Going to the Sun Road, Glacier National Park

Can anyone of you by worrying add a single hour to his life?
--Matthew 6:27

I turn my face to the sky
where aspens sequin the day,
and the sun—as light will—
muscles its way down through pine boughs
to lay a golden ribbon along the earth.

We climb,
the air thinning our minutes,
every second ground to glacial till
and born happily upward into the alpine blue.

We climb.
Rock faces weep away the burdens of ages
sending scree into the shadows.

I’ve forgotten why I lay awake last night,
forgotten the niggling doubts which disappear
into fields of purple aster.

And I’ve forgotten to worry my heart into knots.
See how it rises like the mountain lupine
which simply gives itself to the sun.

It is an alarming experience to be, in your person, representing Christianity to the natives.
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

In the early decades of the 20th century, Karen Blixen-Finecke–who wrote under the name of Isak Dinesen–traveled to Africa with her husband, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, to operate a coffee farm near Nairobi. Because her husband was more interested in hunting than farming, Karen was generally left on her own to navigate the world of coffee farming and to learn about and tend to the native Kikuyu people who lived in the area and worked on the farm. She provided the Kikuyu with medical services and a school for their children, and she often served as the sole Christian witness in their midst. Ultimately, after struggling to keep the farm afloat, Karen decided to return to her home in Denmark after appealing to the colonial authorities on behalf of the Kikuyu who’d made their homes and livelihood on the farm.

Years ago, I traveled to Nigeria with a Christian mission team. Half of our team were medical professionals who offered eye care and performed cataract surgeries, and half of our team were educators who helped to organize two libraries, one in a secondary school and one in a seminary. We spent three weeks living and working in both rural and urban settings, sleeping under mosquito nets, and enjoying the hospitality of so many Nigerians. But unlike Blixen, we weren’t solely responsible for representing Christianity to the natives, for there were many native Christians in our midst, and their witness to us was undoubtedly more powerful and lasting than ours to them. Even to this day, their Christian witness humbles me as I recall the joy and gratitude they demonstrated in their daily activities.

Honestly, I’ve found myself in many situations throughout my life that have made me wonder if I were representing Christianity to the natives. That is, I found myself immersed in and challenged by a cultural shift towards a more progressive form of Christianity that purports to be a kinder, gentler, more inclusive faith, an improvement on the orthodox faith that many in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches have held for centuries. And I’ve thought hard about the position that Karen Blixen-Finecke found herself in as she lived among the Kikuyu people, about the responsibility she must’ve felt to witness well. I’ve thought about this because I, too, feel a tremendous responsibility to be a true and faithful witness for my faith. There is no greater privilege and no greater challenge than to defend orthodoxy.

People who are much smarter, much more experienced and studied than I am have written about and spoken in defense of an orthdox Christian faith since almost the beginning of the church. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul writes to many churches, warning them of the errors of their thinking and practices, and reminding them that the gospel message must not be altered. He writes to the Galations to set them straight about the Judaizers in their midst who were preaching an altered gospel that added a “works” requirement for their salvation. Even a few years after Christ had been crucified and resurrected, the orthodox Christian faith was being tested and altered. Paul and his fellow apostles were powerful witnesses intent on representing Christianity to the natives–sadly, even to the natives who’d previously received and accepted the good news of the gospel.

I’m painfully aware of a common accusation that those who hold an orthodox faith are intolerant, exclusive, and harmful individuals: Pharisees or stuffy academics who rarely leave their ivory towers. The continued challenge of my Christian witness has been to hold firm to the orthodox Christian principles and practices of my faith while acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with my God [Micah 6:8]. I know some insist that orthodox believers–those who subscribe to the essentials of Christian faith as revealed in scripture and common creeds–can’t be truly just or merciful or humble. They argue that if they were truly just and merciful, they would wouldn’t be exclusive and intolerant. If they were truly humble, they wouldn’t proclaim their faith so boldy and certainly. Still, through the trials of my own faith, I’ve only had to close my eyes for a moment. In the stillness of that moment, I can see a cloud of witnesses, some of whom died to defend orthodox Christianity. I see Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie Ten Boon, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Joan of Arc, Maximilian Kolbe, Ester John, and Archbishop Oscar Romero. I see my father and mother and a whole host of friends from several communities and churches. I see the early martyrs: Stephen, the apostles Peter and Paul, and St. Ignatius of Loyola. When I open my eyes, I’m chastened by the devotion and selflessness of these witnesses. Here are frontline defenders of the faith with boots on the ground and eyes turned to Jesus.

