Poem for the Maybe-Inclined

Open up the world.
See it for its breadth, depth, beauty, pain.
Life is bigger than we think.
Smaller than we scoff.
Go out and touch it.
See it.
Swim in the oxygen that
Sits still unless we take
Staccato breaths
And big steps
Off cliffs, out of boxes,
Where the air is thin and
Meaning is thick.
Reach.
Teach.
Learn.
Burn.
Think not of thriving
Or of dying,
But of all that is
Waiting to come alive.

"An Act of Hope": An Interview with Francisco X. Stork

Ever since I read Marcelo in the Real World, I have admired, been inspired by, and devoured everything Francisco X. Stork writes. Creating characters and worlds with great depth and remarkable heart, Stork is able to elucidate what maters most in life. And he connects with readers in ways that not only make for engaging and powerful reading experiences, but can truly change people's lives.

He has already changed mine.

So it is with a huge amount of excitement and gratitude that I want to share an interview with Francisco X. Stork, along with a plea: please (please! please! please!) read his most recent novel The Memory of Light. I wept, exulted, and relished the chance to hear such an authentically moving and life-changing novel. It is one of those few books that I truly believe everyone needs to read, and I thank Francisco so much for writing it.

Growing up, were there any school experiences that either inspired or hurt you? 

More than experiences I think that there were certain persons who guided me and pushed me in the right direction. Many times this guidance was in the form of small gestures that turned out to be significant. I remember, for example, Mr. Halpern, my English teacher at Jesuit High School in El Paso. One day he called me to his desk when class was over and handed me three typed pages. It was a list of a hundred books or so listed in alphabetical order starting with Antigone and ending with Zorba the Greek. 

“These are the books everyone that wants to write should read,” he said. I spent that summer and most of the following year reading each book on the list. It’s how I fell in love with Borges and Cervantes and Dostoievski and Jung and many other classic books of fiction and non-fiction.

As a writer, what part of the process do you love most?

I love it when after a lot of thinking and daydreaming and doodling a character comes to life in my mind and I feel like I can be him or her and think and feel and talk the way he or she does. I think that 80 percent of the writing process happens before I actually start writing. A character needs time to grow inside of me and it is hard to wait for the character to be whole and unique enough for me into step into her shoes. I also love the first draft process when I’m not sure where the book is going and I’m not so much controlling the process as following where it takes me and discovering what I want to say in the process of saying it. During those times I am able to quiet my inner editor and simply write the book that is in me.

In THE MEMORY OF LIGHT, Vicky's journal is so raw and real and full of both despair and hope. How did you find the courage to be able to journey with Vicky in this way? How did you find the words?

It probably helped a lot that I’ve been writing in a journal almost daily since I was a teenager. My journal is a place of total self-honesty. No one will ever read what I write. I don’t even read what I write in a journal once it is written. When Vicky writes in her journal she is also in a place of total honesty. She doesn’t need to pretend that she is strong or happy when she is there. You would think that such self-honesty would be painful and it is - but the process of finding words for what you are feeling is a healing process. I found the words that Vicky used because I’ve experienced what she experiences and probably wrote down for myself some of the things that she writes. Even when the writing is full of despair, the act of writing is an act of hope. There is a hope and faith that there is someone listening to us. In many ways, whether you are overtly religious or not, writing during those times is form of prayer.

What would your advice be to a struggling high school student who is scared about speaking with others about her or his pain? 

The first thing I would say is that it’s okay to be scared. It’s normal to have this fear because you are making yourself vulnerable to another human being. I say this because you shouldn’t wait until the fear goes away to speak to someone. You should just go ahead and do it even though you are afraid. Usually, we have a gut feeling that someone will be a good person to talk to. Maybe we see in someone a kindness or an understanding, a way that a person listens to others, that makes us feel as if we could trust that person. Follow that gut feeling. You don’t have to understand why you’re feeling the way you do before you talk to someone. Just explain what you are feeling and try to communicate the thoughts that you are thinking. “I feel like crap.” or “I have these thoughts about hurting myself.” Just tell what is happening. You are not weak or a bad person for feeling and thinking this way.

Your advice to teachers?  

Be the person that a student can trust. A person in pain is on the lookout for someone who is kind and who can listen. You don’t need to be the student's therapist or even the student’s friend. You just need to let the student’s know that you care. Learn about depression and other mental illnesses and find ways to integrate a discussion of these in your classroom.  Resist as much as you can the pressure to motivate your students by fomenting competition. Let your classroom be a safe place for all. 

Thank you so much to Francisco X. Stork for sharing such depth of heart, and for so honestly walking through both despair and hope. His words remind me of Robert Frost's dictum about writing, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." 

And if you are looking for a book that is not only riveting and inspiring and authentic, but also has the power to truly changes lives, please read The Memory of Light. 

It's a Swamp Thing

No matter what else is going on, being around trees, puddles, roots, moss, vegetation always brings peace. And right now, we are fortunate to be renting an apartment behind which a good-sized expanse of forest sits.

Overt the past week, Tyler and I have enjoyed bushwhacking within the forest--exploring any path that seems to call us, and walking through the EYE POKERS (twigs or thorns approaching eye level), the FEET GOBBLERS (any puddle area deeper than our shoe laces), and along the BALANCE BEAMS (long trees that have fallen and so afforded us ample opportunity to balance our way across).

There is something about bushwhacking that feels right. Something about exploring a forest without a path. Something about zig-zagging our way through notable sights, noises, opportunities.

