Our Throwaways

As a kid, I loved going into my dad's workroom to try and build something. In my mind, the vision of what I would create with hammer, nails, and wood was magnificent--we're talking seamless symmetry, profound usage ability, all-around-wow-factor. The kind off thing I could bring in for Show and Tell to my second grade classroom with Mrs. Schwartz at John F. Kennedy Elementary School and watch all my classmates gaze and say, Dude, how in the world did Luke actually BUILD THAT?!

The reality of what I made during those workroom visits was, however, much different. One time, I tried to build a wooden rocket ship that would put NASA to shame. Instead, the pieces of my dad's scrap wood that I nailed and wood-glued together ended up looking more like a porcupine that swallowed a sink pipe than a rocket. Bent nails protruded from the thing and glue beaded around all it's edges. It's jagged sides all over could have sliced an onion or two or 343.

And my attempt to paint over these severe lapses didn't much help, either. Rather than make the thing look more like a NASA rocket, the paint had the effect of highlighting each mistake in a new and vibrant color.

So, as my seven-year old eyes examined what I had created and held it against the image of what I had wanted to create before I began working, I picked the whole thing up and dumped it in the trash barrel that sat below my dad's workshop desk.

The next day, it was sitting on top of the desk.

When my dad came home from work at Cigna in Hartford, I asked him how my failed attempt at a rocket made it out of the trash and onto his work desk.

"I love it, Luke, and I'm keeping it right there."

I didn't know what to say in response.

Fast-forward about a quarter of a century to this morning. My own four-year old sits at Jen and I's writing desk in our closet/study, crying. He's holding a piece of paper on which he has drawn airplane windows. He has stapled the end of the paper into a nose, and he has taped various parts of the paper to try and form landing gear.

But the paper has ripped, and the staples are coming out, and the tape is sticking more to itself than the intended plane. And so Tyler's tears are profuse.

"I'm throwing this away because it's all NOT GOOD."

And the tears.

Suddenly, all I can see is the rocket I tried to build so many years ago. The rocket I threw away.

So I pull Tyler onto my lap and I tell him the story of my wooden rocket, and how I thought it was so, so, so, so, SO bad. When I tell Tyler about what Bubba (my dad) did, and how the rocket sat proudly on my dad's workshop desk the next day, Tyler looks up at me through his own wet eyes.

"Really?"

"Really."

I pick up Tyler's airplane and hold it in my hands. "To me, son, this is beautiful. I love it."

The thing is: Jen and Tyler and I went back home for a visit this past summer. After two years away from America, everything felt new again. The backyard in which I grew up playing kickball and building forts and going on various missions felt oddly soaked with mystery and joy and possibility again.

And when Jen and I and Tyler set ourselves up for a week in my parents' basement, I sauntered into my dad's old workshop.

There, on his work desk sat my wooden rocket. Its nails still offensively bent out at every angle, the paint still highlighting each mismatched side and each bubbling ball of glue.

For the part twenty-five years, my throwaway has been my dad's inspiration.

So often, we make the mistake of thinking that it is only our successes, the images of perfection in our heads, our achievements and our triumphs that are memorable and meaningful. And sometimes, these things are meaningful and memorable.

But sometimes, it's not the image in our heads that matters, but rather that imperfect practicality that works outward from our hearts to our hands. We believe in something, we go for it, we create it as best we can. And should we hold the authentic creation up in front of us and feel defeated because it doesn't match the perfect image, we might do well to remember that our throwaways could end up being someone else's prized visions.

W.B. Yeats wrote in his poem When You Are Old, "How many loved your moments of glad grace / And loved your beauty with love false or true. / But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, / And loved the sorrows of your changing face." I once recited these line to my wife, because I could find no better articulation of what love is. Real love concerns itself not with the perfections we find in one another or in our own creations. Real love is concerned with the pilgrim soul; real love is concerned with loving the wounds in one another, in ourselves, and in the stories we make and live.

25 years later, I am finally proud to close my eyes and see the image of that rocket I built--with its jagged edges and bent nails. Perfection wouldn't have been anywhere near as beautiful, or as memorable.

Today, may we seek to find the pilgrim souls in one another--to love each other not for the precision with which we think, live, or act--but because we've got our own host of jagged edges and bent nails. And may we seek to see our stories through the lens of the pilgrimage we're on rather than the distance between us and an image of success.

I'm thankful that I've now got a beautifully stapled, taped, and marker-drawn airplane on my desk to remind me.

What Binds Us Together

So a few weeks ago, on a particularly dreary early morning, I was doing the paper route while bemoaning a lack of sleep and a particularly annoying case of the runs. I made it halfway through the route--to house number 18 on a small cul-de-sac--and in the window near the front door I saw a very old woman, sitting in front of the morning news on her television.

As I came up to the door to push the newspaper--The Times--through the mail slot, she looked up at me. Clad in mismatched winter hat and gloves and stay-at-home-daddy-fleece pants and a large puffy coat on which I wore a bright florescent orange vest (the British marketing campaign for safety paramount), I smiled through the window at this 80-ish-year-old woman.