In his book, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith, pastor and writer Timothy Keller, writes:

When a newspaper posed the question, “What’s Wrong with the World?” the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response: “Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus.

The power and beauty of Christian witness is founded, first and foremost, on humility. It’s founded on the paradoxical reality that I am both the problem and the potential solution. That is, like writer and Christian apologist, G. K. Chesterton, I am truly what’s wrong with the world. I hope, however, to also become what’s right. I realize that I can never become what’s right in the world on my own. Wholly dependent upon God’s wisdom and grace, witnesses throughout the ages have demonstrated the type of humility that God uses and blesses.

After church this morning, I had the opportunity to speak to many people, expressing how grateful I was to be in the midst of such a cloud of witnesses. These are folks who witness well as they hold fast to an orthodox faith, living and loving with integrity and humility. When I close my eyes tonight, I will see their faces and give thanks.

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

–Thorton Wilder

I’ve been known to overthink, overplan, overworry–generally to live outside of myself during any given moment as both spectator and critic intent on making the next best move and saying the next best thing. Oh, to be one step ahead, hoping the future will unfold more generously, more gloriously, more certainly! For too much of my life, I’ve taken for granted single moments, regarding them as necessary foreplay for something bigger and better. I’d have done well to heed the words of Rose Kennedy, who cautioned that [l]ife isn’t a matter of milestones, but of moments. Moments are the hummingbirds of time, flashing quicksilver wings through the duties of the day. Too often, much too often, I’ve missed them.

Just the other day, I was telling my grandson, Griffin, about my family’s annual 4th of July picnics at Ft. Kearney Recreational Center. The day began with donuts, juice, and coffee at the picnic area and progressed to swimming and sunbathing on the beach. But the highlight of the day–the pièce de résistance–was the annual Don Welch spastic run from the bath house down the beach into the water. My dad, whose legs only saw sunlight once a year, donned his swimming trunks and waited at the top of the beach as the family–and soon other swimmers–turned their eyes to the spectacle that was about to unfold. We held our breath until he began to run down the beach, his arms and legs flailing in classic Jerry Lewis style, his face contorted and his eyes crossed. For 30 glorious seconds, we laughed until we could no longer stand and fell bent over into the water. Each year, the spastic run grew in popularity, and the Don Welch fan club burgeoned.

I like to think that I was fully present in each of those moments when my dad put aside his respectable teacher persona to become a fool for a few precious and utterly entertaining moments. I like to think that I wasn’t dreaming about the brownies I knew my mom had packed or the teenage boys playing frisbee near the water. I do know that these moments have only become clearer and dearer over the decades. And for this, I’m more grateful than I can say.

So, when Griffin donned an assortment of dollar-store 4th of July accessories and leapt from the pool deck, flashing a goofy smile and double peace signs, I was fully present. Oh, how my dad’s legacy lives on in the heart of his great grandson and his spastic leap! The fact that his photographer mother captured this moment for posterity? Even better. For during the dark days of winter, I can pull this photo out and relive this moment just when I need it. Playwright Thorton Wilder claims, we are most alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. This moment, like those lived on the beach at Ft. Kearney Recreational Area, is a treasure.

The marvelous paradox of a single moment lies in the fact that it contains all moments, according to writer and theologian C. S. Lewis. Or as American writer Henry David Thoreau maintains, you can find your eternity in a moment. A moment may be small, but it be mighty! The other day while Griffin and I were in the pool, he urged me to dive in. Generally, I just float around while he swims beneath me. So, I rolled off my floatie and swam the length of the pool underwater. This isn’t a great feat in a 15 ft. pool, but it’s enough to delight a 9-year-old. In those brief moments underwater, I was transported to all those afternoons I spent at the Harmon Park Pool in Kearney, Nebraska. I can still recall the wonder of lying on the bottom of the pool, submerged and suspended in a sea of blue chlorinated water. It was magical. It still is. There’s something about that kind of weightlessness, that feeling of otherworldliness and timelessness that comes from being under water. A single moment in my little backyard pool contains just that kind of mystery and eternity.

Martin Luther King, Jr. writes:

Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.

