Photo Shoot
 
 Your pink tulle skirt catches
 in the late summer grass
 and for a moment,
 the prairie holds you captive.
 As if a sleeping seed awakened,
 sliding, shooting upward, breaking
 the earth’s skin and standing tall,
 one honey-haired blossom
 among the wild chicory and blue stem.
  
 Your mother moves towards you 
 pressing her eye to the camera.
 Surely she sees what I do—
 your childhood untethering here,
 each gossamer piece catching the breeze
 and escaping, petal by petal,
 into this sacristy of late July.
  
 I long to frame this legacy of loveliness:
 a mother’s soft eyes,
 a daughter’s well-kept heart, 
 both eager to unfurl themselves into time
 forever backlit by a golden and forgiving sun.
  
 But even as I try to hold the moment,
 I see the light casting long shadows from the tree line,
 burnishing pink to mauve.
 And so I vow to celebrate the evening,
 the hour in which you bloomed so brightly
 that I could not mourn the child 
 you were. 

We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A wave of otherness crashed into me when the children of Bambur, Nigeria shouted baturi as my fellow mission workers and I entered their village. In the local language of Hausa, baturi translates as white man. Some children were fascinated and clamored to touch my pale skin. Some were wary and peered at me from behind trees and the dependable skirts of their mothers. Others fled, terrified at the intrusion of such an otherness.

I stood transfixed at the scene before me. I wanted to shout, But wait! I am one of you! See, I have two arms, two legs, a heart that beats just like yours! And yet, even in the throes of my deep and genuine longing to connect, I was painfully aware of the fact that, intentions aside, I was the other. I was a stranger with skin too white, eyes too blue, and a belly much too well-fed.

Author and pastor Jamie Arpin-Ricci write:

It is critical to note that our biases against the other are empowered less by our assumptions of their otherness and more by our assumptions about our own normality. 

In the weeks I spent in Nigeria, my colleagues and I found ourselves sometimes humored and sometimes aghast at what we saw and experienced. We may not have spoken the words, but our quizzical expressions and nervous chuckles barely contained the question we were dying to ask each other: Is this normal? We discovered what appeared to be hundreds of locusts floating in a plastic pail of water, locusts we were told that were intended to be eaten. Normal? We learned that the woman who cooked for us was the only working member in a family of six adults. Normal? We encountered many young girls who carried their infant brothers or sisters on their backs for entire days. Normal? As much as I wanted to convince myself that I didn’t regard my new Nigerian friends as other, my bias was fueled, as Arpin-Ricci suggests, by my assumptions about my own normality. Consciously and unconsciously, I was looking at this new world through a view-finder with an American normal default setting. And if I wanted to see the Nigerians of Jalingo, Bambur, and Jos, this clearly required the other setting.

We live with a multicultural worldview that has spawned new university courses and specialties, solicited literature from around the world to remove the white bias from prevailing anthologies, insisted on inclusion as the answer to all classrooms, neighborhoods, and institutions, and repopulated the former white casts of television series and movies. All this (and more) as a means of eradicating otherness once and for all.

This worldview has also charged that we identify and appreciate those languages, traditions, and customs that make otherness unique. Enter almost any classroom during February (Black History month), and you will find students celebrating the lives and works of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as other influential men and women of color. Two months later, you may find American students decorating their classrooms with balloons, flowers and streamers to commemorate Cinco de Mayo. And what mother–or father–hasn’t prepared some customary food or constructed a traditional costume as a part of a their children’s school project featuring another country?

Like many, I often struggle to successfully live this paradox: I should see no otherness/ I should see and value others’ uniqueness. It’s ironic that our well-intentioned desires to acknowledge and celebrate others’ uniqueness are also declarations of otherness. In rural Nigeria, it’s not uncommon for toddlers to live in orphanages until they can responsibly care for themselves and their younger siblings. This is unique yet so far from the normal we know. How do we keep a precious tension between uniqueness and otherness, so that they compliment each other and live easily in a world that is more either/or than both/and?