And when, over this past week, the forest turned into a legitimate swamp with all the rainfall, this excitement grew. Now, we could leap from moss-covered rock to moss-covered rock. We could stretch our legs across substantial FEET GOBBLERS and see if we'd reach safety on the other side.

The swamp smells. The swamp is dirty. The swamp makes bushwhacking all the more riveting. And Tyler's desire to go out and explore it grows exponentially and correlates with the water level.

Meanwhile--as my 7th grade students explore with great cordiality and energy Avi's Nothing But the Truth, and as Jen and I prepare for Christmas, and as Benjamin, our one year old, takes his first wobbling steps on his own--I find myself reading and re-reading accounts of Ferguson.

I re-read all of the plot-driven events, all of the analysis, the commentary, the calls to action, the calls to change, the calls to consider, the calls to contemplation.

And as a swamp-exploring Daddy, I wonder what I will tell my sons when they are old enough to understand. I wonder how I will explain the kinds of balance our world needs, the very present realities of the dangers that lurk everywhere, and prevent justice for some based on what Toni Morrison calls a social construct--invented hate to match swollen, fearful hearts.

It is far easier to tell Tyler what moss-covered rock towards which to leap; it is more difficult to chart a path through the tragedy and pain our world sees played and replayed.

When Tyler and I explore the forest, we take a new path each time. Now that our forest has become a swamp, the possibilities for paths actually increase. The water--rather than hiding avenues--reveals them. The mucky water shows us leaps we never would have seen before. The dirty build-up affords us opportunities to see chances to buck tired, traditional views of safety in pursuit of something more real, something more right.

So, maybe it is a swamp thing. Maybe the injustice we see playing out is the ultimate call to make new leaps. Maybe the inexplicable pain and horror we now watch is causing a rise in the water level, demanding that we get off the paths we've been walking and start to make leaps toward justice.

They will not be easy. And they will throw us off balance. But the status quo is no longer even an option.

I do not have words to explain to my sons the kind of world I wish we lived in; and I know that thinkers and activists far more esteemed and brave then I am even say that such a perfect world of justice and grace is impossible--people like critical race theorist Derrick Bell, who believed that racism will always be among us, though our challenge to fight it is no less necessary.

However, I do have the words to tell my sons to leap. I have the words to tell them to look for the gaps where the water has risen, to see a trajectory across, and to go for it. And as they grow, I can hope to tell them to keep leaping--in the swamps, yes--but also in their schools, in their relationships, in their words, in their lives, and towards justice.

And I can hope beyond hope to model this leaping, however humbly and imperfectly I can.

Red Underwear

Jennifer and I sometimes look at one another longingly whenever Tyler now roars out, "I am Superman--to the rescue!" Because it was a brief six months ago that Tyler's favorite show was the quirky, tender, violence-free Charlie and Lola.

Now?

Goodbye, Charlie and Lola.

Hello, red underwear.

At Target last week, the three of us giddily shopped the clearance rack in pursuit of a few necessary items: ties and a couple of pants to wear to work, some maternity clothes for Jen, and long pants and shirts for Tyler. As we approached one of the clearance racks in the boys sections, Tyler's whole face lit up.

Red Underwear!

With a Superman logo right in the front!

"Daddy! Mommy! LOOK WHAT I FOUND!" Tyler's who body began to do a dance, and he held the sacred red underwear in his hands as though it were something for which his little soul had been searching all his life. Finally! 

I looked at the price tag, exploring the first measure of a viable reason for saying No. But the price tag afforded me no such easy departure into the land of No-Superman-Status. It read: $1.96.

In my mind (yes, for real) flashed Jackson Katz's incredible documentary Tough Guise, which explores the very dangerous and deplorable ways we teach boys how to be men: through violence, bravado, and toughness. I though of the incredible and momentous readings in Critical Race Theory, which challenge us to explode the myths of equality-already-reached and instead see the severe structural inequalities, dominance, and racism built into our society.

And, yes, I thought of Charlie and Lola.

And I looked down into the bright eyes of my soon-to-be-five-year-old son holding red underwear with a Superman emblem right in the front.

"Please, Daddy? I can rescue people with these!"

And, okay, I caved. It wasn't so much that I chose the macho male route (at least I hope not) but rather that I wanted to allow Tyler to explore everything he wants to explore, rather than trying to hold him at a stage or a place that that brings Jen and I delight and glee.

Immediately upon returning home with the $1.96 red underwear with the Superman logo in the front, Tyler ran to his room, put on his blue pants, and then pulled the red underwear on top of them.

He then ran back out to the living room, "Let's go to the park because I AM SUPERMAN!"

At the playground, we saw two children we've played with before, Inian and Chandrini. They are delightful, kind, thoughtful children, and immediately they asked Tyler if he wanted to play with them. And he did.

I sat alongside their mother, explaining about the red underwear. She laughed and smiled, then said., "My kids don't even notice it, see?"

And it was true. They didn't. The three kids walked balance beams, played tag, played Octopus (a game they made up whereby an "octopus" tries to reach up onto the play structure and gran the swimmers' feet! Ah!), and then created an obstacle course.

I watched my son in the red underwear--watched how he giggled, held hands with Chandrini, giggled some more--when it was finally time to go--gave both kids massive hugs. And something in me calmed down. Just because he's in a Superman stage doesn't mean he's going to start acting tough and cool (and we especially hope not, because, hey, lets' face it: he's got a Dad for whom traditional notions of toughness are about as familiar as rubbing Crisco all over oneself and subsequently taking a trip to the Moon).