I suspect in everyone’s life, there are those moments which defy description or explanation. As an amateur birdwatcher, I often struggle to find the words to describe to others what I’ve seen and experienced. I’ve yet to find words to adequately describe the color of an indigo bunting. But when I see one in the honeysuckle bushes that ring the timber, I’m transfixed in a moment of unutterable fulfillment. Momentarily, I’m struck dumb. And this is exactly how it should be.

Each time I read the Sermon on the Mount, I’m moved by Jesus’s admonition to stop worrying about tomorrow. His words are a clear and present reminder to seek first the kingdom of God, to submit to the present moment, and above all, to trust:

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. [Matthew 6: 31-34]

I continually remind myself that the moments of my day are gifts. And I hold fast to the assurance that tomorrow will worry about itself. And so, I’d like to tell you that I no longer overthink or overplan, that I’m fully present in every moment. But I can’t. Still, I’m making progress–one marvelous moment at a time.

And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

Dear Lousie Erdrich,
Motherless now,
my grief compels me to harvest the moments of my life
in bushel baskets, and to tell myself
that I’ve tasted as many as I could:

that in those last days, 
when she was already weightless—
her bones gone quicksilver—
I hung on, grounding her with my great love;

that the sweetness of her life
was not wasted on me;

that today as I walk the path around the pond,
I’m greeted by water lilies, which are magnificent
structural things—

not at all shapeless smears of pastel light
floating on a Monet canvas—

but a hundred or more white missiles on green launch pads, 
sprung and ready to release their sweet weight
into first light.

So, here is my reckoning:

that though the years unmake me,
casting long shadows of their dominion,
I can take stock of my windfall:

     of this legion of lilies rising in the morning mist,
     of this redwing blackbird whose cries split the seam of dawn,
     of this mother’s voice, like the still small hum of locust, ever in my ear.

And today I can say, without a doubt,
that my baskets are full, and I’ve not gone without.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

I can never pass a cat in the street without greeting it and exchanging a few words, and the cat invariably replies.

–Patricia Moyes, How to Talk to Your Cat

I’ve been known to greet a cat in the street or a ground squirrel along the path or a family of painted turtles stacked on a fallen branch in the shallows or–well, you get the idea. I’ve been known to greet just about any living creature that crosses my path. At my age, I have no shame about speaking aloud or stopping traffic. To greet is the polite thing to do, after all.

Just the other day, I was driving on the highway in southeast Iowa when I met three Amish buggies. Each man, woman, and child waved vigorously as I passed, and this made me happier than I can say. The recipient of so many hearty waves, I felt like a million bucks, like someone worth a flurry of unsolicited morning waves. Shawnee warrior and chief, Tecumseh, advised that we should [a]lways give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place. Though most of us wouldn’t admit it, we often find ourselves in lonely places. So, a friendly word or wave is just the thing to illuminate our darker spaces.

Called the one of the best new traditions in college football, “The Wave” occurs between the 1st and 2nd quarter of Iowa Hawkeye home football games when nearly 70,000 at Kinnick Stadium stand and wave to pediatric patients in the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital, which looks over the stadium. In his September 2017 report, “Meet the woman who helped make ‘The Wave’ happen,” Forrest Saunders (KCRG-TV9) identified Krista Young, a mother of three residing in Anita, Iowa, as the impetus for beginning “The Wave.” She posted the following on a Hawkeye fan page in May of that year:

I think with the new U of I hospital addition open. Kinnick should hold a “wave to the kids” minute during every game.

And the rest is history. Tune into any home Hawkeye game, and you’ll see a whole lot of waving: from Kinnick Stadium to the families and kids in the Children’s Hospital and back again. It goes without saying that there’s something particularly powerful in such a purposeful pause during an athletic event that draws thousands in person and millions on television. You can find sanctuary in the “Wave”, for in this moment, athletes, spectators, families and sick children come together in hope.

And what about those who are fools for enthusiastic greetings, even misguided ones? That is, if I had a dollar for each time I waved furiously at an oncoming car or passersby–only to realize that this wasn’t at all who I thought it was–I’d be a wealthy woman today. But maybe this doesn’t matter at all. Maybe all that truly matters is the spirit of the greeting, which generally blesses the unintended but nonetheless deserving. Actor and comdian Jimmy Fallon knows a thing or two about such greetings. Thank you … motion sensor hand towel machine, he jokes. You never work, so I just end up looking like I’m waving hello to a wall robot. I’m here to tell you, Jimmy, that there are legions of us who’ve found ourselves flapping our hands in front of broken motion sensor towel machines. We may be forced to air-dry, but we rarely fail to amuse the public restroom crowd!

