentina that have regarded the Magnificat as so dangerous and revolutionary that they have banned it from being recited publicly or in liturgy.

Mary’s words are soul-turning words, world-turning words. For as Mary magnifies the Lord, she sings not only of his holiness but of his might, how he brings the proud and the powerful to their knees and how he sends the rich away with nothing. She sings of how God, in his mercy, exalts and provides for the humble and hungry. And as she sings, she cradles the baby in her arms who has come to turn the world on its head.

The artist Ben Wildflower understands the power of this canticle. “She’s a young woman singing a song about toppling rulers from their thrones. She’s a radical who exists within the confines of institutionalized religion,” he said. His block print features a Mary who is more warrior than Madonna:

In Rory Cooney’s song “Canticle for the Turning” (1990), the chorus heralds the power of Mary’s words:

My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears,
For the dawn draws near,
And the world is about to turn.

Mary’s prophetic words lived, died, and were raised in Jesus. They turned and are turning the world with each heart that receives him. There have been–and will continue to be–dark days that threaten to defeat us, to convince us that the time for turning has passed and that the path ahead is tragically, singularly straight. For a time, we may walk, unyielding, our heads to the ground, our hearts wrapped in stone. We may forget that we have a Father who has blessed us and promised that he will not forget or forsake us. We may forget Mary’s song and in forgetting, lose our way.

But as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ tomorrow, we can turn our hearts today. Any day is a good day for turning, but today would be especially good, I think. On the eve of our Savior’s birth, we can remember the courage of his mother, Mary, and turn from fear and hopelessness. We can sing the words of the most passionate, the wildest, the most revolutionary hymn ever. We can turn our hearts toward home.

Bethlehem, through your small door
Came the One we’ve waited for
The world was changed forevermore
When love was born.
                   Mark Schultz, “When Love Was Born”

During college, I worked at McDonalds and just missed the super-size-it promotion, which burst upon the scene months later with thousand calorie fries, drinks large enough to hydrate entire villages, and sandwiches that clogged your arteries if you merely looked at them. The McDonalds Corporation was simply capitalizing on prevailing ideas: large is good; large says you’re worth it; large means success; large is always better.

And in keeping with these prevailing notions, the entrances to all the biggest places are often substantial ones, super-sized doors framed in neon and over which signs beckon come in, come in, come in with incandescent glory. For such doors should be as grand as the places and experiences that lie behind them. Shouldn’t they?

How often I’ve wished that God would create super-sized doors for me, clearly marking the passage ways into experiences and relationships I was destined to have. Oh, that He would send a million watts of light to blaze through the murky midst of my doubt and eliminate any error of choosing the wrong door! It only seems fitting that God would make large, conspicuous doors for his wayward, short-sighted sons and daughters.

In Mark Schultz’s “When Love Was Born,” however, he writes that Bethlehem was a “small door” through which the “world was changed forevermore.”The stable in which Christ was born offered no breadth, no width, no neon splendor. Just a small and ordinary doorway into the most extraordinary event the world has known. Super-sized love in a tiny package.

About small doors, I think Shultz has it right. Their size and appearance give little to no indication of the riches that lie beyond. Bethlehem is, perhaps, history’s greatest paradox.

In his Reflections of the Psalms, Christian theologian and writer C.S. Lewis writes: “For the entrance is low: we must stoop till we are no taller than children to get in.” Perhaps this is point. Too often, we search for grand doors that we might enter with bluster and bravado, tossing our coats and hats confidently aside. When instead, we should kneel so that we might see and pass through even the smallest doors, so that we might enter with a child’s wonder and humility.

For the past year, my mother has asked if I might write about my father’s death, that is, the experiences we shared in the days that preceded his death. And I have been reluctant. Not because I don’t revere those experiences or find them worthy of written record but because I found myself unworthy of recording them. And yet in the days before we celebrate Christmas, before we enter that still, small door of Bethlehem once again, I have been thinking about my father.

I once believed that death might offer sizeable portals, monumental corridors through which individuals would shed their aged or diseased bodies, like well-worn coats, for eternal ones. These would be doors of real stature and beauty. Doors with electronic eyes that opened graciously at the last breath. Custom doors whose artistry reflected each unique life and soul. And perhaps, in the days before my father died, I was waiting and watching for such a door through which his remarkable life would pass. For my father seemed so much larger than life, and it seemed altogether right that death’s door be commensurately grand.