At lunch today, Jen was explaining to Tyler that on this very day nine years ago, "Daddy asked me to marry him, so today is our anniversary.

"What did you say when Daddy asked you about that?" Tyler wondered with anticipation and excitement written on his face.

"I said Yes." Jen looked at me and I looked at this beautiful, strong, loving, kind woman. Then Tyler interrupted our little reverie and said, "HAPPY UNIVERSITY!"

The thing about red underwear is that maybe it doesn't have to be what society says it is. Maybe it doesn't have to be about bravado and fighting and a one-size-fits-all definition of masculinity. Maybe it's possible to remake Superman into something other than a fighting machine. Because at some point we come to the conclusion that everything is flawed--all of it. There's no film, television show, book, interpersonal connection, article, essay, political stance that is flawless. There is bias and cruelty and ignorance in everything we create, because there is bias and cruelty and ignorance inside each of us.

But there's also love.

There is incredible love. And what is love if it's not the power to remake something, to rename and recreate and redeem? It happens in the small moments when we take one of the world's symbols and we transform it to mean something different--to allow love to so overwhelm that thing that it ceases to signify whatever it once did.

It happens when Superman becomes a stand-in for gentleness and thoughtfulness, and when the rescuing he's doing doesn't involve intense violence but instead involves intense connection. Maybe it happens when red underwear streams across a playground with giddy giggle and lots of hand-holding.

Transforming and renaming and redefining seems to be what Jesus was all about. You thought religion was about rules and standards and judgment? You're wrong. It's not. It's about grace and surprising forgiveness and love. You thought love was being nice to people who look and act and talk just like you? It's not. Love is hard, love is work, love is bravely caring for someone so hard that your caring breaks open the concrete doors of their own pride, fear, self-righteousness, guilt. Seems like Jesus had a never-ending list of You thought it was like that, but it's really like this. 

Like all of us, I am (of course) still learning how to navigate the cultural messages my son receives--and those that I receive. What to allow, what not to allow? How to explain certain things, how to teach certain things, how to transform certain things--in my own heart and in the world's? And while Jen and I both explore how to do this at each new stage Tyler approaches, we're holding on to one firm hope: that love trumps everything, and that nothing--not even Superman's red underwear--can long resist transformation in the face of love.

Two Weeks Notice

Seems like, lately, everything is a precursor to my eyes becoming watery and my head telling my heart, you'll be back, really, you'll all come back every few years to see people you've come to know, walk the obscenely curvy, narrow streets you now are no longer afraid to bike on, and catch the # 7 bus into town.

And yet.

Almost three years ago, Jennifer and I and Tyler--then not yet two years old--boarded a plane at Boston's Logan Airport wondering if, in fact, the apartment we'd leased on nothing more than a phone call and a York, England address would in fact, well, be real. We carried pretty much everything we owned, which by the time we boarded the plane was, well, whatever we could fit into three suitcases. We had enough money to make it a few months and then, well, then--

A few months turned into a few years and Jennifer finished a draft of her PhD thesis on human trafficking.

Tyler went from almost-two to almost-five and in that span concocted analogies that made my aspiring-poet / bathroom-humor-loving dad-self rejoice, such as: "Poops are like thunder; pees are like rain."

I worked as a dad, writer, night-teacher, and morning-paperboy.

Together, we all learned something we didn't expect to be the point of this journey. (But then again, what we learn from the adventures we choose to traverse is seldom what we think we'll learn them beforehand.) We learned that gender roles are tough to reverse, no matter how progressive a family is. But they're worth murkying up and seeing what results.

We learned that living without a steady salary is tough. Really tough. But the freedom to experience what an entirely different class of life is like is priceless. We learned that no judgment is ever warranted--no matter how well we think we might understand someone else's situation. (Or, as Mother Teresa put it much more succinctly, "If I am judging, then I am not loving.")

We learned that life is about learning. There is no getting it right the first time. Period. No one gets it right the first time. (And if they did get it right the first time, they probably just hid their earlier attempts!)

We learned that it's really, really hard to set one's heart on something, and then be rejected from that vision again and again.

And again.

And again.

Until finally, the dam breaks and--!!!--rejection, again.

And again.

But we learned that--trite though it sounds, I'm sure--this is where authentic love happens. In the seemingly endless caesuras after defeat, rejection, almost-but-not-quites, there is an incredible and breathless space for love. The kind of love that doesn't come easy and doesn't feel easy but that, when chosen, feels like your heart is, quite literally, bursting open.

In that openness, it seems there is space for the whole world to fit.

We learned that perfection is a ploy. And even if it weren't, we wouldn't choose it anyway. Perfection leaves nothing to imagination, mystery, depending on others, vulnerability, risk, joy, pain, hope. We learned that choosing the latter is much more fun.

We learned that people are remarkable. I mean, remarkable. People! We learned that people will stop and talk and invite you in to show you their pictures of America back when they lived there fifty years ago, laugh as your son plays with the cat, cry when they remember their own adventures, then ask you if you'd like tea.

People--old people--will smile at you and give you the thumbs-up on a morning paper route, totally disregarding the fact that you are a fully-grown man who didn't have time to shave that morning.

People--little people--will hug you and show you pictures and tell you stories and the light in their eyes will look to the light in yours and will beg, beg, beg for that connection of no words but kindness, seeing, really seeing.