Through her thick glasses and early morning eyes, the woman broke into a smile.

So I smiled even wider back at her.

Then she smiled even wider back at me.

Poised in our small dance of ever-widening smiles, the day suddenly became brighter to me. My stomach even felt calmer.

And then I did what any 32-year-old-American paperboy-living-in-England-while-writing-and-daddying-and-teaching-night-classes would do: I gave the old woman a thumb's up.

She slowly raised her arm and gave a thumb's up right back at me.

And everything was going to be okay. I knew it. Margaret (the name of the lovely lady, I later learned) knew it, too.

Fast forward to this morning, and Tyler is on the paper route with me. The deal is: he can come on Friday and Saturday mornings because he doesn't have any pre-school on those days, and so the hour and a half walk doesn't exhaust him before a day of playing knights and castles and galloping with other four-year olds.

We made it halfway through the route, and then an absolute gem of a lady, Claire, comes running out of the Bed & Breakfast she and her husband, Bob, own (The Adams House B & B). Poised in each of her hands is a bacon sandwich: one for me, one for Tyler. We smile wide and thank Claire and Tyler looks up at this lovely lady and says, "It's delicious!" I repeat the words.

And when we're finished with the paper route, we make it back to the little corner store to drop off the florescent yellow bag (safety in florescence!) and Amid is behind the counter. Amid and I usually chat for five or ten minutes after I drop off the bag, but this morning he's particularly amused by Tyler's amazement at a Spiderman magazine on the front counter of the shop.

Spiderman!

Amid laughs while Tyler swoons, and then Amid reaches into his pocket, pulls out the pound that the magazine costs, and says to Tyler, "Here you go, little man, I buy this for you. Okay? This good?"

Tyler looks back at Amid with the stunned shock of great joy. Then he looks up at me as if to say, Daddy, could this really be true? Could life be THIS amazing?

And I smile back at my son, then at Amid, and I think, Dang straight. It's true.

Because what binds us together isn't the fact that life is hard. Yes. Life is hard. Life is going to give us circumstances and situations and walls that we can't see past. Life is going to make us question ourselves and our dreams and our hopes. Life is going to sometimes mock us and laugh at us and hurt us and make us think that there's just no way we're going to be able to keep moving forward.

But that's not what binds us together.

From the pages of Crime and Punishment to Middlemarch to War and Peace to Things Fall Apart to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry to Okay for Now to Mockingbird to Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities--what binds us together as humans is the response of small kindnesses, little acts of courage, tiny decisions to help one another to keep moving forward.

From the small village of Orica, Honduras, to the big city of Moscow, Russia--from Marlborough, Massachusetts to Dehra Dun, India to Flagstaff, Arizona to York, England, what I have seen and what I know to be true is this: all of us are facing battles that we sometimes feel are too big for us. All of us are facing situations around which we can't always seem to wrap our hearts. But when one person--one single person--smiles at us with sincere kindness in their eyes, that battle becomes just a little bit easier.

When one single person gives us a thumb's up, or rushes out into a frosty morning with a bacon sandwich, or buys a Spiderman magazine--that battle suddenly becomes more clear, more manageable, more hopeful.

Because despair makes its living in a solitary way. Despair wins when we don't let others in--and when we don't reach out to others as well. Philo said it best when he exhorted: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is engaged in a battle." Jesus said it pretty dang well too when he said, "Love one another as you love yourself."

The small ways we show kindness to one another are what bind us together. These kindnesses can take the shape of seemingly insignificant acts--but each one wields a powerful blow to the wall of despair. Every tiny smile, every small nod of the head in belief and hope, every resistance to judge and mock another--these all translate to cracks in the walls life shows us. And as these cracks deepen and grow, the full force of hope is unleashed.

What binds us together isn't the very different, divergent ways we struggle against the pain of our lives. What binds us together is the small act of kindness that we give and receive. Though these acts of kindness may wear the mask of insignificance, in reality, they shake the very foundations of despair.

Finding Light

At the bottom of our little street there is a small wooded area known to us as The Magical Forest--namely because, well, it is magical. Prickers are really angry dragons whose chocolate has been stolen by desperate Chocolate Bandits (who only steal chocolate because they have never known the sublime sensation of receiving chocolate as a gift). A large broken tree that hangs down a few feet above the ground is actually a massive trampoline which can catapult a small boy as far as, say, the moon. And a low-looping branch is (of course) a Smoothie Rest Stop on the treacherous journey to the heart of the Magical Forest.

And all this is quite risky and marvelous and the Magical Forest grows and changes with each visit to its wonders. But a few weeks ago--down at the very edge and end of the Magical Forest--Tyler and I noticed a low branch from a tree which someone had pushed into the ground. It was a couple of inches in diameter, and whoever did the deed must have really worked at it.

And succeeded. The branch had been pushed directly into the ground, then covered with a fairly large rock, and then a long, heavy board had been laid across the branch and nailed to it and the base of other small trees nearby. In short: someone had ensured that this branch would grow straight into the ground. (Why someone did this escapes me.)