For lest we believe that the homogeneous nature of our lives will shield us from the problem of otherness, we should remember that it has so many forms. Consider the words of writer Donald Hall:

[O]ver the years I traveled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennae. They can be pleasant, they can be annoying–in the supermarket, these old ladies won’t get out of my way–but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. If we forget for a moment that we are old, we are reminded when we try to stand up, or when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances.

The problem of otherness is never defined by race alone. We can be alien and other if we are older, younger, richer, poorer, more educated, less educated, urban or rural. Change the setting on the view- finder, and anyone who can’t be seen within the comfortable range of normal is other. Through my grandson’s eyes, there is something increasingly other about my refusal to do a cartwheel and my barely stifled gasps as he drives me around the yard on the four-wheeler. I’m fast becoming an extraterrestrial other who lives in the distant galaxy called OLD.

I can remember hearing my younger brother sing along with the cast of Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong. . . In truth, we are taught to distinguish what is different. This is standard stuff for kindergarteners who spend countless hours bent over worksheets that direct them to circle what is different in a group of shapes, animals, numbers, things. Identifying same and different is a discrete skill we teach early and well.

In third grade, my son, who is black, had a best friend, a pale, ginger-freckled boy. When his friend’s mother asked how she would recognize Quinn at the choral concert, he replied: Oh, you’ll know him when you see him. He’s got really black hair. He may not have identified Quinn’s skin color as other, but he did identify a trait that distinguished his friend from the group and made him different. One of these things is not like the other.

In truth, there are no quick, easy solutions to the problem of otherness. It is our nature to make distinctions, to discern what is similar and what is different. Likewise, it is our nature to belong, to join a tribe of those like us. And herein lies the heart of the problem: the limits of our human natures. Holocaust victim and writer Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood this all too well:

However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology, however frank and open our behavior, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbors through Him.

In Galations 5:14, we read: For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In spite of our natures–or perhaps because of them–we are called to love our neighbors in all their otherness. Bonhoeffer knows that the only real conduit between one soul and another is Christ. In the end, all our programs and initiatives, all our best intentions and efforts will fall woefully short. And this is both bad news and good news. Our political and social systems may be destined to flounder, perhaps even to fail, but Christ offers a better way.

Others, like poet Mary Oliver, find a conduit from soul to soul and soul to world by willing entering the mystery and beauty of otherness:

I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything—other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion—that standing within this otherness—the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.

Like all humans before us, we will continue to struggle with the problem of otherness. We will create new programs, institute new, more inclusive language, and mandate new rules and laws as solutions. Still, I take heart that there are, indeed, better ways. But these ways require surrender to a love and a mystery that take us far beyond the limits of our own natures. In a culture where surrender is most often a sign of weakness and defeat, those who live and promote a better way will undoubtedly be cast as others.

It’s a great art to saunter! Henry David Thoreau

In the early mornings, I walk along a rural road near our house. At times, I’ve embarked upon my walks as exercise, tried to pick up the pace and power walk my way to a healthy elevated heart-rate. As the sun rose, I pumped my arms and moved with purpose. A conqueror of the road, each step an accomplishment in its own right. But on most days, I’ve failed. I’m not a power walker. I’m a saunterer.

To know that I’m in good company–perhaps the greatest company–gives me courage and inspiration. I imagine myself learning the great art of sauntering from the likes of Thoreau, my father, and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who writes:

Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts.

This is it exactly: to walk yourself into a state of well-being, into your best thoughts. Like the great saunterers before me, and those that will inevitably come after me, I’ve learned that there is a mysterious and undeniable connection between my feet and my brain. Interestingly enough, executive editor of Wired magazine Kevin Kelly studied ants and discovered that when it comes to walking, most of the ant’s thinking and decision-making is not in its brain at all. It’s distributed. It’s in its legs. I’ve long thought that my thinking and decision-making may be as much in my legs as in my brain. For as I’ve walked, as I’ve heard and felt the rhythm of my feet on gravel, I’ve come to simply be. And during these times of simple being, words, images, and sometimes complete thoughts have washed over and through me. These are gifts of immeasurable worth, mysteries of great sauntering.

Father of Virginia Woolf, English author and mountaineer Leslie Stephen writes:

Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season.