People--regular people--will surprise you with a knock on the door, an offer to join in a basketball or football game, a pat on the back, a phone call or a text message checking in, a sunflower seed that will grow taller than you and next to which your whole face glows yellow.

People of all shapes and sizes and colors and faiths and no-faiths and languages and cultures will look at you and will be willing to connect. If you are willing to connect. And then everything that is assumed to be accurate and aligned and just-the-way-it-is is, well, no longer is.

We learned that it's true what the African proverb says, "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together." And, man, it's fun to go far.

We learned that laughing on the couch in the living room when one's wife is Wonder Woman and one's son is Superman and oneself is Lex Luther provides two hours of fun that is free, ridiculously giggle-filled, and utterly exhausting.

We learned that watching the Queen ride through the streets of your city is a powerful experience, but just as powerful is talking with the man a few streets over who hasn't eaten in a while and of whom no one is lining the sidewalks to catch a glimpse.

We learned that having family who loves you--family that saw all your many imperfections growing up, knows you underneath the grand visions and the big dreams, loves you still, and always will. And the thought of going home to their arms is thrilling.

We learned that adventure isn't one big choice to do something wild. Adventure is a thousand small choices to lean towards things a little unlike what you always thought they would be like.

We learned that we know a lot less than we did three years ago, yet feel more full.

In two weeks, we'll board a plane (preferably the absolute cheapest plane that flies across the Atlantic) and head back to Boston's Logan Airport. And in the next two weeks, I'm going to cry a lot more. Because I'm grateful for the chance to have seen life from a different angle. And I'm grateful to the thousand teachers I have had over here in York--teachers of all ages and cultures and walks and perspectives.

Success, in its raw definition, didn't necessarily happen over here the way I'd thought it might. We're not going home wealthy and prestigious and as bestselling authors. But in that caesura that follows suggested defeat or rejection, there's a kind of success that burns inside of me deeper than anything else I have ever known or felt in my entire life.

It burns so hard and, were it to explode, I venture it'd be big enough to let the whole world in. The success being over here has taught me, in the simplest articulation possible, is this: to say thank you, and to mean it. 

Two Minutes

About two miles from our home, there is a really cool, ethical grocery store. There are three grocery stores a lot closer--and when walking, two minutes versus thirty makes a big difference (especially with the baggage en route home.) When Jennifer or I are feeling particularly energetic, we sometimes give each other a fun little smile which means, essentially, Want to go for the Far Grocery Store? That really cool, ethical one?

And when embarking upon such journeys to the Far Grocery Store--loaded up with either our hiker's backpack, a bike trailer, or canvas bags to lug the food home in--we kind of feel adventurous. Watch out, Indiana Jones, here comes the Reynolds Grocery Trip.

There are all kinds of obstacles along the way...

*Sudden rain! Bam! Quick, run, take cover, launch the umbrellas! No, no, feel the rain! Yes, yes, become one with the rain!

*Sudden hail! Bam! Quick, run, take cover. Yes, yes, take cover, this stuff stings!

*Tired four-year old! Bam! Quick, run, take cover! No, no, wait, stay, hoist him onto the shoulders, forward march!

These outings to the Far Grocery Store always feel like a Thing To Do. Not just a quick bop in for the list, but rather an all-out grocery-store hullabaloo, an activity, a main event. And Jennifer, Tyler, and I usually come home exhausted.

However, this past Monday, we had a first on a Far Grocery Store trip. About ten minutes into the walk / scooter back home, Tyler stopped scootering and boldly announced, "I have to do a pee straightaway."

So I asked what every parent asks their four-year old in this kind of situation: "Can you hold it?"

Tyler looked up at me, breathless and as if to show rather than tell his answer, he danced a little jig right there by his scooter.

I looked back at the super-cool, ethical Far Grocery Store shimmering in the distance. They have a super-cool, ethical, clean bathroom.But ten minutes walk back? In the opposite direction!? That would mean the ten there and then the ten all over again to get back to where we were, only much more exhausted. So, we're really talking fifteen back, and then twenty back to here.

Forward. Got to move forward.

So I calculate again and recall that there's a small divergent path off the sidewalk at one point up ahead, where Tyler used to pee when he was potty training and we happened to be out and about. That divergent path was, say, by my calculations, approximately, maybe...fifteen minutes up ahead.

I knelt down. "Hey little man, can you hold your pee for a little longer?"

Tyler looked up at me and said, "How long?"

And some sort of Parenting Instinct to Lie must have kicked in, because from the very marrow of my being came the words, "Two minutes."

Two minutes!?

Two Minutes!?

Immediately I thought back to my own childhood, whereby I would ask my lovely mother all kinds of time-oriented questions:

"Mom, how long until we can go to the comic book store?"

"Two minutes, Luke."

"Mom, how long until school starts?"

"Two minutes, Luke."

"Mom, how long until I can eat that cake?"

"Two minutes, Luke."

"Mom, how long until I can drive a car?"

"Two minutes, Luke."

It seemed instinctual. Everything was two minutes. The Christmas Tree farm five towns over where we drove to get our Christmas tree each winter was 'two minutes' away. The rest of the cleaning should only take 'two minutes.' Everything would be better in...

Tyler looked up at me with the faith of a child. "Okay, Daddy, let's g. But let's go SUPER-FAST!"

We sped up and off and into the horizon.

Ten minutes later, Tyler said, "Daddy, I have to do a pee SUPER BAD, straightaway!"

I looked up ahead and I could begin to make out that beautiful divergent path. Yes! We could surely make it there in...