A good greeting can be as formal or informal as you like. The moment I hear my grandson Griff open the front door, I’m yelling, “Hey, bud!” I’ve been greeting him this way for as long as I can remember. And his greeting in response? “Hey.” We get each other. We need few words to acknowledge that we’re happy to see each other. In E. B. White’s classic children’s book, Charlotte’s Web, Wilbur, the pig, learns there are, indeed, all types of greetings:

And, just as Wilbur was settling down for his morning nap, he heard again the thin voice that had addressed him the night before. “Salutations!” said the voice.

Wilbur jumped to his feet. “Salu-what?” he cried.

 “Salutations!” repeated the voice.

“What are they, and where are you?” screamed Wilbur. “Please, please, tell me where you are. And what are salutations?”

“Salutations are greetings,” said the voice. “When I say ‘salutations,’ it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning.”

You may prefer a nonchalant Hey or perhaps a hearty Salutations. Regardless of your choice of greeting, however, I’m guessing that, like me, you simply like to be greeted. A greeting of any sort is an ordinary yet powerful means through which you know you’ve been seen and welcomed. In a world in which we may find ourselves feeling more and more like aliens, a heartfelt greeting seems essential.

Sometimes in the moments just after I’ve gotten into bed, I close my eyes and try to hear my father’s standard telephone greeting. Most nights, I can still hear the way it moved through the telephone wires, full-bodied and rich like maple syrup. And I try to remember the sound of my mom’s greeting as I burst through the front door, lugging my suitcase and computer bag. “Boy, you made great time!” she’d say. As if I would take my time as I made my way to her. These greetings are genuine sanctuaries into which I can take refuge, glorious moments during which I remember the magic of my parents’ voices.

I suspect that greetings–informal or formal–may soon be on the endangered social mores list (if there isn’t such a list, there should be). Too many people miss the opportunity to greet another because their heads are bent to their cell phones. They don’t recognize that another has entered their space. In the best cases, they may throw a head-nod in another’s direction; in the worst cases, they never look up from their devices, wholly oblivioius to the fact that they are no longer alone.

Greetings may go the way of the Dodo. I can imagine my grandkids trying to explain to their children that, once upon a time, people actually greeted each other with words, waves, and handshakes. They’d have to unearth old YouTube or TikTok videos as proof of a custom that simply died. I can imagine this, but I don’t want to. I’m holding out for a greeting revival, the sort which sweeps the world with the same kind of fervor that erupts between the 1st and 2nd quarters of Iowa Hawkeye football games.

There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her.
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth

Dear Mom,

Today, I’m sitting in your chair with your cat on my lap. Your absence is a palpable presence as we sit here in the home whose every wall and corner is filled with you. We think of you so often that our thoughts sit companionably beside us and open their arms in love. There is an intimacy born simply of thinking of you so often that your voice rings through our days, assuring us that we are not alone.

Still, like many who have lost their mothers, I’d trade this intimacy for the real thing. That is, I’d trade the intimacy born of simply thinking about and missing you for an afternoon with the real you. Particularly on this Mother’s Day when there are so many things I’d like to tell you.

I’d like to tell you–again–that I want to be like you when I grow up. Oh, I know that by all accounts, a 67-year-old woman should be grown up, but I like to think that I’m not done growing, that I still have time to become more like the woman you were. Each year, I would write this in your Mother’s Day card, this wish to grow into the grace and wisdom that are attributes of the quintessential mother. And each year as I wrote this, I meant it perhaps more sincerely than I’ve meant anything. I want to be the mother and woman who is sorely missed because she was an unfailing champion for those who needed a safe place to land, an advocate for those who believed they had no voice, and a lens through which others could see themselves as you did: loved and seen. You were all that–and so much more.

I’d like to tell you that your phone calls were lifelines. Through my own years of mothering and teaching, thirty minutes on the phone with you gave me the courage and conviction to face a new day, to meet it with your words in my ear, to suck the marrow from it with gratitude and joy. Four hundred miles away, I leaned into those conversations with hope. Now, I often find myself picking up the phone in expectation. And then I remember that you aren’t there to pick up your cordless phone with a familiar, “Hi, Shan.”

