The Coal Palace, Ottumwa, IA, 1890

If I should attempt to interpret the lesson of this structure, I should say that it was an illustration of how much that is artistic and graceful is to be found in the common things of life and if I should make an application of the lesson it would be to suggest that we might profitably carry into all our homes and into all neighborly intercourse the same transforming spirit. –President Benjamin Harrison, Oct. 9, 1890

Although President Harrison was undoubtedly the most famous visitor to the Coal Palace in Ottumwa, Iowa, he was one of thousands who visited the medieval coal-clad castle, the brainchild of three prominent locals: Colonel Peter G. Ballingall, Calvin Manning, and Henry Phillips. When I first moved to Ottumwa decades ago, I recall seeing a photo of the Coal Palace. I was smitten, absolutely gobsmacked. A 230-foot long structure with turrets and a central tower rising 200 feet, all veneered with local coal, this was the stuff dreams are made of. At least for me, for whom both architecture and fantasy have been lifelong passions.

When I was in Italy, I stood before the Duomo in Florence, sorely amazed. But then, I felt the same fascination with all of the other cathedrals and castles I saw as we traveled throughout Europe. I kept asking myself–sometimes silently and often aloud–how could they have made these exquisite structures? Looking at an old sepia photograph of the Coal Palace, I wondered the same thing. How in the world did they build it?

Charles P. Brown, the architect who’d designed the first Corn Palace in Sioux City, was hired to design the Coal Palace. In the last decades of the 1800s, palaces sprung up from the prairie all over the midwest. Made of all sorts of natural materials like hay, bluegrass, alfalfa, flax, sugar beets, and corn, these palaces were built to advertise the bounty of the prairie and to attract visitors to the middle of the country, a region largely ignored by tourists. There were at least 35 of these palaces built in 24 cities. It goes without saying that these palaces were generally fire hazards and vulnerable to weather and time. They were also expensive, and some of their investors failed to break even. After erecting its fifth corn palace, Sioux City called it quits. Mitchell, South Dakota, however, carried the tradition forward and committed to making their corn palace a permanent feature in their town. Long after the other midwestern palaces had been razed and interest in them gone, the Mitchell Corn Palace remains.

But the magnificent Coal Palace, built on a site that I drive by frequently! If only, it, too, had become a permanent feature, a legacy to the local coal industry of the time and testament to the vision of an Iowa architect and local investors. If only I could take my grandchildren there and lose ourselves for an afternoon in the medieval wonder right in our backyard. If only the ebony turrets still rose up from the Des Moines River banks. Palaces transport us from our ordinary lives and dwellings to places only our imaginations can take us. They draw us in; they make us wonder.

The facade of the Coal Palace was constructed of a variety of coal, including bituminous coal (nut and pea) and vitric coal, from ten surrounding counties. The structure was, indeed, impressive. In 1890, The Ottumwa Courier reported on the the artistry of the palace:

Aloft in the main tower, a ‘hanging garden of Babylon,’ with richest contribution of the tropics, with a frieze of classic figures in relief round the entire building, carefully and artistically chiseled out of bituminous blocks which make ‘light, heat, and power.’ With flagstaffs on the various turrets proudly waving the pennant of the various countries which the palace is to represent, and with the undisputable evidence of Uncle Samuel’s higher authority even over the rich feudal baron, King Coal, from the Stars and Stripes waving from the staff of the main tower—a new flag with 44 stars in the field of azure.

As night fell, the arc lamps in the palace towers and colored electric lights illuminated the Coal Palace, making the scene more splendid than any illuminated castle of the rich barons of the middle ages, according to the Ottumwa Courier.

If the facade was impressive, however, the interior would’ve taken your breath away. The central tower held an observation gallery and dance floor, which could be reached by stairs or by elevator. In the central hall, one could find a large auditorium with an estimated seating capacity of 8,000. Behind the stage–this is the part that really gets me–was a waterfall which fell 40 feet into a little lake below. Lit by 700 lights which threw rainbow colors into the falls, it was surrounded by miniature boulders and live fir trees. A suspension bridge spanned the little lake which required 1,600,000 gallons of water daily. And beneath the main floor, visitors could actually be lowered into a miniature working coal mine where they could observe the coal-mining process as real miners worked.

Sadly, the Ottumwa Coal Palace–like most of the midwestern palaces–was short-lived. Opened in 1890, it was closed and razed in 1892 when interest in and enthusiasm for the palace died. Still, it stood for two glorious years, and its opening was celebrated in The New York Times. Above all, perhaps, it’s a reminder of–in President Benjamin Harrison’s words–how much that is artistic and graceful is to be found in the common things of life. I spent some of my happiest childhood hours imagining palaces all over the Rock Garden of Harmon Park. They lived among the rocks and trees, the wildflowers and moss-covered ponds. In that season of palaces imagined among such common elements, I discovered other worlds and found much delight.