Tyler and I looked at the strange little experiment and we both wondered aloud what had happened to that branch.

"Daddy! Maybe the Dragons use it as their slide that goes straight into the ground and way way way way WAY to the middle of the earth!"

Tyler's hypothesis was a very good one. I nodded my agreement of this possibility. But then something magical happened in the Magical Forest. Something really magical. Super-duper MAGICAL.

Tyler stepped onto the branch that has been forcefully burrowed into the ground. When he did so, a tiny little thing with green buds on it two feet away moved. Tyler climbed down, and I asked him to do it again. And again: the tiny little thing two feet away moved.

We proceeded to do our own experiment--moving the branch in the ground as much as we possibly could, and each time, the little plant moved. Then, we went over the the little plant and pulled and prodded it and--Holy Crap!--the branch moved.

Deductive reasoning and a little bit of dirty fingernail digging unearthed the truth for us: that branch had said, essentially, I don't think so. That branch had remained underground for two long, hard, deep feet and then it had managed to break the soil and find the light.

Tyler and I discussed how the branch might have said exactly those words: I don't think so.

As a brave, bold knight would say them? I DON'T THINK SO.

As a climber of Mt. Everest must utter them, fighting back defeat and despair? I...don't...THINK...SO!

As an astronaut who has just glimpsed the moon through her tiny little rocket window? I don't THINK SO!

However the branch said these words to whoever forced it into the darkness of the ground, to the heavy rock that lay atop it, and to the board nailed in its path to light--the words came. And--man!--to have heard them.

Now, on each journey to the end and edge of the Magical Forest we make sure to spend a few moments with this most Magical of Branches. We shake, tenderly, both the branch and the plant and watch the reverberations travel along the two feet of hidden, dark growth. We point to the green buds that get bigger by the day, and we wonder at how marvelous the leaves will look when Spring finally announces that it's time.

And I know that many of us, pushed into the dirt by the circumstances of life, bearing heavy weights, often think that the darkness we might find ourselves in is it. That our chances at budding may be irrevocably lost or bound with the heaviness and pressure of nails.

There is a beautiful moment towards the end of George Eliot's Middlemarch when two characters--Dorothea and Rosamond--are meeting and the scene is set for revenge, hatred, bitterness, and despair to reign. Both parties have been deeply hurt and profoundly misunderstood. But then Dorothea decides on a different route: instead of burrowing further into the darkness she bulldozes the walls that stand between her and Rosamond. She shares with bold honesty and remarkable forgiveness all that is on her heart. And in the face of such courage, Rosamond, too, cannot maintain the grasp on her own bitterness and spite. It's at this poignant moment that Eliot writes, simply, "Pride was broken between them."

Pride was broken between them.

In the place of a bitter reluctance to renewal and hope, these two characters tear down the walls that divide them and they break out into open light. Instead of pride, they choose confidence. Instead of a haughty sense of comparison and competition, they choose cooperation and boldness moving forward.

Last night, in the Public Speaking class, each of 12 students shared the start to a speech called One True Thing. We talked about the need to break past the walls all around us--and to refuse and refute the lies of Shame, Fear, Despair, and Bitter Criticism by using bold, clear, and passionate voices to say what we believe.

And as I watched these 12 people of all different ages share their bold truths, I couldn't help but allow my eyes to do what they wanted to do: yup--tear up. I felt an incredible sense of gratitude for just being able to hear these voices. For watching these voices bud with the beautiful green of courage and hope and--in clear language--the I don't think so that the Magical Branch uttered.

Whatever darkness and dirt may be piled on top of you right now, may you hold to the hope that even after two feet of despair, the light may still be found. Reaching upwards, the opportunity to break ground and bud is there, waiting. And there are innumerable people waiting to see what kind of leaves you'll grow, and how--exactly--your voice will sound when you utter those beautiful, bold words, I don't think so.

The Real Mt. Everest

Today began with deep sea diving and ended with a trek up Mt. Everest--and all without leaving the comfort of our pajamas. Earlier in the week, Tyler and I had taken the train to Hull (residence of famed abolitionist William Wilberforce) to go through the subatarium, The Deep. While there, we saw sharks, jelly fish, blue lobsters the size of Arizona, and wolf-eels.

(The wolf-eels were hands down the absolute most remarkable. They lurk, usually, on the sea floor and crunch crab shells for food. They're gentle giants, though. And they mate for life. When the mother births eggs, she wraps her 2-meter long body around the eggs to protect them. Then, the father wraps his body around the mother to protect her and the eggs.)

Since our visit to Hull, we've been exploring the deep sea worlds of our carpet (layered with a thick blue blanket on top, along with fish masquerading as bath toys). Today, we stood atop the couch, science goggles covering faces, and invisible air tanks on our backs, and leapt into the wonders of the ocean.