I’d like to tell you that I remember everything. That I remember too much. That, some days, the memories are too heavy to bear, while other days, they buoy my spirit as I sail into my day. I remember the power of your make-do-ness to transform a barely middle class life into a wonderland. I thought the lavender floor-length dress you made me for my junior prom was a confection in dotted swiss. I marveled at how you could stretch a dollar and a pound of hamburger. And when I said I wanted a blue birthday party during my kindergarten year, you broke out the bottle of food coloring and used it liberally, turning the cake, ice cream, and Kool-aid royal blue. (No one escaped without blue lips and finger tips!)

In his book, For One More Day, Mitch Albom writes:

But there’s a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begin.

Like Albom claims, behind all my stories are your stories. Recently after my granddaughter’s track meet, I was telling her the story of the district meet my junior year in high school. As I recounted the wind and sleet, the cold that cut through our cotton sweat suits and numbed our legs, I remembered that behind this story was another more remarkable story. This was the story of a mother who sat in the stands (one of a handful of spectators braving the weather), huddled under a Hefty garbage bag and sporting a plastic visor to keep the sleet from her eyes. This was your story, Mom. As I’ve told it over the years, people invariably chuckle at the image of a mom wrapped in plastic. But I want them to see what I see: a mother who showed up, again and again. Standing alone at the start of the 200 yard dash, I had only to look into the stands to see you smiling and waving and to know that–win or lose–you’d drive me home.

In her best-selling novel The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt describes the grief of a son whose mother is killed in a terrorist attack:

I missed her so much I wanted to die: a hard, physical longing, like a craving for air underwater. Lying awake, I tried to recall all my best memories of her—to freeze her in my mind so I wouldn’t forget her—but instead of birthdays and happy times I kept remembering things like how a few days before she was killed she’d stopped me halfway out the door to pick a thread off my school jacket. For some reason, it was one of the clearest memories I had of her: her knitted eyebrows, the precise gesture of her reaching out to me, everything. Several times too—drifting uneasily between dreaming and sleep—I sat up suddenly in bed at the sound of her voice speaking clearly in my head, remarks she might conceivably have made at some point but that I didn’t actually remember, things like Throw me an apple, would you? and I wonder if this buttons up the front or the back? and This sofa is in a terrible state of disreputableness.

I want to tell you that I understand this grief and how waves of ordinary things keep washing upon the shore of my consciousness. Small things that would never be scrapbooked or photographed come in with the tide of a moment. In the months before you died, I keep remembering how when I hugged you, you were a bird with hollow bones. I felt as though if I didn’t ground you in my arms, you’d simply float away. Years after my father’s death, I remember all the times you told me that you’d been talking to him, your hard, physical longing laden with sorrow and with beauty. And I remember once when I was frantic with worry about something (I’ve forgotten what), you assured me that everything would be o.k. and offered me this: Just don’t get your blood in a bubble. And I thought, who says this? You did. And now I do, too.

Most of all, I’d like to tell you that when I close my eyes today, I can see you and Dad driving into the countryside where the wild honeysuckle is in bloom, and the sky hangs clear and cornflower blue above you. I can see the road open before you, and redwing blackbirds strung brightly along utility lines that stretch into the distance. And you are young and in love. The glorious May afternoon pours in through your open windows, and you can think of nowhere else you’d rather be.

Today, I can think of nowhere else I’d rather be but in the home you made for all of us. So, I’ll sit here with the cat on my lap, and the silence generous enough for my sorrow and my joy. I can think of nowhere else I’d rather be but in this place where I learned what it means to love and be loved.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

With all my love,

Shan

A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true. –W. H. Auden

“You really know how to end a poem.” After reading each new poem I sent her, my mother’s words were a constant and hopeful refrain. Months after her death, these are words to write by, and more importantly, to live by. For if ending a poem in truth is essential, so, too, is ending a life.

Sonneteers know the power and value of a good ending. Line by line, they drill down into a final couplet which delivers so much more than a poetically exciting rhyme. In these final two lines, sonneteers give us the wisdom that distinguishes the endings of the best poems. A poem should begin in delight, claims poet Robert Frost, and end in wisdom. Consider the final couplet in Sonnet 18, one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Now this is a great ending! Here, a lover proclaims that his words will forever testify to his beloved’s beauty and worth. Neither death nor time will diminish her, so long as his words live. Oh, to be immortalized by a great sonneteer who understands just how to make a final, grand statement!