As a saunterer, I like the idea of turning my intellect out to play for a season. Too often, I feel constricted by an intellect at work. I long to play, long to throw syllogisms and every analytical compulsion to the wind. Loosed then, I could walk and send my intellect into the fields that have been overtaken by sunflowers. Here, amidst thousands of bright blooms, one can do some serious playing.

Naturalist John Muir saw the holiness of sauntering. He writes:

I don’t like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not ‘hike!’ Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre’, ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.

Mountains or plains, forests or fields, we ought to saunter through them reverently. Sauntering is walking on holy ground. A single thrush, a stand of Queen Anne’s Lace, a copse of willows–all sing the abiding songs of creation. Each morning, I pilgrimage To the Holy Land and count my blessings as the road unfolds before me.

Backpacker and writer Colin Fletcher is best known for his book The Complete Walker. In it, he writes:

Frankly, I fail to see how going for a six-month, thousand-mile walk through deserts and mountains can be judged less real than spending six months working eight hours a day, five days a week, in order to earn enough money to be able to come back to a comfortable home in the evening and sit in front of a TV screen and watch the two-dimensional image of some guy talking about a book he has written on a six-month, thousand-mile walk through deserts and mountains.

I confess that I have often regarded my morning walks with the prospect of productivity. After I walk, I say to myself, I will accomplish something: clean the house, write a poem, something, anything. Foolishly, I have regarded walking as a warm-up, a preamble to something productive. But Fletcher’s words humble me, for the walk itself is no less valuable or worthy of my time than writing about it later. The walk is the thing, the only thing. Sauntering for its own sake is golden.

Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility. Poet Gary Snyder celebrates the balance of heartiness and soul, spirit and humility that great saunterers may experience. My hair unwashed, my eyes rimmed with yesterday’s mascara, I often put my most humble self on the road each morning. Stripped of most pretenses, I walk and sweat. Unadorned and alone, I saunter unabashedly into the day. I like to think that this sauntering self is my best self and that early morning meditations are my best prayers.

Thoreau understood the great art of sauntering and claimed to have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who have understood the art of Walking, that is of taking walks,–who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.

Some mornings, I feel as though his eyes are upon me, the master saunterer looking fondly down on his fledgling. I plan to be a saunterer worthy of Thoreau’s classification of genius. And if I begin to power walk or plan my week, I’ll slow to a saunter, humbled and inspired by all those who walk for its own glorious sake.

 Seasons of Clover 

 Along the Soap Creek bottoms,
 wild clover covers the earth like a violet duvet,
 here for a season, gone tomorrow.
 These are saffron days
 when even in the hollows,
 light teases the shadows, unraveling
 the dark edges of night. 
  
 That this will pass,
 that these days will not last
 is like a descant that lilts above
 the song of seasons. 
  
 Like tangerine dreams which take flight
 and later come to rest, still and spent,
 in dark heaps along the creek bed.
  
 Like happiness, 
 that pink-cheeked child who, for a season,
 dances with rosehipped abandon
 until she returns, ashen, to earth.
  
 Like love
which crowns the buckthorn
and lays hands upon the brambles.
Like love whose filaments--
slight as cottonwood seeds--
rise until we can see them
no more. 
 

“She would’ve been a good woman,” said The Misfit, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

Every time I read this line from the end of “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” I want to shout: Can I get an amen? Not just because The Misfit pegs the grandmother in this story so accurately, but because O’Connor pegs all of us so accurately. Wouldn’t we all be better women and men if there was someone holding a gun to our heads every minute of every day?

Unlike most of her contemporaries, O’Connor wrote through a pointedly Christian lens. In The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, she wrote:

Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas. 

For O’Connor, then, a good woman or a good man was solidly in the eye of the only beholder who matters: Christ. Many of her characters lived in little universes of their own choosing until some act of violence, like a real or metaphoric gun to the head, brought them before a mirror where they stood, stripped of their pretensions, alone and sorely in need of grace. O’Connor’s work centers on the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil. The problem, however, is one with which she was all too familiar:

All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.