Roger Priddy's Fabulous Atlas for Kids

Later, after looking through a fabulous picture-book atlas by Roger Priddy, Tyler became fascinated with Mt. Everest. Some of his friends at school are from Nepal, and Tyler immediately began what would become the days; refrain.

"Daddy, can we go to Nepal and climb Mt. Everest right now?"

"Well, to get to Mt. Everest, we have to buy place tickets, and pack our bags, and then ride our bikes to the train station, and then get a train to the airport, and then fly to Nepal--so that will tale a loooooong time!"

"Well, let's start packing our bags then, Daddy!"

I thought for a bit and then said, "Hey, let's climb Mt. Everest in our imaginations--just like deep sea diving. Come on!"

We robed ourselves in winter coats and grabbed ice picks that looked an awful lot like tree branches. Still wearing pajamas (ahem, snowsuits), we pulled our sub-zero goretex boots on and made the long trek to the Nepal at the bottom of Lesley Avenue. We hiked through the treacherous pricker bushes (ahem, ice cliffs) and narrowly escaped the pokey broken branches (AVALANCHES!) until we finally made it to the peak.

I looked at Tyler with wide eyes and a big smile. "We made it, son!"

Tyler half-smiled, then looked back at me. "Okay, but Daddy." And there was something in that Daddy that was the seed of a deeper longing. Something far more expansive. Something far more challenging. Something far more...

Far.

"Since we already did the pretend mt. Everest, can we go home and pack our bags and ride our bikes to the train station and take a train to the airplane station and take a airplane to THE REAL MT. EVEREST?"

"Well, see, the REAL MT. EVEREST is so so so far away that we need to plan way ahead."

"Daddy, what does plan way ahead mean?"

"Plan way ahead means we have to think about it a lot, and have oxygen tanks, and real ice picks, and super big boots, and super big coats."

"But Daddy, I am not very big yet, so super big boots will go over my belly button!"

Our day progressed, and we managed to make it back down the other end of the street from Nepal to our kitchen. We ate a lunch of salad, mangoes, and wheat bread and butter. After lunch, Tyler looked up at me with a half-smile.

"Daddy, now that we ate SO MUCH FOOD, can we please please please go to the REAL MT. EVEREST?"

Tyler pushed his chair back form the table, jumped down, and proceeded to show me an array of varying skills and abilities.

"See, Daddy, I am SO STRONG and I have SO MUCH ENERGY because I can jump and run and even reach up almost to the top of the sky."

After discussing the difficulty of getting to the REAL MT, EVEREST at two o' clock on a Thursday afternoon to climb it, well, that afternoon, we decided to do some research. I showed Tyler the gear people wear when they hike Everest, and we printed out a picture of the mammoth mountain so that Tyler could gaze longingly at the towering beauty as it gazed back at him from his wall.

Before we hung up the picture, Tyler asked me if I could write something on it for him.

"Sure, my man, what shall I write?"

The REAL Mt. Everest

"Can you write this: THIS IS A PICTURE OF THE REAL MT. EVEREST. TYLER REALLY WANTS TO CLIMB THE REAL MT. EVEREST. SO DOES DADDY. SO DOES MOMMY. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DADDY CAN WE HIKE THE REAL MT. EVEREST."

The picture now rests proudly on Tyler's wall, right above his bed. Tyler now sleeps soundly.

However silly and ignorant Tyler's desire to climb the tallest mountain in the world, it strikes me now that we all need a dose of that kind of silliness and ignorance. There's a beautiful line from the film Amazing Grace, based on the life of William Wilberforce, when a close friend, William Pitt, announces to Wilberforce that he wants to become prime minister. Wilberforce chuckles and says, "No one our age has ever taken power." To which Pitt responds, "Which is why we're too young to realize that some things are impossible."

Ah! To hold onto that innocence which still doesn't realize that some things are impossible. I think this kind of  holding-on is, possibly, the only real ally of authentic barrier breaking. When we're at the threshold between innocence and experience, we often make the mistake of thinking that to enter one is to leave the premises of the other.

Maybe not. Maybe there's a way to move forward into experience and learning and growth and reality without totally relinquishing the dreams of youth that maturity often associates with impossibility.

Jen and I often remark to one another that if we knew, in advance, what these three years in England would entail, we would have been hard pressed to make the same choice again. Would we really have given up everything and come across the pond literally broke if we didn't think a big pot of gold was soon waiting for us. (A few months at most, surely!)

Probably not. But then we would have missed the greatest adventure of our lives. We would have missed riding bikes in the pitch black night with tiny lights clipped on front and behind, Tyler riding in a bike trailer. We would have missed pulling our wheeled luggage the two miles back and forth to the grocery store to go shopping. We would have missed seeing that even without money, the greatest joy we have ever experienced is still possible. We would have missed feeling totally broken inside, and then waking up the next morning to find that what broke the night before was only the shell, and not the seed inside.

Will Tyler and I wake up tomorrow and book a flight to Nepal?

Maybe we'll put that particular dream on hold a few decades. But in the meantime, I hope to never be a father that says it's impossible. I want to be the kind of man who looks into the bright eyes of his son and says--unequivocally--you ever hike THE REAL MT. EVEREST and I'll be at your side.