For me, there’s something particularly poignant about late summer. The world becomes a bit crispy, the grass reduced to brown bristles that crunch beneath your feet, and the spiny heads of spent coneflowers giving up their last breaths. Nights are cooler, the sun goes down earlier, and the lushness of summer lingers only in the memory. Every year at this time, I feel the regret that comes with the end of summer. I know it will return, and I appreciate the change of seasons. Still, I grieve when I put away my shorts and flip flops and break out the jeans and jackets.

But in spite of the brown that’s begun to consume what greeen is left, late summer has a heroic quality to it, a refusal to go gentle into that good night. As I age, I see evidence of this refusal all around me. And it’s remarkable.

Late Summer Chicory

The sunny trefoil has given way to dust,
and a slim stand of Queen Anne’s lace 
wilts near the tree line.

But wild chicory throws down a gauntlet to drought,
straddling cracks which snake along the scorched earth.
Their blue-violet mouths open to the day’s heat
and drink deeply.
They say, bring your worst:

    your chronic sun;
    your winds which flay the topsoil 
    from the fields;
    your searing days and smoldering nights.

They wipe their brows, stand sentinel
in a land which browns with certainty.

Is it any wonder that I love them?

That of all the blossoms in the world,
I choose these periwinkle flowers
which I would string and wear like fine pearls;	

that as I drive to town,
I let my hand float on the air,
blessing miles of blooms which line the road;

that a fragile, fickle world
quails before such blossoms
with backbone.

Today, when I look in the mirror 
where death lies fallow but eager,
my eyes are zealots who cry,
bring your worst.

Pool side is my best side. –Unknown

Our backyard pool–by any stretch of the imagination–is humble. It’s a 15 ft. above ground pool from Walmart that we’ve had for three years. We bought it during the pandemic when pools were nearly impossible to find, so we felt we’d struck gold when we located one (there was literally only ONE) in Des Moines. We counted our lucky stars as we drove home with our new pool in the back of the truck. Since we bought the pool, we’ve added a pool deck, a cement base and stone surround, and dug it into the hillside so that when you’re floating in it, it’s almost like an infinity pool. Beyond the pool edge is a span of timber–green as far as the eye can see.

I’ve come to love the pool as much or more than my grandson, Griffin. We’re faithful pool users, logging more hours in the water than I can count. Sometimes, we swim twice or three times a day because we can. There is no trip to town involved, no tickets to buy, and no line at the concession stand. Here, the snacks are plentiful and free, just inside Grandma’s house. So, what’s not to love?

Each year, Griff and I wait in anticipation for the pool to go up. And each year, he gets in as the pool is being filled with water from the hose so cold it’s numbing. But he insists that it’s not so bad, that it’s worth blue lips. This past summer, he and I have spent almost every afternoon in the pool, and during those hours, I’ve come to know and love him even more (if that’s possible).

We shared afternoons of bull riding during which he flails around on a pool noodle-become-bull, as I count down the 8 seconds, and make the buzzer noise. I’m also in charge of providing the play action for each ride. We’ve shared afternoons of sea exploration during which he dons his scuba mask and scours the pool/ocean bottom for a variety of creatures that he retrieves and deposits on my floatie. Again, I’m responsible for identifying and counting the creatures he captures. We’ve spent afternoons during which my floatie is a race car, and he’s the mechanic who gasses and tunes me up, and then speeds me across the diameter of the pool. We’ve spent afternoons during which he performs an array of tricks, from handstands to sommersaults, on which I score him. I admit that I’m a generous scorer; he always earns at least a 9.

One afternoon, however, he flipped off the back of his floatie into the pool and emerged saying, Well, I’ve been to heaven and just saw my Great Grandma Lois. Really, I said, that’s pretty amazing. Yeah, he said, well, I going to make another trip. He flipped into the water and lay submerged on the bottom for awhile. When he surfaced, he announced, I’ve just seen your Dad. He’s working at a pharmacy. He’s working at a pharmacy? I wanted clarification to be sure that I actually heard this. Yes, but he’s still writing poetry, he said. While he works at the pharmacy? I asked. And after he gets off work, he added. There was something in his eyes as he recounted his visits to heaven, something soft which suggested that he understood how important and comforting it was that he report back on my dad. Although the entire conversation was imaginary–and comical, to be sure–it also testified to his belief in a heavenly home after death. At nine, he’d clearly thought about this and wanted to reassure me that my dad was doing well selling Pepto Bismol and Tylenol at some pharmacy beyond the pearly gates–and writing poetry, of course, in the break room.