O’Connor was painfully aware that her audience was largely comprised of people who think God is dead. She knew that this audience put little stock either in grace or the devil. For this audience, her stories were examples of the modern pessimism and violence which characterized much of 20th century literature.

If O’Connor’s works were to be taught as she intended, from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy, many literature teachers would undoubtedly be fired–or suspended until they could promise to avoid this perspective in favor of a more psychological one. For these teachers, her characters are not sinners in need of grace but rather victims in need of psychiatry. For them, a good man or woman should be defined by the prevailing social and cultural mores.

I thought about O’Connor as I finished Ian McEwan’s novel, Enduring Love. The story opens dramatically with a young boy inside a hot air balloon which has become untethered. His grandfather clings to the one of the ropes, running and pulling, desperate to bring his grandson to safety. Upon hearing the child’s cries, the novel’s protagonist, Joe Rose, and several other men rush to help the grandfather. They grab the dangling ropes and do their best to hang on to the balloon as the wind threatens to carry it and the child away. When they can no longer hold onto the ropes, Joe and the others–except one man–release their grips, as the wind lifts the balloon from the field. They watch in horror as this man is carried into the air and, finally unable to hold on any longer, falls to his death. The boy is later rescued when the balloon descends miles from the field. After the tragedy, Joe Rose and Jed Parry, one of the others who came to the boy’s assistance, share a few moments of grief.

The novel centers on the relationship between Joe and Jed, one that begins with Jed’s insistence that Joe pray with him before they leave the field. Jed becomes increasingly persistent–calling, writing, and stalking Joe in an attempt to help him see that God loves Joe, just as he loves him. As Jed’s attempts to communicate with Joe escalate, Joe becomes convinced that Jed suffers from de Clerambault’s syndrome, a delusional disorder in which one believes another to be infatuated with him or her. Jed’s infatuation unfolds over the course of the novel. As it does, McEwan appears to lay the groundwork to ultimately reveal that it is Joe—not Jed—who is truly paranoid, that he becomes obsessed with Jed, just as Jed is obsessed with him.

At the end of the novel when he is finally institutionalized after admitting that he did try to kill Joe, that he held his wife at knife point, and then threatened to slit his own throat unless Joe forgave him, Jed stays true to his love for God, his undying love for Joe, and his desire that Joe come to God. Many reviewers turned up their noses at this ending, claiming that it seriously weakened the novel. Better to omit this scene altogether, to continue pulling readers into Joe’s paranoia, to conclude the story as a psychological tale. But to end it with Jed’s unfailing passion for God and for Joe’s soul? As a literary work of the 21st century, this simply would not do.

Jed’s character is much like those of Flannery O’Connor—those characters who appear fanatical, characters whom you want to cast off as crazy or ignorant until she brings their convictions to light, and you realize that you’ve smugly empathized with the wrong character(s) all along. O’Connor ultimately uses violence to shock both her characters and readers into an awareness of her protagonists’ desperate need for grace. McEwan uses violence, too, as he brings Jed and Joe together in a final traumatic scene. Here, I could see that in spite of his delusions about Joe’s love for him, Jed does not suffer from any delusions regarding sin and grace. He clearly sees the real hole in Joe’s heart and understands that only God can fill it. The reviewers haven’t shared my insights, however, finding both Jed and Joe to be psychological victims of their circumstances and of an indifferent, if not hostile, world. In their eyes, neither character constitutes a good man.

But have the critics gotten it wrong with Enduring Love? If O’Connor were alive today, I truly believe that she would say yes. Yes, they got it all wrong. With a single violent and traumatic event, McEwan sets the stage for the possibility of Joe’s conversion. O’Connor would see Joe as an atheist blinded by his devotion to science. She would see Jed as an unlikely but willing disciple who yearns to bring a fellow sinner before God, to open his eyes to the limits of his intellectualism. And when Jed threatens to kill himself and begs Joe to forgive him, she would see this as the pivotal moment of the novel. Gun to the head or knife to the throat, violence can shatter our false sense of control. And humbled then, we can choose to turn to God or to turn away.