In my more cynical moments, I begin to wonder if a true statement is a dying thing, an anachronism that lives solely in our memories. In the past few years, I’ve heard more people my age speak fondly of news anchors like Walter Chronkite who wrote:

As an anchorman for the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts with a simple statement: “And that’s the way it is.” To me, that encapsulates the newsman’s highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard to the consequences or controversy that may ensue.

I can’t help but envy the certainty of Cronkite’s parting words: And that’s the way it is. To leave your viewers with the truth, to live up to your highest ideal as a news anchor, that must be wonderful. When I consider what passes as news today, I salivate at the prospect of a newsperson whose integrity is forged and defined by such truthful statements.

American painter Jackson Pollock knows the value of making a statement. He writes:

It doesn’t make much difference in how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

Cynically, I also wonder if we’ve come to value technique more than truth, style more than statement. Today, our leaders and celebrities toss out lovely words which essentially say nothing. We’re offered pieces of art and photography which may be technically good but often fail to move us. They simply don’t arrive at a statement. They say nothing. I recall an assignment for one of my graduate courses in poetry writing. We were asked to find an example of a good poem, one that exemplified the traits we’d been studying throughout the term. During the next class, one of my classmates volunteered to read the poem he’d brought. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like this: Outside my window, a sparrow chirps. Silence filled the room as he let these words sink in. Nervously, he finally broke the silence by saying, “I mean, there’s not much here. But that’s the point, isn’t it? It seems like there’s not much here, so there must be something. Right?” If this poem were intended to be an example of postmodernist technique, it left my classmates and I scratching our heads. Did this poem actually say anything?

Our postmodern age tends to thumb its nose at anything that smacks of being sentimental or absolute. It’s simply not cool to show that you care–in art or in life. Sadly, what this often means is that we don’t make statements for fear of being called sentimental or judgmental. Actor Jon Voight countered this prevailing philosphy in this statement:

“Climb Every Mountain” is a beautiful statement of philosophy. Critics may think “The Sound of Music” is saccharine, but I think it’s profound. The message, that we can’t accomodate evil, is just as important today.

Voight challenges us to consider that The Sound of Music is more than a saccharine, feel-good film. It goes without saying that the music is wonderful and the cinematography spectacular. The film’s statement about refusing to accomodate evil, however, is even more profound. Aesthetically beautiful, The Sound of Music also has something to say.

In art and in life, we may be tempted by the styles and techniques of the times, spending our time and money on appearance, on what culturally passes as “good.” But if these things become our statements–that is, if style and technique trump wisdom and truth–this should give us pause. If our legacies are built upon things which essentially mean little (or nothing), this, too, should give us pause.

I learned everything I know about how to end a poem and a life from my father, an unfailing champion for the heroic voice in an age of indifference. In advocating for the power and usefulness of such a voice, he wrote:

Which started me thinking again about poetry, especially its usefulness. If writers write long enough, they write for their lives. If they persist in wanting the right words in the best places, they begin to sense a floor beneath their work, something more than stylish or momentarily pleasurable. In short, something solider. These are the writer’s underwritings. Every long-term poet, even one who deflects a knowledge of it, takes a discernible stand, and his underwritings, whether he knows them or admits them, become as crucial to his life as to his art.

With each poem I write, I sincerely hope that I take a discernible stand, that I give my readers something more than stylish or momentarily pleasurable, that I write for my life. And I sincerely hope that my underwritings, my statements of wisdom and truth, become as crucial to my life as they are to my art. I hope that I answer my father’s call to action: In a dumbed-down age, why shouldn’t poetry speak up? Although it may feel increasingly risky to speak up, one can seek sanctuary in statement.

A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.
― Joan Didion, The White Album, 1979

I dream in places. Generally when I wake, I have only a hazy recollection of plot or people. What lingers is a sense of place. Although Longfellow High School in Kearney, Nebraska was closed and locked up years before my time (save for the north end which housed our junior high music and geography classes), I’d peered through the windows on many occasions, imagining what lay beyond the entrance and up the staircase. And in the decades since, I’ve dreamt about being in that grand building, waking to carry the scent of wood polish and old books with me throughout the day. This place belongs to me, for I’ve been one who’s claimed it hardest and remembered it most obsessively.