One True Thing from My Dad, Harry Wilson Reynolds, III: A Spark Always Exists

Dad and Grandson Tyler

It's a fitting time to share One True Thing from my father, since being a paperboy has been recently on my mind. When I got that first paper route as a ten-year old, I remember one of the all-time highs of doing the thing (rivaling even the obscene amounts of candy-purchasing-power I now possessed) was Saturday morning breakfasts with my father. Instead of taking my bike around, as I did from Monday though Friday, on Saturday morning my dad would tell me to hop in his tiny 1982 Ford Escort, baby blue, and off we'd go. He would help me deliver the papers and when we were finished, we'd drive over to A.C. Peterson's Diner on the border of Hartford and Windsor, Connecticut.

Pancakes.



Dad Snowblowing Nemo!

That word deserves its own paragraph because that's what my father and I built our relationship on. Pancakes. We would sit at A.C. Peterson's and eat mountains of pancakes with a huge ball of fresh butter in the middle and pure maple syrup streaming down the sides like avalanches off Everest. My dad would plunge a fork into his own thick stack and--bam!--literally a full quarter of the stack would disappear into his mouth. I still don't know how he managed to do it. He'd ask me about school, about writing, about what I thought of life. And each time his fork would plunge in I'd watch with a massive smile, waiting to see what correlation of syrup and butter and pancake would make the journey to his mouth.

On Sundays, throughout my childhood, my dad would cook his own pancakes in our home kitchen. He was a fixture by the stove--and as each of my four brothers and I would wake, and my mother, and when my grandparents arrived, my dad would stare out with wild, wonderful eyes and ask, "How many!"

Indeed, it was more a call to arms than a verifiable question.

What I appreciate most about my dad is his relentless enthusiasm for life. He's had to face some walls that I can't even imagine trying to scale, but every day he has woken up and tried to pass on to his five boys a sense of the wonder of life--the fact that we can hug one another, laugh with one another, noogie one another, fart (constantly) in front of one another, listen to one another, love one another.

When I was in high school, I did a creative writing project whereby I wrote 50 poems and then revised them and collected them into a small poetry book, called Eggs, Sunnyside Up. My dad read the thing and then, one Saturday afternoon, drive me into Hartford and brought me out for a cup of coffee at a place called Zuzu's, where we sat up in the loft and I tried to get used to the flavor of coffee while he told me how proud he was of me. Then he brought me to a print shop and together we chose a cover, font, style, size and he paid for thirty copies of the book to be printed up.



Dad and His Five Boys During a Camping Reunion Trip

Many years ago, during my first year of being a high school English teacher, there came a point where I just felt like I had nothing left. I had a stack of essays to grade and I'd already put them off long enough. Now it was Sunday, and I had promised--promised!--my students that I would have them back on Monday no matter what. The problem was, this particular Sunday I could barely get out of bed, let alone conceive of grading 26 five-page essays.

My father drove thirty miles to meet me at a local coffee shop--Lasalle's--and sat with me for five hours as I relentlessly graded the things. Everytime I looked up at him with weary eyes that said--I can't do this job, let alone grade these essays--my dad would walk over to the free refill station and grab me another cup of joe, then place it in front of me. "Come on, Lukie-babes, you got this. Yes! Caffeine it! I put extra cinnamon in there, Luke--you got this!"

Dad and Tyler and I in Summer 2010

And, as often happens when my father comes out with his phrases that arise from his deep enthusiasm for life, I had to smile. My father must have gotten me about twelve cups of coffee that day (and pancakes were a part of the meeting earlier, to be sure). And he made sure to sit across from me until I finished.

In this life, we all face walls that we wish we didn't have to. We all come up against circumstances that we wish we could change. My father has faced a lot of those. But he's always chosen to keep going at it--to keep pouring another cup of coffee and look for a way to find some enthusiasm (or at least invent some strange new phraseology). That's the big lesson I hold onto from my father: don't quit, and while you're not quitting, drink a heck of a lot of coffee and pile your pancakes high.

Without further rambling from me, One True Thing--poetry style--from my dad.

A Spark Always Exists
By Harry Wilson Reynolds, III

Once, when the first snow came,

I saw with wonder

The small tracks.

Sprinkled across the ground,

Like small jewels cast aside,

By a thoughtless Giant.

As I grew

I saw only muddy tracks,

The need to shovel paths,

Jobs to be done,

And the ever insistent song of belonging.

As my step grew slow,

My mind churned unceasingly:

Things that had gotten away,

Magic that had died,

Names of things that I could not remember.

Dead light

Bathed me daily,

Whispering the lost song of life,

Stealing my last gasp.

The promise of redemption,

Shadowy,

Just out of reach,

Haunts my every thought.

The journey continues

Along a familiar path,

Worn low by replicated desires,

Demon friends that encourage,

Sameness that blankets the night.

Somewhere in that maelstrom

A spark of me exists,

To be blown to life

Amid the rubble of life's hardness,

It's disappointment,

It's stolen expectations. 