O’Connor would understand that it would be more modern to accept Joe as an educated, intelligent man who succumbs to paranoia after a tragic event and encounter with a delusional man than it would be to consider him as a sinner in need of redemption. She would understand that many may argue that the Jed Parrys of the world should be institutionalized. They would be sorely mistaken, though, for Jed emerges as the novel’s true protagonist and as the only good man.

Perhaps good men and women are hard to find because, like Joe and many of O’Connor’s characters, we refuse to see them. And because we do seem to stumble blindly through our lives, often unaware that we cannot see, we may need a proverbial gun to the head. O’Connor wrote:

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.

We may need writers who shout and draw large and startling figures to bring us to our senses–and to our knees. We need these writers to help us see the good men and women in our midst. They are often easier to find than we believe.

It didn’t surprise me that McEwan’s critics panned the ending of his novel. They don’t have eyes to see Jed as anything but another crazy fanatic. They were disappointed in the novel’s ending because Joe’s paranoia was finally validated as real and not imagined. Sadly, they would have preferred that this paranoia remained imagined, reducing Jed’s presence (and faith) to figments of Joe’s traumatized mind.

Just last week in a commercial advertising a current reality television program, a young man questioned a young woman’s chastity. In the sound bite, he announced his conviction that the marriage bed should be pure. Indignant, she rose from her chair, pointed her well-manicured finger into his face, and claimed that indeed she had had sexual relations and that Jesus still loves me. In the next frame, we see the young man being packed into a waiting car and driven away as the young woman smirks in disgust. It won’t surprise me that many will see the young woman as good and the young man as misguided, at best, and bad, at worst. Many will not regard the young woman as O’Connor might: one who sets up a little universe of her own choosing and who gleefully pronounces a little immoralistic message.

It struck me that I might write Ian McEwan as Flannery O’Connor’s proxy and encourage him to keep up the good fight. But a good fight, like a good man or woman, is clearly in the eye of the beholder. For O’Connor and for me, that beholder is Jesus. I’m not really sure who McEwan’s beholder may be, but I can hope that Jed Parry’s unfailing faith was more than a just fictional account of a delusional man. I can hope that, in McEwan’s heart, Jed Parry is a good man.

 Prayer for the Fawns
  
 From a distance, I see a dark shape
 at the edge of the road.
 A dog, no doubt,
 hit by one of the trucks that takes this corner too fast,
 trucks that carve smooth ribbons of clay into the new gravel
 that the county lays each summer.
  
 Upon nearing, however, I see a smattering of white spots
 on a dew-slicked back.
 And legs, curled tightly as if womb sleeping,
 cocooned in liquid time.
  
 Even in death, there is something expectant here.
 As if these legs would unfurl at any moment, 
 their gleeful joints and sinews stretching,
 their bones so perfectly knit together 
 finding purpose. 
  
 Even in death, these ears fold perfectly
 into soft crescents at the crown.
 I long to run my hand over them 
 the way a mother smooths a child’s hair which spreads  
 like a silk fan across her pillow at night.
 And I long to see the timber—just yards away—
 reach its oaken arms to snatch this life 
 from death.
  
 This is my prayer for the fawns,
 for all that would begin.
   

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. Joseph Campbell

There are 70,000 Stolpersteine or stumbling stones in more than 1, 200 towns and cities across Europe and Russia. Stumbling stones, bronze blocks memorializing Nazi victims, comprise the largest decentralized memorial in the world. Each block is placed at the victim’s last known home, the place which marks a Gestapo or SS raid and arrest, the beginning of the end. The inscription Here lies followed by each victim’s name, birth date, and fate: camp internment, exile, deportation, murder, or suicide.

In 1992, artist Gunter Demnig of Cologne, Germany conceived Stolpersteine. These stumbling stones commemorate all victims of the Nazi regime, which include Jewish, Sinti, Roma, disabled, dissident, and Afro-German and asocial citizens. Demnig personally oversees the creation and placement of each stone, a labor of love and duty that keeps him working and traveling 300 days a year. He often cites the Talmud when he reminds the world that A person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten.