When I recently told Griffin that he had 10 swimming days left until school started, he said, Wait, what? 10 days, are you sure? His dismay only matched mine. We have just a few last days in the pool together until another school year begins, and we take down the pool for the season. I’m painfully aware that I have precious time left when he’ll want to hang out with his grandma in a pool that’s only 3 ft. deep. And I’m aware that he won’t always want to tell me the kinds of things I’ve learned this summer, that as he enters his teenage years, I’ll often be met with stony silence and the obligatory yes/no answers.

But I will take every minute, every pool-filled afternoon, every confidence he offers. For in the sanctuary of our pool, we’ve lived a thousands lives and have seen the world in our 4,646 gallons of chlorinated water. We’ve ventured into the areas of philosophy and theology, as well as learned a thing or two about the best way to do a back sommersault. Best of all? We’ve lived it together. Our pool has, indeed, been a sanctuary. There are approximately 270 days until that wondrous day next May when the pool goes up, and the floaties come out. It goes without saying that Griffin and I will be faithfully counting them down.

Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world. ― Robert Frost

Disclaimer: In school, most of us had to memorize the difference between a metaphor and simile, and we’re painfully aware of the differences. For the purposes of this post, however, I’m using metaphor generously to include all comparisons–even those that use like or as (Please forgive me, Miss Gilpin!)

Consider metaphor’s elixir in matters of the heart. I recall a story my dad once told me about a high school basketball player he coached and taught. He noticed that this young man was habitually hanging out at the locker of a particularly pretty coed. When he asked him about his prospects with this young woman, the young man shook his head dejectedly and admitted that he’d repeatedly struck out in his requests for a date. My dad said, I’m going to suggest something–now hear me out. Open the literature anthology we use in class (the book, my dad admitted, he’d never seen the student open), choose a poem you like, copy it, and give it to her. The student didn’t say aloud, Are you crazy? but his face said it all. Still, the next day during English class, my dad saw the student crack open the book, thumb through the pages, rip out a piece of notebook paper, and urgently copy from the page. Then he folded the paper into the smallest square possible, and sent the note on its way through eager hands all the way to the front row where the young woman sat. Seconds ticked by as she unfolded the note and read its contents. Then she whipped around in her seat so violently that she almost threw herself out onto the floor. She looked back to the young man with utter adoration. A date was surely in the works, my dad thought. Later, he asked the student what he’d copied from the text. Something about her being like a summer’s day, he said. Something like that. He’d copied Shakespeare’s famous sonnet 18 which begins: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day/Thou art more lovely and more temperate. He chose a good one, my dad told me, a very good one. And he confessed that he signed the poem with his own name. Lucky for him, the young woman didn’t know her Shakespeare! Ah, the power of metaphor to bring two star-crossed lovers (or at least two ill-read high school students) together!

But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark. This metaphor comes to us compliments of John Updike in his novel, Rabbit, Run. And what a metaphor it is! Their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark. Wait–what? A leaping starfish? Realists may scoff and question the whole comparison, arguing that anyone knows starfish can’t leap. But poet Jane Hirshfield argues that [m]etaphors get under your skin by ghosting right past the logical mind. Leaping starfish may not sit right in our logical minds, but they live gloriously in our imaginations. And often in our memories. Thanks to John Updike whose metaphor I’ve come to love, I can’t look at a pair of locked hands without seeing them as starfish leaping through the dark.

One who truly understands the power and worth of metaphor, Portugese poet Fernando Pessoa writes:

There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality.

Take for instance, biblical metaphors, which bring the spiritual world of the divine into the physical world of the ordinary:

We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand. —Isaiah 64:8

I am the good shepherd, … and I lay down my life for the sheep. —John 10:14-15

I am the vine; you are the branches. —John 15:5

These metaphors live vividly, indeed, and take on their own personalities: God as potter, shepherd, and vine, and humans as clay, sheep, and branches. Or consider the infamous words of Elvis Presley: You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog / Cryin’ all the time. Or the timeless lyrics of Rascall Flatts: Life is a highway / I wanna ride it all night long. Singer-songwriters depend upon metaphors to live vividly and take on their own personalities, to console and enlighten us.

We use metaphor confidently in common speech. When we say that he’s a late bloomer or she’s a real thorn in my side, we do so with complete confidence that those listening will understand. When I tutored non-native English speakers, I became painfully aware of just how often we use such metaphors. The teacher is a bear? one Japanese student said with horror in his eyes. No, I reassured him, not literally a bear. Then I set out to deconstruct the metaphor for him, in hopes that he’d go to class the next day without fear of being mauled or eaten.

And what about bad metaphors, the kind that are so bad that they’re good? Here’s some of my favorites from actual student (not mine!) papers:

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling-Free.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph. (Wait–isn’t this one of those overly complicated math story problems?)