Nonsense of That Sort

There's a beautiful line in George Eliot's Middlemarch where Caleb Garth is responding to the notion that people in town will criticize him if he makes a certain decision--not because of the quality of the decision, but because of how it will seem to others. And Caleb says in beautifully potent words: "Life is a sad tale if it is to be decided by nonsense of that sort."

It strikes me how important these words are when we consider the choices we make: what hopes do we have for our decisions? So much of our culture has become entrenched in results-oriented, data-driven decision making. Nowhere is this seen as clearly as in the consistent battles over school reform. With major foundations and corporations sponsoring bottom-line oriented reforms, teachers are becoming more and more like stock brokers: here's the raw material; make us a return. And the returns are so often tied exclusively to standardized test score results. 

As adults, our lives are consistent with this ethos. The standardized tests are still plentiful, though we call them by other names. We talk of how much money we make, achievements we garner, resume-builders we can claim, honors we've been awarded. These things are all helpful and can be such beautiful gifts, but when we value them first and foremost we set a dangerous precedent: we start making decisions based on the chances that these kinds of results can be achieved. 

The question is: what if they can't or aren't?

Are actions in our lives any less courageous or important or beautiful or inspiring or true if they are not results-oriented?

Parker Palmer talks about the need for faithfulness over effectiveness in this recent interview in The Sun. He says: 

"We need to change our calculus about what makes an action worth taking and get past our obsession with results. Being effective is important, of course. I write books because I want to have an impact. But if the only way we judge an action is by its effectiveness, we will take on smaller and smaller tasks, because they're the only kind with which we are sure we can get results. I'm not giving up on effectiveness, but it has to be secondary to faithfulness...And when people are faithful to a task, they often become more effective as it as well." 

The values we want to live by aren't corroborated by results. They are corroborated by the faithfulness with which we continue to live by them. Courage, kindness, grace, boldness, hope, and love aren't data-driven and they aren't dependent on results. They are values that can guide the way we teach, parent, write, and interact with others. The more we get used to thriving on value-rich interactions and pursuits, the more we can say with Caleb Garth that we don't care about what other people think--we don't care about "nonsense of that sort." 

When I was still in elementary school at John F. Kennedy in Windsor, CT, my oldest brother Christopher worked at the local grocery store, Geissler's. Chris was in high school, and this was his first job. My mom would often bring me and my brother Michael into the store to buy groceries just so we could go through Christopher's line and visit him. I loved doing this. Often, another man who worked at Geissler's was near Chris. His name was John, and he had emigrated from China with his wife, Elizabeth. 

In China, John has been a professor of Mathematics. But in America, he bagged groceries. 

One evening, after Chris had worked at Geissler's for a few months, he told us that John and his wife were coming over to the house for dinner, as they wanted to cook an authentically Chinese meal for us. That night ended up being one of the all-time highlights of my elementary school years. Seriously. John and his wife glowed with fun and excitement as they explained to us what they were doing in the kitchen. My whole family watched them, laughed with them, and just loved being around them and hearing stories of their lives.

Over two decades later, John's face is so clearly in my mind. The man's smile could power Manhattan. His exuberance  knew no boundaries, and his kindness as a man and joy as a teacher was so beautifully on display. I've been thinking of John an awful lot in light of this journey. As an elementary school kid I saw John as one of the happiest people I had ever met in my young life.

Now, as a man, I am sure that John went through great doubts--and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he and Elizabeth struggled to make ends meet, or that John perhaps mourned the loss of his vocation and status as a Professor when eh came to America and exchanged it to be a grocery bagger. And yet John's life is no less beautiful or inspiring to me now than it was when I was a kid. John's smile is no less real or poignant because I have grown and seen some of the hard truths life so generously gives us. 

Instead, John's work in the world strikes me as even more profound. The impact he had on me as a young kid was to plant a seed which grew up inside my heart to say, essentially, who we are isn't tied to the results we achieve or the amount of money we make. Who we are is tied to the way we care for others--the love we give and receive. 

Sometimes I fight with this seed and its growth. Sometimes, I dang well want to take clippers and prune the thing way, WAY back. Sometimes--YES!--I want to chop the whole thing down.

But then it flowers. Little buds appear on the growth of what was once a seed, and when these buds open up they confirm what John first showed me long ago, what Parker Palmer talks about above, and what Caleb Garth scoffs about. What keeps us warm on cold nights aren't the results we've accomplished or the test scores we've garnered. It's the love we share. 

I Have Those Exact Shoes. For Real! (And a Cover Reveal)

At the end of last week, I felt a giddy excitement when our editor at Chicago Review Press, Lisa Reardon, sent an e-mail attachment my way with the cover of Break These Rules. Out on September 1, 2013, the book includes essays from authors I deeply admire and who inspire me (and a whole heck of a lot of other readers).

Besides the joy of seeing a project that my remarkable agent, Ammi-Joan Paquette, ushered into existence, I was also happily surprised to find that the yellow shoes on the cover of the book are the same yellow shoes I own.