A Berlinian craftsman, Friedrichs-Friedländer, spends at least 50 hours a week in his suburban garage engraving each stumbling stone by hand with a hammer and hand-held metal stamps. Working six days a week mostly in silence, he has inscribed more than 63,000 Stolpersteine.

Given the magnitude of the project, some have argued that the process of creating and inscribing the stones should be mechanized. Not so, says Friedrichs-Friedländer who explains:

To show respect for the victims, it must be done by hand. The Holocaust was so systematic. What they invented as means of mass slaughter, it was more or less automatized. We don’t want anything like that.

As with many good deeds and noble causes, stumbling stones are not without critics. Although it was controversial, Munich banned the stones in 2004, a decision that was upheld in 2015 in spite of a petition containing 100,000 names. Charlotte Noblach, head of the Jewish community in Munich and Bavaria and a Holocaust survivor, vehemently opposes the project and argues for preserving the dignity of the victims. She said, For me, stumbling over a piece of metal in the ground is anything but dignified. Friedrichs-Friedländer disagreed, claiming that If you want to read the stone, you must bow before the victim.

Bowing before victims seems like the kind of practice that could change the world. For the most part, we’re not a bowing people, preferring instead to keep our sights on higher, more potentially advantageous stuff. And as we look up and out, we miss so much of what has happened and continues to happen below our radars. Unthinkingly, we trample on the very folk who have already been crushed. In the end, it may not matter whether these are victims of genocide or individual acts of destruction. For in the wake of any type of destruction, we walk on without stumbling.

We should stumble more. We should catch our toes on all sorts of stones which send us flying face first to the ground. And lying there, we should be bloodied enough to take pause. When an expert in the law asked Jesus to define neighbor, Jesus responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Lest I think too highly of myself and my willingness to love my neighbor, how many times have I crossed to the other side of the road, leaving a neighbor in need along the road? How many times have I neglected to look down and see the life that was lying at my feet? How many times have I refused to stumble and then to bow before ones who deserve my attention and my mercy? I should stumble more.

On this day, the occasion of my 64th birthday, I vow to do just that. There may not be lovingly crafted bronze blocks in the streets and roads of my community, but as I walk, my heart will bow before the stones that should be there. And I will stumble before those who lie at my feet. I will refuse to cross the road. For as Joseph Campbell writes, Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

 
 Indigo Bunting
 At the peak of a linden,
 the indigo bunting sings.
  
 Oh, how its dark silhouette--
 exposed by a single slant of light--
 explodes into cerulean shards
 of surprise!
  
 How the sky delights in something bluer,
 something truer and finer
 than the milk-blue of this morning!
  
 And how my heart will fly,
 caught up in one brilliant moment!
   

  Catching a Wave
  
 In early summer, the wind pushes through 
 the tops of elms and dapples the road 
 below.
 It whips the pastures into waves,
 the grasses rolling surely 
 upon the shore of summer.
  
 This is high tide,
 and my heart swells.
 What once was dark and brittle
 is now a happy vapor, a lemon trifle,
 a lark.
 Oh, that I might sing the wind’s songs,
 that I might live in the land of lilac
 where prayers are always fragrant,
 always weightless.
  
 I grow old.
 But today, I feel like riding the waves
 of May apple and merrybells.
 I feel as though I may go beyond the breakers--
 beyond the shoal of age--
 into bright danger.
  
 Today, I think I will leave the shallows
 where I have hidden among the rocks.
 Here, as I am swept out of myself,
 I will scatter my 63 years, like shells,
 across the sand.
 
 And then,
 I will catch the closest wave
 and ride hard with the wind. 

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our heats? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? 
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

I stood in front of a class of 26 juniors whose homework had been to read the final six pages of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Within the opening minutes of the class period, it became painfully obvious that only five of the 26 had actually read the assigned pages. This was not new, not an exceptional day. The majority of my students seldom read what was assigned but rather waited for me to summarize what they should have read. And tragically, this was necessary if we all were to move on to whatever task was at hand that day.