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

How I love a good, bad metaphor? They’re much like bad jokes. You wait for the punch line, and when it comes, it’s delightfully awful. As one of my former students so convincingly argued: You have to at least give me credit for effort. Clearly, there’s effort behind these bad metaphors, for it obviously took some thought to settle on a comparison of a warm laugh to a vomiting dog.

In Alvin Journeyman, Orson Scott Card writes: Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. I learned this lesson early and well from my father who claimed that [n]othing enriches our wooden lives like metaphor. And he could pack a whole lot of truth in very little space, presenting an exquisitely lean metaphor to carry some downright heavy wisdom:

Don’t think that a small vessel like a poem can’t be a freighter.

Gossip is a form of skinning.

Revelations are like stones dropped into the palm of a blind man.

A breeze is the tenderest habit skin can wear.

Speed reading is like trying to kiss a girl who’s driving by in a convertible. All you get is a hint of her pucker.

In bureaucracies sour cream rises to the top, followed by foam.

Marriage, like the sun, should be the longest form of love.

Those who feast upon memories occasionally eat the best left-overs.

Both Robert Frost and my father were right about metaphor. We must be educated in it if we are to live beyond our wooden lives.

for Quinn and Lindsay

. . . believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

To say that I was smitten is the grandaddy of all understatements. I was wholly, unabashedly, wildly smitten. As they placed my new son in my arms and our eyes locked, I held the tangible love I’d only imagined in the weeks before our adoption. It goes without saying that I was smitten with all of my babies, but with Quinn, there was an urgency tinged with desperation that wormed itself through me. He would be the last baby I would ever have, the last late night feedings I’d ever give, the last baby baths and stroller rides, the last chest-to-chest rocking sessions.

I was no stranger to the changes that occur when babies become toddlers become children, for my three daughters had prepared me well for these transformations. As inevitable as these changes were, I admit that I wasn’t always crazy about them. Initially, that is. But then, like most parents, I learned the marvels of the next stage–and then the next. I learned that there was nothing wrong with briefly mourning the stage that was ending, but that I’d better buckle up quickly for the next stage. It was coming whether I liked it or not.

I was blessed to be able to work part-time until Quinn went to school. He went with me everywhere and unwittingly became an ambassador for adoption, as strangers stopped me to ask such questions as: Are you babysitting? Are you a foster parent? What does his father look like? Quinn let them touch his hair and make googly eyes at him, while I answered their questions. People were generally kind–just curious. So, from the time Quinn was a baby, he was becoming a people person, an individual who rarely met a person he couldn’t talk to and didn’t like.

When I was shopping one day, a clerk walked all the way across the store to ask me where my little buddy was. School, I said, he started kindergarten this year. She nodded knowingly but not before a look passed across her face, a look that reflected exactly what I was feeling: if only I could turn back time. Sometimes I can hear echoes of Power Rangers’ battles being played out from the backseat of my car, and I can still remember the feel of his hand in mine as we crossed the street.

Through each season of change, I learned more about myself as I learned more about him. I learned that when he carried the ball during football games, I would run–figuratively and sometimes literally–along with him. Once during a middle school game during which the spectators were standing on the sidelines, I broke free and would’ve crossed into the end zone with him, but blessedly I came to my senses. (Can you imaginethe headlines? Quinn Vesely and his Mom Score Final TD!) With every yard we (and I say “we” intentionally) pounded out, I learned that there was simply no way that I could be a passive bystander in my son’s life. For better or worse, I felt every victory and every loss–athletic and otherwise–almost as keenly as he did. I still do.

This week, Quinn will marry Lindsay, a wonderful partner who makes him very happy. And this change, of course, makes us very happy. Still, even though he hasn’t lived at home for years, there’s something particularly bittersweet about the fact that he never will again. But I take solace in poet Ranier Maria Rilke’s claim that there is a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, a love so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it. My children have given me an inheritance of great love, and it travels from Montana to Iowa to Pennsylvania surely and miraculously, traversing miles and months in a blink of an eye.

Change is in the air this week as we prepare to celebrate Quinn’s marriage to Lindsay. When two become one, the change is sacred and oh so wonderful.

Congratulations and all my love Quinn and Lindsay

photo by Collyn Ware

We’re made for the light of a cave and for twilight. Twilight is the time we see best. When we dim the light down, and the pupil opens, feeling comes out of the eye like touch. Then you really can feel color, and experience it.   ―James Turrell , American Artist

Twilight is often referred to as the golden hour, that magical transition from day to night, all the world bathed in lavender light. Even the word twilight sounds as lovely as it looks and feels. Artist James Turrell claims that this is the time during which we see best, that we can actually feel and experience color. Author Olivia Howard Dunbar writes that twilight is when the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater—a moment when anything can happen, anything be believed in.