Seriously.

Two years ago, one of our neighbors here in York gave me a pair of yellow shoes that would satisfy the Fulford Indoor Bowls Club regulations. I had been bowling in hiking boots--something that dismayed the elderly men and women with whom I bowl every Thursday night. The indoor mats don't take kindly to those high rubber ridges. I was in need of flat shoes with no money to purchase flat shoes.

Introduce the yellow gifts of love! My neighbor had heard of the predicament and one evening knocked on our door. When I opened, she stood there holding the exact same yellow shoes you see on the cover of Break These Rules.

Seriously.

Now I just need to find some fabulous-looking argyle socks to complete the wardrobe.

In the meantime: the essays in this book are essays I wish I had when I was a teenager. They are essays about dressing to match who you are rather than dressing to match who everyone else is. They are essays about being male or female less in the Hollywood, strict code-of-conduct way and more in the freedom-expanding way. They are essays about moving money way down on the priority list, giving the need to "be cool" a vacation, and both speaking boldly and also allowing quietness to be powerful. These essays explore the strict notions of status-quo living that so many teenagers (and, ahem, adults) constantly face.

Break These Rules is a book that arises out of needs I saw in myself as a teenager--and, yes, as an adult--and needs I saw and see in my students. Sometimes, we only learn to explore new possibilities when others share their explorations with us. Poet Theodore Roethke famously wrote, "I learn by going where I have to go." In Break These Rules, 35 authors bravely and vulnerably shared where's they've gone and what they've learned by breaking the rules of a status-quo society.

My hope is that these essays will show teenagers and adults alike that there are other ways of being oneself in the world; there are ways to be courageous and kind and beautiful and bold that don't involve doing things the way they've always been done.

All of the royalties from this project are being given to the Children's Defense Fund.

Here are the awesome authors who have kindly and bravely shared their rule-breaking adventures and admonishments within the book:

Kathy Erskine, Sara Zarr, Josh Berk, Carl Deuker, Francisco X. Stork, Matthew Quick, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Leslie Connor, Wendy Mass, Carol Lynch Williams, Gary D. Schmidt, A.S. King, Neesha Meminger, Lisa Schroeder, Mike Jung, Anna Staniszewski, Jen Nielsen, Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Jennifer Ziegler, Brian Yansky, Chris Barton, Tara Lazar, Natalie Dias Lorenzi, Jennifer Reynolds, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, Mitali Perkins, Margo Rabb, Lisa Burstein, Rob Buyea, Chris Lynch, Pat Schmatz, Sayantani DasGupta, Tamara Ellis Smith, and Thanhha Lai.

On Being a 32-Year-Old Paperboy-Man-Dad-Writer-Teacher

Exactly twenty-two years ago I earned the first job of my life: I would deliver 18 newspapers to our neighbors on Alcott Drive and nearby Brewster Road in Windsor, Connecticut for the now-defunct Journal Inquirer. [Note: even though I often delivered the papers later than required, I don't think I played any hand in the newspaper offices shutting down ten years later).

I was ten years old. I was excited. After all, I'd be making my very own money for the first time, necessarily precipitating (and sustaining) the momentous occasion of being able to ride my bike to the local gas station and purchase obscene amounts of candy without asking my mom for money. In the life of a ten-year old, this is huge.

In the life of a thirty-two year old? Not so huge.

In fact, kind of small. Tiny, rather. Miniscule. Microcosmic. Shameful?

So three weeks ago, I got a phone call from the corner store near the home we rent in York, England. Two and a half years ago, when we first made the leap to give away all our possessions, leave jobs, switch roles, and relocate across the Atlantic Ocean (how's that for subtle, slow change?) I saw a sign in the window of this corner store. The sign said BOYS AND GIRLS NEEDED FOR PAPER ROUTES. But we were newly expatriated, broke, confused, and I was slowly realizing that thinking along the lines of quick-book publication-to-sustain-family-making-crazy-leap wasn't exactly a healthy, sane, reasonable, or in any way bright way to think about life.

So, while we figured things out [ahem, continue to do so] and while I enjoyed being a stay-at-home father and writer, I saw the need for a little [ahem: microcosmic] money to help the cause. I figured I could deliver the newspapers before Tyler woke in the mornings and still be ready to go for a day of Lollipop walks, riding swings on various playgrounds, Finding-dog-poopies-walks, and endless reading of truly delightful picture books. [note: picture books are divine. All books are divine. but picture books are especially divine because my son and I both appreciate their awesomeness at the same exact moment.]

The thing is, the corner store never called back.

Until two and a half years later. At which point, Jen and I had talked at length about what God's been teaching us along this seemingly-crazy journey, numerous books have been written and revised and written and revised with great passion and hope and (yes, sometimes) gritting of the teeth. At which point I'd read some of the best novels of my life (Wuthering Heights, Okay for Now, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Middlemarch), and at which point Brene Brown's incredible research and challenge in Daring Greatly had come to present itself to Jennifer and I.