And so I asked (though I had long suspected the answer): What do you consider homework? They responded without thinking: math problems, worksheets, end-of-chapter questions. What if, I posed, your only homework was to read–not to answer questions, not to complete a worksheet–but to read? There were audible chuckles and visible smirks. Finally, one brave soul volunteered that reading would not even appear on the homework radar. I persisted: Really? You wouldn’t consider reading six pages if that was the only homework you were assigned? A resounding no followed. No, they would not consider reading because (it was all too clear) they didn’t consider it as real homework. At least not like a good worksheet or set of even-numbered math problems. In the galaxy of homework, reading was not even a quark or lepton. In most of their eyes, reading held no presence at all.

How could this be? Reading has transported me to historical and geographical worlds. I have looked through the eyes of characters who were so much like me and so very different from me. My world has expanded through reading, so that I was able to look and learn about the far reaches of this earth and beyond, as well as into the smallest, most intimate places and things. For years, I have had a ready-made answer to the question: What would you take if you knew you would be stranded on a desert island? Books! In any form–Audible, Kindle, print! Books, glorious books! For me, and I know for many, reading has been my greatest teacher, my most faithful companion, and the source of great wonder, wisdom, and pleasure. It has been–and continues to be–a sanctuary.

In 1955, author Rudolf Flesch published his ground-breaking and controversial book, Why Johnny Can’t Read–and What You Can Do About It. Flesch claimed that only the U.S. suffered from a remedial reading problem. British kids could read Three Little Pigs, for heaven’s sake! Only American children needed the dreaded remedial help. And this birthed a colossal industry of remediation specialists, curriculum, and materials. This industry continues to flourish, while parents and educators continue to lament the stagnant reading scores.

But let me be clear: my students were not in need of this type of reading remediation. They could read well enough; they simply chose not to read. They argued–convincingly, I must admit–that they didn’t need to read to pass classes. Some boasted that they hadn’t ever read an entire book, and they’d been on the honor roll for years. Most agreed that doing school was largely about showing up and completing paper work (worksheets, quizzes, tests, etc.). As a veteran teacher, I knew that what they were saying was true. I’d seen the honor rolls and the academic achievement awards passed out at end-of-the-year assemblies; students who didn’t read were standing proud and tall as they accepted a host of academic awards. And when some of my colleagues admitted that they had read little in college (some claimed to have never even bought the required books), I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Like many Americans, my students and some of my colleagues were not illiterate but alliterate: non-readers by choice.

Granted, there are–and always have been–happy, successful people who don’t read. They raise families, contribute meaningfully to their communities, and thrive. What I have seen in my lifetime and throughout my educational career, however, is that the percentage of non-readers is growing. Whereas once there may have been relative balance between readers and non-readers, the scales appear to be tipping heavily towards those who choose not to read. Some argue that this is due to the easy access of technology, while others contend that this is symptomatic of a society that values quicker, less rigorous rewards. Reading simply takes too much time and requires too much brain power. And reading, the old-fashioned print kind of reading, prohibits serious multi-tasking. I can testify to this, for I once walked into a parked car as I attempted to read and walk from the faculty lot into the school. I fear for many, reading is passé .

Like Annie Dillard, I read in the hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed. I read to live, and in the words of the Apostle Paul, to have life more abundantly. Granted, although I’ve spent a lifetime reading literature, I also read for information. Most of what I have learned about history, philosophy, theology, and science, I have learned through reading. The information imparted from the written words of the greatest historians, philosophers, theologians, and scientists has also brought me abundant life. In The Living, Dillard writes: She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. That’s me. I read to fill up and live, to take in each word as one would breathe air.

One has to choose to fill up, though. And herein lies the painful reality of reading–or non-reading–today. I applaud those who work tirelessly and passionately to intervene early, so that more children have the phonemic tools required to become successful readers. And I commend those who, like me, commit to teaching students how to read, that is how to comprehend, the texts of our disciplines. All of this is good and necessary. But it’s not enough.

Recently, I read the Facebook post of a friend and colleague’s daughter. She is completing a long-term substitute post, and her fifth-grade class had just finished Wilson Rawls’ classic young adult novel, Where the Red Fern Grows. In her post, she writes that she and the entire class were moved to tears. At the end of the novel, Rawls writes:

After the last shovel of dirt was patted in place, I sat down and let my mind drift back through the years. I thought of the old K. C. Baking Powder can, and the first time I saw my pups in the box at the depot. I thought of the fifty dollars, the nickels and dimes, and the fishermen and blackberry patches.