Twilight is both gloriously of this world and yet not. Perhaps its greatest attribute is that it gives us a glimpse of what’s beyond earth and life, a glimpse into the sacred. I’m convinced–like James Turrell–that there’s something truly other-worldly about twilight and that I can feel color in these moments. I may be twilight’s biggest fan.

Twilight

When twilight comes,
it falls first in a familiar trill through the trees,
a silhouette of a bunting on a fence post,
a sweet sliver of blue light
that taunts the dusk.

It comes as a nether world,
where every mystery flickers across
the iris of time,
across the grasses which give up 
the last breath of day and welcome 
the first breath of night,
across deer who will bed in the timber,
their heads drowsy with dew.

It comes as a herald of dreams
once hidden behind a silken scrim, 
but backlit now,
they emerge like fireflies, 
like galaxies in the lavender light.

It comes as a whisper
that grows finer and lighter, 
its filaments fusing into a single cloud 
of witnesses.

And when it comes,
you spread your arms under the old oaks
which have dropped their crowns towards earth;

you pull the corners of the day 
around the lilies and the yarrow,
around the moths in the meadow,

while magic burns gold and true
across the hills. 

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything

We live in a time when dropping the phrase the miraculous scope of human generosity into conversation may illicit responses that are anything but generous. You speak of human generosity as if you could really find this in the world today. Human generosity? In your dreams! Sadly, we’re becoming more accustomed to scarcity with supply chain issues, shortages, and recession rearing its ugly head. And in the face of scarcity, many–perhaps most–of us tend to batten down the hatches, fearing rougher waters ahead. Like baby formula (toilet paper, cleaning products, and now baby formula???), generosity is often in short supply.

And yet, the miraculous scope of human generosity continues to thrive. Several years ago when some friends and I visited Europe, we turned to each other multiple times a day and said, People are so good. We struggled hauling oversized suitcases (what were we thinking?), reading train schedules, deciphering directions. Time and time again, natives came to our rescue, most often even when we hadn’t asked. I’m sure we looked forlorn and utterly clueless, like a group of grandmas on holiday (which we were!) The generosity of these Italians, Swiss, and French was humbling. We were wholly at the mercy of strangers who loaded our monstrous suitcases onto trains, accompanied us to the places we needed to be to hail cabs and join tour groups. We willingly surrendered before their generosity and understood, even then, that a lifetime of thank yous wouldn’t be nearly enough.

Last month on my birthday, I was in the checkout line at HyVee when the young man at the register commented on the cake I was buying. I told him that it was my birthday, so I decided to pick out my own cake. As he was ringing up my last grocery items, he motioned to the rows of candy behind the register and said, If you had to choose one, which one would you choose? I scanned the rows and said, Snickers, it would have to be Snickers. He asked the employee sacking if he would take over the register, so that he could buy me a Snickers for my birthday. He pulled a Snickers off the shelf, then hesitated and said that he knew they had jumbo Snickers, which was what I should have for my birthday. On the top row, he finally located the jumbo variety and presented it to the temporary checker for purchase. Then he handed it to me and wished me a happy birthday. I pushed my cart into the parking lot wearing one of those goofy smiles plastered across my face. I might’ve even been singing as I loaded my groceries into my car. In Man of La Mancha, Dale Wasserman writes, I come in a world of iron…to make a world of gold. On June 11th, I entered a world of produce and canned goods, an ordinary world which a high school student generously transformed into a world of gold.

In The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Steven Pinker writes:

People do more for their fellows than return favors and punish cheaters. They often perform generous acts without the slightest hope for payback ranging from leaving a tip in a restaurant they will never visit again to throwing themselves on a live grenade to save their brothers in arms. [Robert] Trivers together with the economists Robert Frank and Jack Hirshleifer has pointed out that pure magnanimity can evolve in an environment of people seeking to discriminate fair weather friends from loyal allies. Signs of heartfelt loyalty and generosity serve as guarantors of one’s promises reducing a partner’s worry that you will default on them. The best way to convince a skeptic that you are trustworthy and generous is to be trustworthy and generous.

We’ve all witnessed–or been the beneficiaries of–random acts of kindness: the driver ahead of you in the fast food restaurant line pays for your meal; a woman offers to hold your baby so you can tend to your screaming toddler; a man finds you stranded on the road with a flat tire and changes it for you; and a kid for whom $20 would buy the world runs after you to return the $20 bill you dropped at the concession stand. There are times when people demonstrate their generosity without the slightest hope or expectation for payback. And perhaps generosity does help us discriminate fair weather friends from loyal allies, as Trivers, Frank, and Hishleifer contend. Certainly we’re drawn to those whose generosity seems as natural as breathing. Good people, we say. salt of the earth kind of folk. These are the individuals who frequently become our best friends, the friends to whom we turn in times of joy and sorrow, the friends who anticipate what we need before we say a word. Their generosity is a hallmark of their devotion and care.