In choosing to do something that doesn't make sense and doesn't follow the arc of what's expected, we--all of us--open ourselves up to criticism. We open ourselves up to the notions that maybe we're making a big mistake. That maybe we're making problems for other people, messing with the Status Quo when the Status Quo would much rather be left alone, thank you very much.

Jen and I have certainly encountered those moments where we'd look at each other and wonder, "Did we really need to give away all that awesome stuff? Remember the drying machine! The DRYING MACHINE!" And during these crisis-type moments, we usually did what any sane, wise couple would do: we scrounged for loose change and bought a bag of Cool Ranch Doritoes and a beer to split. Or, rather, we closed our eyes and prayed, and challenged and encouraged one another, and reminded ourselves that anything different or new isn't easy. It's not supposed to be.

And usually after those moments of crisis, we'd come to another realization: we don't want it to be easy. We want to grow. We want to learn. We want to see life from a different perspective. We want to consider totally different narratives--both for our own tiny family, and for the larger family of which we're all a part. We want to crack the shell of those words Jesus said--love your neighbor as you love yourself--and touch and taste what's inside. We want to ask why not? more than we ask why? And more than anything else, we want to learn what hope looks like when its face is pushed into the dirt. [note: Hope's face doesn't have to be ground into the dirt, does it? let's not get too carried away.]

And so, on my first day of being a 32-year-old paperboy-man-dad-writer-teacher, I loaded thirty newspapers into a brightly reflective yellow bag on which the words THE DAILY TELEGRAPH were splayed. I walked the route that first morning with a sense of hope, even fun. And then, pushing the crosswalk button after I'd finished, I saw a teenager finishing her route too. She even had a matching reflective yellow bag like I did!

Cool! Thinking we'd have that instant job-sharing connection, I smiled wide and tossed a hearty, "Morning!" her way.

And that's when it suddenly descended: the shame. She smirked first, then looked towards the ground in utter disbelief. I realized then what I must have looked like to her: a guy in his thirties with a stubbly beard working as a....newspaper carrier? For real?

And there are moments when all of our lofty goals and assertions sometimes turn back towards us and become our accusers. Moment even when our dreams turn to face us, lift their fingers, and say, You really thought so? For real?

Did we really think coming to England two-and-a-half years ago with no money and changing family roles and knowing no one was going to be easy?

No.

Did we think it was going to be as hard as it felt that particular morning?

No!

But then something amazing happened. Something magical. Something miraculous. (Usually, these kinds of events happen just after the moment when everything you've fought for and believed in tends to suggest that Possibility has taken a permanent vacation).

It snowed. It snowed massively, so that a week into my new paper-route job, I was led to drag a cart with triple-sized Saturday morning papers from door-to-door amidst freezing temperatures. Was I grumpy? yes. was I wondering what it was all for? Yes.

Until I looked back along the sidewalk and my wife and my son were walking towards me. I mean my wife and my son. There they were, holding hands, walking towards the third door of the route, twenty-seven papers left to go. My four-year-old boy grabbed that metal cart alongside my own hand, and my wife grabbed the other side. "We'll do it together today," Jen told me, with a look in her eyes that blew every notion of failure or mockery or impossibility to smithereens.

And that Saturday, we did the paper route as a family. We dragged that cart through the ice and the snow of the roads, yes, but also through the ice and the snow of my own heart.

Brene Brown writes in Daring Greatly that when shame strikes we need to say in reply. "This hurts. This is disappointing, maybe even devastating. But success and recognition and approval are no the values that drive me. My value is courage and I was just courageous. You can move on, shame." God says in 2 Corinthians 12:9, "My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness." And my four-year old boy says, "We can do it, Daddy! Come on!"

The beauty of all of these words is that they are not results-driven. They're not about the end product of success or failure--but rather they're about the singular decision to get up and keep going.

Three years ago, I used to wake up and put on an ironed shirt and tie, ironed trousers, and grab a leather satchel filled with student essays and notes for important upcoming meetings. I used to have a binder with PhD coursework for a program at Boston College.

Today, this morning, I did a paper route. I passed by teenagers who aren't much different that the ten-year-old boy that still, sometimes, makes his voice known inside of me.

The trajectory of this character arc could, possibly, be markedly seen as failure. If this life were the stock market? Forget about it.

But when I examine what this experience has been about--what's it's taught me and my wife and our son--there's no way I would trade these last two and a half years for anything. Because, see, there are many other moments like that snowy Saturday morning. There are so many other moments when everything seemed lost or impossible, and then Hope would break through and prove that despair and criticism and fear have no permanent place. They're squatters.

With six months to go on this crazy England journey, I think it's possible to characterize one of the biggest lesson I have been learning in a single line: what matters more than anything else is the way we embody love towards one another. It's more important than all our credentials, all our achievements, and all our significance.

Whatever you face in your life right now, may you face it with the quiet certainty that the love within you is stronger than the circumstances outside of you. And if you need a reminder of this truth, I highly suggest a stint as a 32-year-old paper carrier.