"Two minutes, son! We can do it!"

And off we sped, time-warping ourselves forward to the safe-peeing zone, and then making it there just as my son's bladder was about to erupt.

Before my high school graduation in Windsor, CT many years ago, the then-Superintendent of Schools shared a quote that went something to the effect of: "He who is victories is usually he who can hold on just thirty seconds longer."

At the time, I thought, very powerful philosophy of sticking it out, hanging in there even when it feels like you have to quit.

But after Tyler and Two Minutes, I find myself thinking--now wait just a couple of minutes: just how long are these thirty seconds?

And I wonder if, sometimes, God is watching all of us, knowing exactly where the best Pee Spots are, and kind of telling us, "Hey buddy, just hold on for two minutes--just two more minutes." Because maybe, like a parent, He knows if he told us, "Look, it's going to be a long, long time before that wall breaks" we'd kind of crumple to the ground and just fall apart.

Two minutes can sometimes be a very, very long time. Two minutes can be an eternity. But I know that however long two minutes' takes, it's always worth the excitement of the adventure, the rush for the finish line, the joy of the journey. And when we arrive to that Pee Spot or Promised Land--sweaty and bladders bulging--I wonder if two minutes suddenly feels short once more.

Please Do Not Park on the Verge

Every morning on my paper route, I ride past a tall telephone pole on which is posted a sign that reads: PLEASE DO NOT PARK ON THE VERGE. Zipping past, I've never really thought much about it until today. It's in the moments when we feel we can't keep pushing forward that seemingly insignificant things take on momentous value. People giving a thumbs-up, a smile and a chat, a sign on a telephone pole. These are the things the paper route has taught me, and today, after I gave my two weeks' notice as we prepare to begin our transition back to the states this summer, a sign spoke the words on which I desperately needed to ruminate.

Maybe you do, too.

If you find that you're on mile 23, running and feeling the burn along your calves, the strain inside your thighs, the stinging circling your stomach--don't stop. Now is not the time to take a breather, wait and see, wonder the thousand what ifs your mind seems always ready to proffer. Now is the time to keep moving forward. Please, don't park on the verge.

If you find that you're parenting as best as you can, and certain patterns feel so hard to change, and you have so many questions about what you need to learn to do better, what kinds of behavior you're teaching, why your kid shares sometimes and sometimes hoards, why a temper tantrum happens when the day looks bright--don't doubt. Now is not the time to question your ability as a mother or a father, your commitment to growth, or your unconditional love. Keep moving forward, doing the best you can, but understanding that you are never going to get it right every time. No one does. Please, do not park on the verge.

If you find that you're chasing a dream, and yet rejection is chasing you, and calls come that are so close you feel the whisper of their tender-hearted declines--don't lose faith. Now is not the time to take it easy, sit back in your chair, and ponder other avenues or possibilities. Now is the time to work through the closeness until it gets closer and closer. Now is the time to lean into the wind that blows you back, using its own force to make your forward movement that much more determined. Please, do not park on the verge.

If the character arc you're traveling seems oddly void of worldly goods--be it money, fame, praise, prestige, success, respect--don't change course and seek signposts that point towards results over work, product over process. Now is not the time to consider what your bank account could have been, what your status could have been, where your voice might have travelled. Now is the time to get down on yoru hands and knees and watch a bee on a flower; now is the time to realize and fully grab hold of that ancient truth that the work itself is the reward for the work. The joy of the journey is itself the reward for the journey. The love with which you hear and respond to the people all around you is the greatest possible fruition you can fathom. A kiss on the cheek of an elderly woman when you feel like crashing down, a wave to a neighbor, the example of a wife who keeps on giving so generously to a homeless shelter, to friends, to anyone in need even though her own battle is fierce--these are the signposts of love. These are the acts of triumph. Hold onto these. believe these. trust these and keep moving forward. Please, do not park on the verge.

Among everything you are up against, remember that love triumphs if you only choose to keep moving forward. Love your wife. Love your son. Love the people whose paths you find yourself crossing. Let this be your legacy. Not a bullet-point list on a resume. Not a checklist. Not fears of inadequacy nor worries about accomplishments. Let the sheer fact that you never stopped moving forward be all the bullet points you need.

Please, do not park on the verge. Cross over it, believing that the triumph lies in this feat and no other.

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.

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.

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. 

Castles

On a normal Sunday morning, it began when Jennifer looked at me with a spark in her eye and said, "How about a train ride to Scarborough?" Something inside me lit up, and as the two of us told Tyler the plan, he began dancing and immediately donned his red bath robe, announcing, "I will be the boy and the train to Scarborough will be the polar express!"

Two hours later, we had ridden bikes into the city center in a downpour. Soaked and excited, we quickly locked up the bikes outside the train station, offered a granola bar and a Braeburn apple to a man who needed it named Cliff, and then ran towards Platform 5, Tyler's oversized bath robe billowing out behind him.

In Scarborough, the rain didn't let up. After a mile walk down Castle Road--with a brief interlude at Anne Bronte's gravestone at St. Mary's Church--the castle appeared, hunching down as a giant and lowering his hands for visitors to walk through. In the giftshop, we flashed our cards while Tyler tried out some swords, and then tried some crackers with chutney, which he promptly gagged out and onto his shirt and Jennifer's hands.