French writer Simone Weil argues that [a]ttention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. How generous is the individual who simply attends to your presence! To be noticed is remarkably generous. As clichéd as it may be, the gift of time and undivided attention is probably one of the most coveted gifts. In a world of self-professed multi-taskers, we long for someone to look us directly in the eyes and to assure us that we hold their attention. This kind of attention says you matter to me. This kind of attention is a generous oasis is a noisy, busy world.

We’ve all known truly generous people who open their homes and hearts without a thought. They’ll give the shirt off their own backs, their own beds (and take the sofa for themselves), their time, talents, and money to others. Simone de Beauvoir, a French philosopher, understands the spirit behind this kind of generosity. She writes: That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing. Perhaps the essence of generosity is found in this paradox: giving all, offering, as novelist James Baldwin claims, what most people guard and keep and yet feeling as if this costs you nothing. This paradox also lives in Jesus’s words to his disciples: For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it (Matthew 16:25).

Generally speaking, many of us can be generous when it costs us little, when we find ourselves with an abundance–or at least with some to spare. But to be generous when it costs us much, to be generous when we find ourselves in survival mode, that is the miraculous scope of human generosity that Elizabeth Gilbert contends compels us to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices. To the young man who gifted me with a Snickers at the grocery store, to the multitude of European natives who made my trip so wonderful, to my family and friends who give so freely, and to the many strangers who’ve generously lent a helping hand, I offer my eternal and sincere thanks. I aim to keep thanking you for as long as I have voice.

Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children. –Sitting Bull

When a call goes out for unity, most of us will rally–at least in theory–around the prospect of bringing people together. Some of us who are old and sentimental enough might even clasp hands and break out in Kum Bah Ya. Or perhaps we could belt out a rousing chorus of the 1971 Coca Cola theme song, remembering times when our youth fueled our idealism and certainty that if we just put our minds and hearts to it, we could live in perfect harmony:

I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I’d like to hold it in my arms
And keep it company

Our grown-up, supposedly more mature selves still elect officials who promise to unite our communities, states, and nation. We continue to live under the banner of unity. We speak passionately about the life we can make for our children if we’d only put our minds together. We understand that our very survival depends upon it.

And yet, we remain–as we’ve always been to some degree–divided. Today, many would argue that we’re not just divided; we’re deeply divided, perhaps irreparably divided. We can no longer even see the other side, who live in another far-off galaxy, lightyears and principles away. In truth, there are more times than not when we prefer not to see them. Better they remain in the black hole in which they belong. Better they live among their own ignorant, misguided, hateful kind.

For most of my life, many people thought they knew me. As a college-educated daughter of a college professor, they professed to accurately identify my politics, my faith, and my principles: Democrat, spiritual but not Christian (and certainly not evangelical), and progressive. As a young college instructor, I learned this early as I overheard colleagues ridiculing a student whose narrative essay recounted her experience at summer church camp. As if this was the most significant thing she could write about, they said, as if she really believed in this crap. They spoke believing that I shared their sentiments, that I was one of them, that we were unified in our common disdain for this young woman’s provincial views and simple-minded faith. But they were wrong.

I didn’t correct their misconceptions because I was fairly certain that I, too, would be cast off and privately ridiculed. At 26 and at the beginning of my teaching career, I was genuinely afraid. And I was convicted that I should work hard to get along with everyone, regardless of what they believed or didn’t believe. I’ve lived most of my life under that same conviction, and to say that it’s cost me is an understatement, for I’ve often found myself in No Man’s Land, that lonely space between ideologically diverse factions, slogging my way forward. Moving forward has meant working hard to act compassionately towards my opposition. Moving forward has meant growing into a certainty regarding my own ideas and principles, while struggling to remain open to others. In truth, moving forward has often meant embracing the complex nature of most issues and forsaking the unity that others appear to enjoy with their like-minded friends and colleagues.

English Puritan writer John Trapp maintained that [u]nity without verity is no better than conspiracy .Herein lies the painful truth of ideological unity: it’s improbable (at best) and impossible (at worst). How does a nation ideologically unify those who believe in life at conception with those who don’t, those who believe that women should have a choice to abort or not with those who don’t? How does a nation ideologically unify those who believe in the tenets of capitalism with those who don’t? How does a nation ideologically unify those who believe the government should fund private and public schools with those who don’t? The list could go on and on. We know it all too well. When people hold ideas and principles absolutely, there isn’t any compromise they’re generally willing to make.

In short, to unify means that some group will lose something–or possibly everything they believe is good and true. And losing is something we’re not particularly good at, especially when the stakes are high and the principles we hold most dear are in jeopardy.