How wrong I was. For days, friends, colleagues, students, and family members came to offer what words they had to express their gratitude for the presence my father had been in their lives and for the legacy he would leave behind. With each visit, a small and intimate door opened into the communion of their souls.  These intimate openings would foreshadow another—I like to think a simple door with planks hewn from local cottonwoods—through which my father would quietly enter one night as we slept.

All along, I believe that my father understood how he would enter his death quietly and humbly as a child. Like Lewis, he knew that stooping was required. As I sat by his beside one night when my mother and sister were sleeping, he told me of a vision he had when he was a teen. In this vision, Christ was standing before a group of laborers in a field that had recently been harvested. My father told me that Christ’s arms were open as he beckoned the dirty and worn workers, saying, “Come to me.” This was the humble image he had held in his heart for seventy some years: walking into Christ’s arms with no adornment or fanfare but the final beating of his servant heart.

I had it wrong, you see. It was never the door that was intended to be grand and glorious but rather the life passing through it. Jesus entered the world inauspiciously in a small stable and left it flanked by common criminals. Neither his entrance nor his exit would define his immeasurable impact on the world.

And it would not be my father’s entrance nor exit from this life that would reflect the magnitude of the love, the wisdom, and the life he had shared. Did I feel his small door opening that night as lay in my bed trying to sleep? Did I hear God’s still, small voice urging me to rise and go to him? Did I know, without seeing, that my father’s door had closed?

In the center of our living room, I stood alone at the head of my father’s hospital bed and took his hand one final time. There was no one to see or to mark the time of his passing, but I felt my universe shift as I looked out into the black August night.

I’ve learned much about small doors. So, when my time comes, I’d like to think that I will rely on muscle memory as I bend and duck to clear the transom. I’d like to think that years of stooping will prepare me for this final door. And like a child, I’d like to think that I will pass through it expectantly into the open arms of my Father.

I am the door. If any one enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.  John 10:9 ESV

                                              The honeysuckle bush has not lost its berries,

                                               and their round, red selves punctuate the timber

                                               like crimson ellipses.

                                               Oh, let us not forget the lovely omission

                                               that breathes here!

                                               Bright and expectant, it sings Emmanuel

                                              through the dark rooms of December.

His retreat into himself is not a final renunciation of the world, but a search for quietude, where alone it is possible for him to make his contribution to the life of the community.
― Carl Jung

In her New York Times bestselling book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain exposes herself as an introvert and reveals the reality of introversion as something quite different from common perceptions. As I turned each page of her book, I found myself thinking yes, this is it exactly. I have had a public presence for most of my life. Each day for 41 years, I stood in front of classrooms and spoke about the wisest things I could. I spoke about all sorts of moral truths that manifested themselves in the greatest literary works. I spoke about differing perspectives and our obligation to understand them fully before we took our respective sides. And I spoke about the beauty of language that continues to move us with profound assurance. In short, I put myself out there hourly, baring my soul in hopes of reaching largely indifferent audiences. I played the role of an extrovert, and I played it as well as I possibly could—regardless of the personal cost, regardless of the reception.

There are so many others who, like me, have played this role. They may have even convinced themselves that they could grow into more extroverted selves whom the world would more eagerly embrace. Susan Cain writes that introverts:

. . . may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

Cain understands that what the world often sees as a wallflower who cowers in insecurity and lonely corners may be a contemplative who revels in a solitude that is anything but lonely. I think about many of the students and colleagues I have known. I remember the eyes that locked onto mine, the bodies that leaned ever-so-slightly forward as I spoke or read, the ears that listened, and the mouths that did not speak. And I remember the written words that spilled from them, words that burst gloriously forth from inner wells that were never made public but that lived nonetheless. Here was no shyness or weakness; here was the quiet strength of those who listened well and thought even better.

In her book, Introverts in Love: The Quiet Way to Happily Ever After, Sophia Dembling identifies a common misconception about introversion as a negative space:

Historically, psychologists have looked at introversion as the absence of extroversion. They measure extroversion, and if you are low in it, then you are considered an introvert. This perpetuates the perception of introversion as negative space, and introverted activities as not really doing anything. We need to train ourselves, and others, out of this idea. We need to start seeing doing nothing (or reading, or working alone on projects, or whatever it is we do to recharge) as activities that are as valid as any social event.

I find much truth in Dembling’s claims that we perceive introversion as a negative space in which those who occupy it are not really doing anything. Extroversion, she maintains, is the measuring stick for our times. How many times have I been guilty of measuring audience engagement by their verbal responses or lack thereof? How many times have I failed to see in others what I recognize as true of myself? How many times have I feared the silences in my classrooms and, in foolish desperation, tried to fill them with my own talk? And how many times have I left school and walked to the parking lot thinking I sicken myself with all this talking?