Years ago when we discussed ageism in a Human Relations course I taught for educators, I used Geraldine Page’s final movie, A Trip to Bountiful. I’ve probably seen this movie a dozen times, and each time, I find myself as moved by Page’s performance as I was the first time. An aging woman stuck in a city apartment with her adult son and whiny daughter-in-law, Page’s character spends most of the day, and often most of the night, in a rocking chair by the window overlooking the yard and street beyond. Time and again, she begs her son to take her back to Bountiful, the small Texas town where she’d grown up, married, and raised him. Her yearning is palpable throughout the film. She dreams and daydreams of the place that’s defined and grounded her. Her son, a man bent on climbing the corporate ladder and providing a better life for his mother and wife, ignores her pleas. Why do you want to go back to that old place? he asks. There’s nothing there any more.

When she can no longer bear being pent up in that apartment, she decides to run away–again. This time, however, she not only makes it to the bus station but actually purchases a ticket, boards the bus, and departs before her son can find her and take her home. As she travels through the rural Texas countryside, she hums the hymns that have sustained her through the droughts of life. She tells her seat mate that she’s happier than she’s been for a long time. Because she’s going home to feel the soil between her fingers, to hear the birds, and to turn her face to the sun again. She’s going back to the place she believes will jump-start her soul and give her the will to return to the city, to commit her final days to living in that small apartment.

When her son finally catches up with her on the porch of her now dilapidated house, she’s smiling and greets him with, I’m home, son. I got my trip home. He chides her for taking such a risk–traveling alone in precarious health–but she tells him that it’s enough that she’s returned one final time, that this trip will carry her happily through the rest of her days. As she looks around one last time before getting into his waiting car, she reminds herself that when all the people are gone, the land and sky, the birds and coastal breezes will remain.

I understand this. As my father and his grandmother understood this. The open prairie of Nebraska and the timbered hills of Iowa become the protagonists of our stories. It’s enough that they will remain long after the people we love have gone and the memories we’ve made have faded. In his novel, A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway writes:

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

The names of places dignify those villages, rivers, roads, and fields where so many died as casualties of war. These places make the sacrifices of war real. They anchor the abstract notions of things like glory and courage in the concrete: stone, soil, water, wood. It’s no wonder that we return to these places and walk their hallowed ground. It’s no wonder that we say their names with reverence and wonder. Our most important stories inhabit these places. And they rise from the ash heap, recover, and remain when all else has disappeared. This is the power of place.

In her novel, Black Beauty, Anna Sewell contends that [i]t is good people who make good places. Having just returned from a visit to my family home in Kearney, I’m buoyed with a familiar sense of joy that emanates from this place. I walked into the closet of my childhood bedroom which spreads magically under the eaves, creating a private nook for book-reading and imaginative play. I remembered the hours I spent there in solitary contentment. I laid in bed and saw the room as it had been when I was young: an upright piano along one wall, my mom’s sewing machine on an old desk in the corner, and an ironing board under the east window. I could feel my fingers on the keys. I could hear the rumble of the old, black Singer as my mom guided a piece of fabric under its needle. Good people made this home, and within, good places abound.

In my mind, I can still walk the halls of the many schools I’ve attended as student and teacher. I can look down the aisles of the three-story department store in which I worked during high school and college. And, without thinking, I can tell you just where you’d find a bottle of calamine lotion or a 10-cent glass animal. If I close my eyes, I can climb the spiral staircase up to the balcony of the lighthouse overlooking Harmon Park’s rock garden. And when I’m miles away from and missing home, I can mentally walk the perimeter of our pond and watch sunfish travel through the shallows. I can do this because all these places–real and remembered–are sanctuaries for me.

If [a] place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, as Joan Didion contends, then I find joy in knowing that there are so many places that belong forever to me. If there are others who argue that they claim these places hardest, let it be known that I won’t release them graciously, and I won’t stop visiting them in my dreams.

Gethsemane

The olive trees drop their fruit in easy slumber,
and the ground gives up the last heat of the day,
draws the curtain, surrenders 
to sleep.

Nothing will keep watch.
The children of Jerusalem dream,
and the men who fill their nets with silver fish
curl contently into the shadows.

And we who believe we would stay awake—
for surely, we would prostrate our best selves in supplication—
sleep, too.

In dreams, we soak the earth with prayers
and wait. 
We circle the wagons, keep vigil,
stand watch.