I looked at his grave and, with tears in my eyes, I voiced these words: “You were worth it, old friend, and a thousand times over.“

Is it any wonder that nearly 60 years later, Rawls continues to bring his readers to tears, to fill them with feelings and words they will never forget? What happens to these tender 10-11-year olds who cry not only because they grieve the loss of the coon hounds, Old Dan and Little Ann, but who grieve the ending of the world they have entered, the characters they have known as friends, and the story that has stopped? It’s clear that something happens, for as they move more solidly into adolescence, more choose not to read.

Later, some will reminisce about this book as the last–and only–book they read. They will recall it fondly and even recommend it to others. But many will move beyond it, as if it were the threshold into adulthood, a rite of passage. As they move forward, many will choose not to read. When adults and teachers press them, they will argue that they can read–if they choose–but they prefer not to read. When experts insist that finding the just-right book will jump-start the love they once had for reading, many students will smile and fake-read for countless, precious instructional hours. And these same experts often look on, believing that their methods have hit pay dirt.

The real reading crisis today is one of will—not skill. And this is a deeper, more potentially damaging crisis. For it pervades school in many forms, not just reading. More and more students are simply refusing to do anything but physically show up and inhabit a seat. They come to class with no notebook, pencil or pen. Their books remain in their lockers (or on the back seat of their vehicles) for entire school years. These students aren’t particularly disruptive and aren’t regular visitors to the principal’s office. They just take up space, waiting for the day they will legally no longer have to take up space.

We may be tempted to regard this as yet another educational crisis, one that will undoubtedly birth a new iteration of specialists. And we wouldn’t be wrong: this is an educational crisis. But it is so much more than this. Truly, this is a social, cultural, and political crisis. This is a crisis that we all must own. Its proportions are far too great for educators alone to fix. For students who choose not to read or to do school sometimes choose not to vote, not to work, not to parent, and not to commit to anything that doesn’t yield quick, short-term rewards.

Thankfully, there will always be those who champion reading and those who devote their lives to creating the conditions and providing the skills for others to become readers. And there will be those writers who take Dillard’s advice to heart:

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality? 
―The Writing Life

What if we were to read as if we were dying, to daily consume the greatest words written? What if we were to fill up with words as if we were terminal patients, enraged by triviality? Clearly, this would be a world-changer. But only if we first choose to read. Like anything, this type of reading begins with a choice.

Certainly that are those who, at one time or another, having chosen not to read turn again to reading. My greatest fear, however, is that when–and if–this desire returns, many will be so out-of-shape to read that any attempts will leave them discouraged and convinced, once again, that reading is just too much work. No one could convince me to run a 400 meters today. Once, I was in shape enough to win a state championship, but today? This would literally be the death of me. Even if I had the great desire to return to competitive running, I would understand that this would require years of re-conditioning and training. I couldn’t simply take the track and run well. But I fear that many naively assume that they can pick up serious reading at any time. Not without serious conditioning and time, I’m afraid.

I realize that there are those who will argue that there are other legitimate ways to fill up with wise, inspirational words. One can listen to others read, and one can view others perform. Still, even in this age of technological alternatives, there is a case to be made for reading. Like Dillard, I feel the real desire for the possibility of meaningfulness. I want to feel the majesty and power of life’s deepest mysteries. And much of this comes from the process of wrestling with printed words, from holding a book in one’s hands, from dog-earring pages and writing in margins, and from returning again and again to passages that perplex, inspire, and challenge us.

I don’t believe that all is lost on the reading front. I do believe, however, that the reading challenges we face today will require the efforts of a virtual village. This is a job much too big and much too important for teachers alone. Oh, teachers have done and will continue to do much more than their share. But if we are to resurrect reading for more than a few willing students, if we are to right the imbalance of non-readers to readers, and–most importantly–if we are to address the pervasive problem of individuals who choose not to fully participate in school or life, this will take a village.