Romanian-French playwright Eugene Ionesco wrote that [i]deologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together. We know that ideas separate us, and, for the most part, we have no common dreams now. Sadly, anguish remains as the sole factor that occasionally unites us. Mass casualities, natural disasters, and sometimes wars unite us as we offer aid and comfort to victims. For a time, our ideas and principles seem to take a back seat as our anguish reminds us of our common humanity. For a short time.

I’m not a cynic who’s ready and willing to argue that unity is the pipe-dream of Pollyannas who refuse to see the way of the world. But I do understand the painful reality of unity. As difficult as it is, we’d do better to accept the fact that there can be no ideological unity. In the court of law and in public opinion, some group and its principles will win, and the other will lose. Losers can pray for the wisdom and guidance to live out their principles in whatever ways they legally and realistically can, working devotedly to affect the kind of change that will one day change policy and public opinion. During the battle (and make no mistake, it’s always a battle), both sides can choose civility and understanding, or they can choose to inflict terrible harm with little thought to the world they leave their children.

photo by Collyn Ware

Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird? -Sir David Attenborough 

For much of my life, if you’d have asked me about birds, I’d have probably scoffed and conjured up an image of a doddering old fool decked in camo with an expensive pair of binoculars around his neck and an official Audubon bird guide in his pocket. I say “his”, not to be sexist or discriminatory in any way, but my notion of a birdwatcher has always been male. Probably because my father was a bird person.

From childhood, my father loved birds, particularly homing pigeons. So, we grew up with a backyard filled with homing pigeons, enough to fill two lofts that flanked the yard. We grew up in a home graced with feathers and occasional pigeon droppings. We grew up with a father who spent his Saturdays watching the sky for his birds to return home (and hopefully win the weekly race) and his evenings in a den littered with Racing Pigeon Journals, photos of champion homing pigeons, and large and assorted bird books.

Our home at 611 West 27th Street was a veritable pigeon-central. Members of my father’s racing pigeon club (I know what you’re thinking, but there are clubs of homing pigeon racers!) met there regularly to open their specialized clocks which recorded the exact minute and second that their pigeons returned from races in which they were shipped as far as 500 miles and released to fly home. The winning and losing in these races involved a lot of math, as members calculated the air speed per minute that each bird flew. Silence pervaded as men crowded around the dining table, pencils scratching away on slips of paper (no calculators or cell phones then) until someone yelled, “I won!” These were bird people at their best (or so I’m told).

One Christmas, my mother gave my father a customized sweatshirt that read Strictly for the Birds, and we all understood how absolutely perfect this gift was for a man who knew the intricate structure and feather pattern of a pigeon’s wing, a man who could identify a common barn pigeon from a homing pigeon in the air, a man who once stitched up the breast of a pigeon who’d failed to clear a utility wire in our alley. Indeed, he was strictly and wondrously for the birds.

So imagine my surprise when a few days after my recent birthday, I woke up and said to myself, “Wow, I’m a bird person!” In truth, I’d been becoming a bird person for quite some time, but I’d spent so many years with my head in books or bent over student essays that the realization snuck up on me. The signs were there, though. In the early days, my family snickered when I walked the edge of the timber searching for the elusive indigo bunting whose song I’d heard all day. When I walked into a bush once (my eyes had been fixed on the tree tops), they guffawed. I was becoming the doddering old fool I’d imagined a bird person to be. Outfit me in camo and hang a nice pair of binoculars around my neck, and the picture would be complete.

Oh yes, the signs had been there for quite some time. A solar bird bath, a line of bird feeders edging my deck, and jumbo bags of black-oiled sunflower seeds–always a surplus, just in case we run out. It would probably behoove me to invest in sunflower seed stock at the rate and quantity we buy them. And grape jelly stock, definitely grape jelly. We’ve taken to buying it in gallon cans to keep up with the local oriole population’s needs. This is what bird people do, I’m told. They present a smorgasbord of food choices in an array of feeders. They aim to please.

The naturalist John Burroughs writes:

 The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.

For my father, and now for me, the bird as a poetic subject is gloriously at the top of the scale. How can you not love a creature that’s large-lunged, hot, and ecstatic? How can you not marvel at the gold of the gold finch, the blue of the mountain blue bird, the scarlet of the cardinal and tanager? How can you not be humbled by the dogged persistance of the arctic tern who wings its way thousands of miles from its Antarctic breeding ground to summer in the north? Or the soul of the sandhill crane who mates for life?

So, in my 67th year, I’d like to reintroduce myself: Hello, I’m Shannon. I’m a bird person. Better late than never, I say.

Barn Swallows

As I push my cart of baby carrots,
two onions, and a bunch of green bananas
around the corner of the produce aisle,
a barn swallow swoops 
from the bunting above the meat counter.

Instinctively, I duck.
It flies yards above me,
but I fold myself over the cart,
which I’ve pushed to the side
seeking refuge beside the canned goods.