The next two hours held a slow crescendo of sunlight, until finally a massive rainbow broke the clouds and, as Jen remarked, dove into the ocean beyond the cliff of the castle. We ran and ran and ran--all the while shouting out whatever things came to our heads. We splashed through puddles and tried to wrap our heads around that fact that the castle has existed for a thousand some odd years.

"This is the greatest day I ever had!" Tyler shouted as we ran, and it was hard not to agree.

Leaving the castle, we walked down to the beach and constructed our own. Cold winter sand collected from our gloved hands and rose to form a respectable little tower. We draped seaweed that has washed ashore from all angles of our castle.

The sun slowly made his excuses and ducked out of our day, but not before the thirty-minute-old sand castle and the thousand-year-old stone castle aligned. Looking at them both together from the shore, their sizes were similar. While one would fade with the oncoming waves, in that moment both were just as strong.

In Rachel Joyce's remarkable novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, the protagonist slowly chooses to make what began as a brief walk to the post office into a cross-country journey. Harold continually faces the foes of any adventure that involve the feet and the heart--but again and again Harold makes that quintessential choice: to keep going. As he continues onward, he deals with the regrets of his life--and how his past failures as a man, husband, and father have haunted his present. What is most moving about Harold, though, is that his walk is a promise to face what his life has been, and an attempt to remake it over again.

Joyce writes of Harold, "It didn't matter that he had not planned his route, or bought a road map. He had a different map, and that was the one in his mind, made up of all the people and places he had passed." As Harold walks his journey, he slowly learns to become vulnerable--connecting with others in ways that are authentic and nonjudgmental, and learning to view his own past in this light too.

The thing about castles is that we are often so much more fascinated by those that others have built. We may stand at the boldness of their stone walls and gape at the sheer magnificence of them. And this is important.

But what is just as important is making our own maps, too. Pushing the cold sand into walls that slowly rise and reach up towards the horizons in our very own eyes. Just as important is the need to make maps from all the relationships within which we find ourselves--seeking significance not via accomplishments on the grand scale of years, decades, and centuries, but on the grand scale of the human heart--the way in which we empower it within others, and within ourselves.

In the end, waves come and collect all our work--whether within the tide pushing up against the shore to take the sandcastles we build in a day--or the time pushing up against our lives to bring us to a new home.

What lingers longer than ourselves is never the walls, never the castles themselves, but always the love in which we create and cast our visions onto existence. That is what both allows us to endure, and endures.

One True Thing from Angela Ackerman: Kindness is Contagious

Angela Ackerman is steeped in writerly wisdom--but she is also steeped in life wisdom. The marriage of these two attributes is a blessing to her readers--those who follow her and partner Becca Puglisi's incredible blog The Bookshelf Muse, and those readers of their highly valuable and elucidating book The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression. Angela spreads warmth and generosity wherever she goes--both in person and with her words. So I am so overjoyed to share One True Thing from Angela here today on kindness and paying it forward.

Kindness is Contagious
By Angela Ackerman

I really only have one moral belief that I follow in life: if you can help, do. This mantra guides me as I interact with people, make decisions, and plan my future. I like to be there for others, and contribute to their happiness and success if I can.

It doesn't always work out of course. Like the time a crazy hell cat ran into a neighbor’s house because I had called on her to inquire if a lost cat I’d found was hers (It wasn't  But to be fair, they looked almost identical). And then there was the time my other security conscious neighbor drove off, leaving her garage door wide open, so I closed it for her. (And then subsequently had to help her break into her own house when she returned because her garage door had malfunction and wouldn't open.) Hmm. I see a pattern here: Me. Neighbors. Kindness backfiring.  Perhaps I should think twice about anything involving neighbors?

But back to the meat and potatoes. Why do people proactively do things for others? The small things. Simple gestures. Bits of kindness that aren’t necessary, but people do anyway.

I think it’s because deep down we hope that kindness will inspire kindness.

When it came time for our Emotion Thesaurus book launch, Becca and I knew one thing: we were not comfortable waving our book and asking people to buy it. That’s just wasn't us. So we decided to do something we could get very excited about, something we believed in: proving that kindness will pay forward.  

Our launch initiative involved convincing one hundred writer/bloggers, in secret, to do a Random Act Of Kindness for another writer and post about it on their blog on the same day (our release date). We created a week-long event for this, with prizes each day that people could try to win, prizes donated by industry professionals like Scrivener and Writer’s Digest who believed in what we were trying to do.

The first day was amazing. One hundred Acts of Kindness hit the WWW, things that included small gifts, shout outs, offers to read work and more. The people who were on the receiving end were blown away that someone they knew in the writing community would single them out so thoughtfully. Words of gratitude swam across the internet.  It was great!

When day two came along, Becca and I held our breath.  Would the kindness roll forward as we believed? Would people be inspired by our Kindness Blitz?

And you know what? By the end of the week, we estimate that over 200 bloggers joined Random Acts of Kindness for Writers. So my one true thing is simply this: Kindness not only brings about amazing things...it is also contagious!

Angela Ackerman is one half of The Bookshelf Muse blogging duo, and co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression. Listing the body language, visceral reactions and thoughts associated with seventy-five different emotions, this brainstorming guide is a valuable tool for showing, not telling, emotion. 

What Beautiful Is

There is a stay-at-home dad I know who is funny and kind and gracious in conversation. He loves his two young daughters immensely. He writes about birds and trees in a large pad which he keeps in his back pocket at every playgroup. He also suffers from debilitating mental attacks and sometimes struggles deeply and intensely to cope with life and move forward.