In sleep, we are heroes
of a story that might have been.
We have eyes to see
and say all the things we might have said.

But in truth,
our intentions scatter like moths,
while the stones here               
bear better witness.

You get used to it, not in the good way, to the extent of the entire world oftentimes feeling like a place where you weren’t invited. If you’ve been here, you know. If not, must be nice.
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

Although there are days when I feel like I’m alone, alienated from the world at large, I’m pretty certain that I’m not. Alone, that is. I suspect that there are others who also feel as though the world is a place where you weren’t invited. And I suspect there may be others like me who’ve begun to feel like perhaps it’s better not to be invited, like the party just isn’t worth it, like staying home in your sweats with a bowl of popcorn is preferable.

In Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, Demon Copperhead, her protagonist is a contemporary David Copperfield born to a single, drug-addicted mother in a trailer in rural Tennessee. From the beginning of his life, Demon’s constant companions are hunger and fear. He dreams of a world where everyone is invited, a party with an all-you-can-eat buffet. His world, however, is no party. As a child, he learns to navigate the foster care system after his mother dies from an overdose. This is a world in which he sleeps in laundry rooms, works in tobacco fields, and survives on barely enough calories to sustain a mouse. This world is more like the Hunger Games where only the fittest survive. Demon often wanders this world as an alien, desperate to find a safe place to land.

Each day when I read or watch the news, I feel as though I’m looking in on a world that I hardly recognize and to which I’ve not been invited. This is a world in which battle lines are drawn with such power and certainty, that if you’re someone who finds herself taking time to carefully consider, to weigh evidence and opinions, to use your head and your heart, then you’ve not been invited. This is a world in which you can no longer send your children to school with the assurance that they will return safely at the end of the day. This is a world in which adults don’t play nicely, a world in which name-calling and shouting are expected. This is a world in which one’s convictions and principles are tested (or canceled) daily. In this world, then, it’s no surprise that many individuals feel alienated, as though they’ve been dropped unwillingly into an episode of Survivor.

Each year as we enter Holy Week, I find myself in the Garden of Gethsemane. To the extent that I’m able as a human being, I live alongside Christ as he prays in anguish that the cup might be taken from him. Author and theologian C. S. Lewis wrote that of all scenes in Christ’s life, he was grateful that this scene in Gethsemane did not go unrecorded. He contends that it was here that all the torments of fear, despair, and even hope were loosed upon Jesus. Here, he explains, Jesus was fully human, subject to utter despair and desperate hope that, like Isaac, he might be saved at the last minute. To be alienated from God is to suffer exclusion as only a human can.

Yet, Christ was not only fully human but fully divine. Even as he anguishes in Gethsemane, he prays not my will but yours be done. As Son of God, he understands that he has come to offer himself as a living sacrifice, to take away the sins of the world. And just as the world has misunderstood and hated him, he knows that the world will misunderstand and hate his disciples, too. In John 17:15-16, Jesus confirms that his disciples should remain in the world. And yet as he speaks to his Father, he says: I have given them Your word and the world has hated them; for they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Christ understood that the cost of discipleship was founded upon a profound paradox: be in the world but not of the world. This is a different sort of alienation. Disciples are to live fully in the world, while they alienate themselves from its worldliness. That is, they are to live with their eyes upon Christ, turning their eyes away from the temptations and sins of the world. This is intentional, willful alienation.

Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead doesn’t choose his alienation. In the midst of its darkness, however, there are a few people who shine a light upon his worth and potential. In this passage, we can see one of these supporters, his teacher, who continues to advocate for and encourage him:

He looked at me. His hands were on his desk with the fingers touching, a tiny cage with air inside. Black hands. The knuckles almost blue-black. Silver wedding ring. He said, “You know, sometimes you hear about these miracles, where a car gets completely mangled in a wreck. But then the driver walks out of it alive? I’m saying you are that driver.”

The world may appear to be a mangled wreck, but some drivers walk out alive and well. In a world that has alienated him, Demon perseveres and becomes that driver. In a world that hated and killed him, Christ walks out of it alive. We may intentionally alienate ourselves from the world, or we may find ourselves involuntarily alienated from the world. Either scenario is lonely and difficult. But we hear about these miracles where individuals not only survive alienation but thrive–in spite of or because of it. Easter is a time for just these sorts of miracles. In a world we may struggle to call our home, this is truly the best news.