Silly me, I think, as I push my cart
back into the aisle
and am just passing the condiments
when the swallow slices
the air so deftly
I don’t feel the cut
until seconds later.

I stand agog—
there’s no other word for it.
I stop traffic.

For seconds, I throw my head back and say
(aloud and to no one in particular)
Would you look at that—

And just as I turn down the cereal aisle,
a second swallow bisects the path of the first, 
shearing the fluorescence above. 

Such cruel geometry,
their angles too desperate,
their lines unfixed.

A pair, I think,
star-crossed lovers destined to die
at the meat counter or in the freezer section.

I want more for them. 
I want the blue June sky that opens generously
over the world.
I want the breeze which fans the hardwoods.
I want the waning and the waxing moons,
the sun giving itself to the western hills
all orange and pink and carmine. 

I want to coax them through the electric doors
which stay open and expectant. 
I want the man who will enter after hours with his pellet gun
to find them gone,
to find only melons nestled in their bins,
bottles of laundry detergent and tubs of margarine
tucked in dreamless sleep.  

And in a dark corner of an old barn,
I want them paired and nesting,
the day but a sigh
in the wild, velvet night.

for Judy

I want you to be concerned about your next-door neighbor. Do you know your next-door neighbor?  –Mother Teresa

In the last half of my life, I’ve often heard people lament the fact that they don’t really know their neighbors any more. The folks who move into our neighborhoods may live next to us, they say, but that’s about the extent of it. We know very little about their lives except for the types of cars they drive and the number of FedEx deliveries they average a week. For many, neighborhoods are now defined more by geographical proximity than by relationships.

I’m blessed to live close to neighbors with whom I have genuine relationships. I know that I’m one of the lucky ones and understand that this is no small thing. I could answer Mother Teresa honestly: yes, I know my next-door neighbors.

Over the twenty years that I’ve lived here in rural Iowa, my friendship with my neighbor Judy grew. In the early years, our conversations were held in the yard, often with Judy seated atop her John Deere mower. She’d see me walking down the lane towards the mailbox, kill the engine, and we’d catch up on family and life events. She asked about my work at school, about each of my children, and about my family in Nebraska. She asked the kinds of questions that always made me feel truly understood and appreciated. I came away from our conversations feeling as though all was right with the world–or at least all was right in our little corner of the world on 114th Lane.

When I began to write blog posts, Judy quickly became one of my most devoted readers, responding to each piece mere minutes after I’d posted it. I can’t begin to measure my gratitude for her unfailing readership. As I was sitting in my little writing cabin drafting a new post, I’d imagine how she’d soon be sitting in her brown recliner reading my words, sharing a sacred literary connection with me, her neighbor and friend.

In his book, The Good Neighbor: The Life and Works of Fred Rogers, Maxwell King writes:

In everything he wrote, in all the programming he produced, in the life of caring, kindness, and modesty that he led, he set a very clear example. His legacy lives in the concept of a caring neighborhood where people watch out for one another, no matter where they come from or what they look like.

Recently, Judy died. I’ve had days to grieve her passing and to think about the rich legacy she leaves. Certainly, a vital part of this legacy is that she, like Fred Rogers, created a caring neighborhood where people watch out for one another. When the entire world was cloistering during the height of Covid, I lived in a small, protected neighborhood where I could pedal my boat on the pond, watch the birds from my porch, and talk with Judy and my other neighbors across their yards. For months, our world was small and intimate, founded–in large part–upon Judy’s loving care.

Another part of Judy’s legacy is that she leaves behind her son, Kevin, who has lived with and cared for her the past years. He, too, has become an integral part of our neighborhood, a part of a family who looks out for one another. Like his mom, Kevin often stops to talk from the seat of his mower, a neighborhood tradition that will undoubtedly live on.

Author Rabbi Harold Kushner writes:

The happiest people I know are people who don’t even think about being happy. They just think about being good neighbors, good people. And then happiness sort of sneaks in the back window while they are busy doing good.

Such simple advice: just think about being good neighbors, good people. And yet, it goes without saying that if all–even most–of us would follow it, the world would be a considerably better and happier place. As Kushner advocates, happiness will sneak in the back window as you live neighborly lives.

And who is our neighbor? We claim those who live near us as neighbors, but when an expert of the law asked Jesus this question, Jesus responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Being a good neighbor stretches far beyond the geographical and relational boundaries of traditional neighborhoods. A good neighbor, Jesus exhorts, shows mercy to those in need, even–and especially–those whom we don’t know and may not necessarily care to know. Clearly, the world would be a bettter, happier place if we walked humbly and showed mercy to all the Samaritans in our lives.

I will miss Judy. Neighbor, friend and mentor, she is the kind of woman I’d like to be when I grow up. Our neighborhood has been blessed by her presence; we will continue to be blessed by her legacy.