This morning, I saw him. The man's smile could swallow an entire street. His youngest daughter walked beside him, her smile echoing his.

The great South African poet Dennis Brutus--who fought against the apartheid system and was even jailed at Robben Island in the cell next to Mandela's for his work--has two of the most beautiful lines I've ever read within his poem, "Somehow We Survive." Brutus writes, "Somehow we survive / and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither." 

To think of the horror Brutus watched unfold in his lifetime--both that subjected to others and to himself--and yet to still be able to write these lines. To still be able to claim the survival of tenderness, the endurance of beauty.

Many of us face attacks that come in all forms and circumstances. If you're reading this, then most likely you and I are similar in that we do not face imprisonment for our beliefs and our quests for justice like Brutus did. And yet, the battles my friend, the stay-at-home-dad, faces threaten also to wither tenderness.

And each of us experiences, perhaps a thousand times a day, the subtle assaults from both within and without that long to make us believe that tenderness withers. Beauty is not sustained.

And that is true if we allow for the world's definition of beauty. If we assent to the notion that beauty is perfection, that tenderness is only possible where no mistakes are made, then we're sunk.

But if we, like Brutus, are willing to fight back against injustice in small ways and large, then we begin to forge a claim on the definition of beauty, the true meaning of tenderness.

What Beautiful is appears after attacks have been mounted and weathered. Rather than throw our hands up in despair and rage, then, we open our hands in readiness--willing the future to be different from the past. Knowing the present is our only genre for writing new stories, we learn to smile wide enough to swallow a street. We learn that tenderness may be frustrated, but it does not wither. True beauty never can.


SOMEHOW WE SURVIVE
by Dennis Brutus


Somehow we survive
and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither.

Investigating searchlights rake
our naked unprotected contours;

over our heads the monolithic decalogue
of fascist prohibition glowers
and teeters for a catastrophic fall;

boots club the peeling door.

But somehow we survive
severance, deprivation, loss.

Patrols uncoil along the asphalt dark
hissing their menace to our lives,

most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror,
rendered unlovely and unloveable;
sundered are we and all our passionate surrender

but somehow tenderness survives.

One True Thing from Jennifer Reynolds: You Are Enough

Okay, the truth: Jennifer Reynolds is about the most awesome person I've ever met in my entire life. She's my best friend. She's deeply committed to social justice. She can research some of the most harrowing details of human trafficking, and yet still manages to wake up every day and believe in hope, in love, in faith, and in fighting for a better world. Jennifer is the kind of person who dances with her four-year old son in the ancient ruins of Barnard Castle in the Yorkshire Dales. Jennifer is the kind of person who whip up an original, incredibly tasty soup from scratch. Jennifer is the kind of person who brings a book like The Sunflower Sword to life. And Jennifer is the kind of person whose pilgrim soul is ever on thew lookout for new possibilities, new ways of growing and changing both herself and the world around her. So I am beyond honored and excited and over the moon to have my wife share her One True Thing today.

You Are Enough

By Jennifer Reynolds

When Luke asked me to write my thoughts for “One True Thing” I laughed: not because I thought he was joking, not because I didn't want to, and not because I don’t know any true things. I laughed because it made me nervous to narrow down my thoughts and construct something interesting and original (especially within the “paragraph or two” suggested length!). But there was also something else, and it was a subtle sense that anything I came up with could never be just right or worthy of posting “out there”. It’s a battle I have faced for a long time, and it is one that I believe is shared by many others. It is a battle I have tried to put to words and have often come up short. You see, I love to write, to create, to research and to engage with social justice issues. And yet, it is when I am actually trying to pursue these ventures that make my little heart beat so fast that I feel most inadequate. It has left me puzzled time and time again.

So where does this leave me with sharing “one true thing”? Recently, I watched Dr. Brene Brown’s TED talks on vulnerability and shame, and felt something click. As she eloquently suggests in these lectures, there is power in imperfection and letting go of control. There is power in retraining our minds to think more about our passions, our gifts, and the blessings all around us rather than what other people think about our actions and decisions. There is power in recognizing that who we are is a gift in itself, and it is not egotistical, arrogant or self-centered to love ourselves (which is not the same thing as putting ourselves on a pedestal above others; rather, it is treating ourselves with kindness, compassion, patience and grace). This is essential if we ever hope to fully love others. And it starts with seeing and believing one true thing: I am enough. You are enough. We are all worthy of love and belonging…just as we are.

(For a brief talk from Dr. Brown on her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, see this clip which was featured on PBS: http://www.pbs.org/about/news/archive/2011/pbs-living-courage/) 

Empowerment Is...

After talking late into the night on the phone with Jaques Derrida, one thing became very, very clear to me: "Stand By Me" is an amazing song to sing with your wife while organizing a massive cardboard-box full of papers, letters, drawings by your four-year-old, contracts, scribbled love notes on torn sheets of paper that also contain: grocery lists and various truck sketches.

The thing is: you get to the bottom of that cardboard box. And you've realize that two years of life have afforded tiny moments that contain so much inexplicable joy in their complete normality you would burst if you tried to pretend they were pretzel sticks (in order to stick them in your ears).

When Derrida finally had to go, I did what anyone in my situation would do: I called the towering great, Ms. Harper Lee. She'd know what to make of the tiny moments. She'd know--yes she would--what to make of the fact that the cracks of the past two years have afforded the greatest heights. She'd know--Ms. Lee! Ms. Lee! She would!--what to make of the fact that the absolute highest elation came in the absolute most common moments.