And yet. The world loves an extrovert, a real talker. These are the individuals whom we promote and honor, whom we seek out as means to our social ends. We use such words as bold, confident, brave, and capable to describe them. We recruit them, hire them, and watch them shine (and watch others—perhaps even ourselves—as they hitch themselves to these shining stars.)

And yet. Like Cain, I tend to worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they’re good talkers, but they don’t have good ideas. We are drowning in good talking, I fear. But good ideas? I suspect that we just dip our toes into these waters, wading along the edges of what might be. There are introverts out there who would plunge in, preferring the potential dangers of the deep to the shallow safety of good talk.

Lately, as I been working in schools as a consultant, I’ve come to rethink many of the philosophies, frameworks, and strategies that have pervaded the educational world. One of these has been—and continues to be—the emphasis on student collaboration. Collaboration, educational experts claim, is valuable and necessary for real learning to occur. As students collaborate, they consolidate and corroborate their thinking. They learn from each other in the safety of a student group. They practice the necessary job skill of working with others. And they are more actively engaged than when the teacher (the dreaded sage on the stage) is lecturing. In truth, many (most?) experts agree that collaboration is the gold ticket, the magic bullet, the secret weapon.

I’ve promoted student collaboration, implemented it in my own classrooms, and witnessed others who, too, have implemented it. Indeed, there have been students who have flourished in group work, making their voices heard, testing their ideas against others, and generally talking their ways into better ideas and solutions. And there have been students who have withered in group work, sitting silently as others flounder or do nothing, retreating to their own thoughts and being reluctant to venture into such  atmospheres of seeming futility. They may have recognized the ignorance or foolishness of their peers and simply decided not to participate or (heaven forbid!) lead. Sadly, we may have considered these introverts to be failures—at best—and insubordinate—at worst. Tragically, we may have gotten it all wrong.

Another equally prominent educational initiative is differentiation—the purposeful planning and implementation of strategies, assignments, and assessments designed to meet unique student abilities and interests. In theory, differentiation has the individual at heart, and what could be better than this? In practice, however, it verges on the impossible. Ask any teacher about differentiation, and you will invariably see them come unhinged. They will tell you that they understand the value of it, but they honestly don’t know how to realistically make this happen. They will throw up their hands and lament that they would have to create hundreds of different assignments and tests and that, even if they were willing, there simply wouldn’t be enough hours in the day. Some would snort in disgust; others would tear up and lower their eyes in failure.

I once had an educational specialist advise me to differentiate a Macbeth assessment by giving students the option of writing a literary research essay, creating a collage (magazine pictures and lots of glue?), or even performing a puppet show (a sock puppet reenactment of Macbeth killing the king?) If students struggled to read Macbeth, she suggested that I rewrite it in language they could understand. Rewrite Shakespeare? I asked incredulously. Yes, if that’s what it takes, she said.

That being said, if differentiation is a goal (albeit an increasingly challenging one), why wouldn’t we recognize the differences between extroverted and introverted students? Why wouldn’t we want to honor the strength and value of introversion? Why wouldn’t we consider the potential damage we do to introverted students, demanding that they become more like their extroverted peers and, consequently, become better? Why wouldn’t we acknowledge that listening to a good teacher is just as—if not more—worthwhile as student collaboration? And why wouldn’t we foster more genuine contemplation, more thinking and writing in solitude before speaking?

In her book, Cain writes that the “pain of independence” has grave implications. She continues:

Most of our most important civic institutions, from elections to jury trials to the very idea of majority rule, depend on dissenting voices. But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think. 

I fear that many introverts experience the pain of independence too often. Those whose very lives depend upon  solitude, the seedbed from which dissenting voices are often born, may come to feel the primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection. They may pay far too much attention to remarks and looks which classify them as awkward, withdrawn, and even reclusive. In the end, some may convince themselves that they have no real place in a world of extroverts who appear to thrive among their fellow humans. The more, the merrier and all that jazz.

 French philosopher Gaston Bachelard explains:

A creature that hides and “withdraws into its shell,” is preparing a “way out.” This is true of the entire scale of metaphors, from the resurrection of a man in his grave, to the sudden outburst of one who has long been silent. If we remain at the heart of the image under consideration, we have the impression that, by staying in the motionlessness of its shell, the creature is preparing temporal explosions, not to say whirlwinds, of being. [The Poetics of Space]

Perhaps, as Bachelard proposes, one who withdraws is actually preparing a a way out. I have been witness to the miracle of sudden outbursts from those who have been sheltered in contemplation. From experience, I know that silence is not absence of feeling or thought. Neither is it necessarily evidence of trouble. Call such an outburst a resurrection. Call it a temporal explosion or whirlwind of being. But call it something of value, something to affirm and even cherish.

Cain believes that withdrawing to the shelter of oneself is akin to those animals that carry their shelter wherever they go. In spite of their preference for solitude, introverts are rarely lonely. In fact, Cain says introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward. American writer Zora Neale Hurston concurs:

Being under my own roof, and my personality not invaded by others makes a lot of difference in my outlook on life and everything. Oh, to be once more alone in a house!

If it were not for introverts, we would not have much of the world’s best art, literature, science, philosophy, theology and thinking in general. Solitude is often the hotbed for creativity and introspection. Oh, to be once more alone in a house!

For most of my life, I tried to convince myself that I could be, that I should be more like the extroverts in my life. I worked on putting myself out there. But even after years of practice, I still find it intimidating to walk into a crowded room or gym. I’ve perfected a certain strain of small talk, but I prefer more intimate talk between a person or two. I’ve told myself that my desire for solitude is selfish and/or cowardly. And I’ve struggled to balance my public life with my private life.

Now, as I consider my grandchildren, who are also introverts, I am even more convicted that the world needs introverts, particularly those with such sweet faces and tender hearts. I want their world to be one that doesn’t gauge their worth with the measuring stick of extroversion, one that doesn’t quickly think absence in the face of silence. I pray that they will grow into their introversion as contemplatives who retreat to read, think, and listen to God. As their peers perform and compete on public stages and arenas, I want them to know that they are o.k. just as they are. And when they prefer to sit beside me in silence and look out at the goldfinches who cling to the bird feeder, I will honor their silence and know that their presence is more than enough.

If you are interested in Susan Cain’s research and book on introversion, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, here is an excerpt you might enjoy:

A Manifesto for Introverts

1. There’s a word for ‘people who are in their heads too much’: thinkers.

2. Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.

3. The next generation of quiet kids can and must be raised to know their own strengths.

4. Sometimes it helps to be a pretend extrovert. There will always be time to be quiet later.

5. But in the long run, staying true to your temperament is key to finding work you love and work that matters.

6. One genuine new relationship is worth a fistful of business cards.

7. It’s OK to cross the street to avoid making small talk.

8. ‘Quiet leadership’ is not an oxymoron.

9. Love is essential; gregariousness is optional.

10. ‘In a gentle way, you can shake the world.’ -Mahatma Gandhi”

As we gather for Thanksgiving, we enter the paradise of family and friends, the sacred and unique place we hold–physically and spiritually–for all those with whom we are most grateful. We remember those who are no longer with us, feeling blessed for their presence. And in spite of a landscape of leafless trees and frozen ground, we remember greener days and the world as it was intended. 

Paradise

At dawn, frost sheaths the milkweed

and shells of wild parsnip that edge the road.

It shrouds the hay fields,

graying the glory and bright treble notes

of summer.

A lovelier garden winters beyond me.

Its iron gate has closed upon

the Columbine and poppies,

the bluebells and lilies.

In the silence, I listen for familiar songs,

but they are cloistered among the growing,

garden things.

They weave themselves into staffs of grace,

their major and minor souls lilting

sempre dolce.

This is the way it was intended:

Mayapple and melody;

the persistent descant of willow and yarrow;

clear notes of freesia, fuchsia, and phlox;

a profusion of green with rich, red fruit

at the center.

But here, the trees quiver in the wind,

their bones dark and exposed.

In the sky, the sun kneels

in pale submission, and my breath erupts

frozen and freed into the morning air.

Still, I place my hands on the iron rungs

and push.

There, my heart steps—trembling—

into paradise.

Epiphany

The sun burns through the barren branches of the ash.

It has pierced the heavens

and emerged through a single pin-hole

into a cloudless, cobalt sky.

For a moment, I cannot see to move.

In this instant, I am held fast in light

which spreads concentrically in golden spheres

on the gravel beneath me.

I am the axis of something I feel

but cannot yet name.

Call it epiphany,

for I am soul-bolted, blinded,

transfixed beyond reason.

I close my eyes, but the center holds.

Call it epiphany,

this bird of light whose wings split

the silence of unknowing

sending an illumined shaft,

a manifestation of something greater.

Finally I walk,

my feet moving east,

my trembling hands teasing the air

with sure incandescence.

And here I move upon this blessed, bright plane

where all dry bones are girded

and gilded.