Ms. Lee listened. "Yes," she said, eventually.

Eventually, all things come to that yes, too. Eventually, the cracks that remind us where the boundaries of our dreams belong--well, they open up and if we stand (securely) and look over their edges, we see opportunity rather than dissolution.

It was three in the morning, but those cracks-cum-canyons had gotten me riveted. I knew what I had to do. I picked up the Magic Jack phone which my mother-in-law had so kindly sent our way, overseas, so that Jen and I could make calls back to the states.

Even though I hesitated, the hesitation didn't linger longer than a hesitant moment. Then, the hesitation fled (after hesitating, briefly) and my momentum and determination returned. I pushed the secret digits of the secret number that had been secretly sent to me from a secret, unnamed source.

"Hello?" President Barack Obama intoned.

"It's time," I said, knowing full well that the secret which had covertly connected us in this moment in time would indescribably decipher itself and make the purpose of the Magic Jack phone call clear.

It did.

"Empowerment is finding that the cracks aren't terrifying; they're merely invitations, Lukester," the president said, his voice cracking with that subtle kind of confidence that only comes when you've walked down the canyons of your own life.

Hanging up the phone (non-hesitantly), Jen and I looked at one another. "I Got You Babe" by Sonny and Cher blared, and we sang along. But while we sang along, we also stared into the bottom of that cardboard box. Scattered around us everywhere in the room lay the normal mementos of everyday life for us--To Do Lists with items like Freeze or Use Cabbage and Herbs, and Princesses Tyler had colored in, and letters from friends, and love notes scribbled (yes) on grocery-list halves.

And while we sang, Jen and I silently sent this sentence backwards and forwards between us: empowerment is letting the cracks sometimes pull us apart enough so that we're no longer afraid of the canyons we encounter. 

We tried singing that sentence to the rhythm of "Stand By Me" and "I Got You Babe" but the syllable-count didn't quite match up. The next time I chat with Derrida, Lee, or Obama, I'll get some advice on what to do about that dilemma.

Until then, some deferred wisdom from them--albeit via me--to you: empowerment isn't seeking to evade the cracks of normality that fill life. Empowerment is relishing the normal moments so much that they become the stuff of dreams.

One True Thing from Mr. Looney: Love is Effort, Not Entitlement

As a fifth-grade student, I was confused, insecure, hopeful. Very confused, very insecure, very hopeful. And when I walked into my first day of class that year at John F. Kennedy School in Windsor, Connecticut, it took only moments for my young brain to register that this year was going to be something beyond cool; it was going to be magical.

Mr. Looney stood at the front of the class, holding a pen like it was gold. He talked about stories, he talked about Robert Frost (his favorite poet), he talked about Flair (the name for his self-designed writing program that included enough inspiration to light a rocket ship), he talked about love, about the stuff that matter sin life, and about the power of learning. His curly hair rising off his head like ideas-made-tangible, Mr. Looney became, for me, the very essence of creativity and passion.

He encouraged all of his students to write in ways that made our hearts beat fast. As I previously shared on author Peter Salomon's blog,  Mr. Looney's Flair program included lots of creative writing,  revision, reading to one another, and sharing our imaginative narratives and ideas with him and with the class. We kept folders, and I often wrote about these family vacations my family took to Cape Cod. Only two hours away from us (Windsor, Connecticut), nevertheless we always managed to get lost, and we’d end up taking four or five hours, easy, and there’d be chaos in the car–until finally, we’d pour from the navy blue Ford station wagon onto the Mayflower Beach, build a sandcastle big enough to shame a blue whale, and watch the tide take it away, piece by piece. Mr. Looney laughed with tears in his eyes as he read my stories–and the way he made me feel like I could use words to create mood, emotion, possibility…well, that never left me.

Mr. Looney touched something inside me and woke it up. And ever since, I’ve tried to never let that part of me go back to sleep. 

When all of us students got Mr. Looney Robert Frost poetry books as teacher-gifts, he smiled and said thank you as if each one was a divine gift from God, shuttled to Earth straight to his desk, and it wasn't until years later that I finally asked myself, How many duplicate Frost collections must he have!? But Mr. Looney is the kind of man for whom there is never enough poetry, never enough life and love and passion and joy: because he creates it. His energy and enthusiasm couldn't be contained, and both sprtead out to all of us--his students. The reverberations and ripples are endless today: a whole army of story-loving (and living), imagination-thriving kids whose hearts he touched in remarkable ways that still walk with his words today, decades later.

So it's an honor to include ONE TRUE THING from a man I've admired for many years, my fifth grade teacher. 

Love is Effort, Not Entitlement

by Bob Looney

I have learned no person should expect lasting love or friendship from another.  These are not entitlements; they require effort.  You need to nurture the relationships which are important to you.   As you grow and develop, you must display tolerance and acceptance of the inevitable changes in others.  Ego is a detriment to a relationship.  It is not beneficial if you think it is important to consider whether you or the other has given more.

Yes, loving relationships require diligence and effort, but they are worth it, for they give incalculable meaning to our lives.

Acceptance

The perks of working as writers / researchers / night-class teachers: yesterday, as Tyler was in pre-school in the morning, Jennifer and I rode our bikes to the Starbucks in town, ordered two coffees, lugged backpacks heavy with books up the stairs to two comfy chairs whereby we look out the window, and also at one another.

Our goal was reading--Jen for research purposes, me for novel purposes. But soon into a few sips of our coffees, we both sensed that our outing would be more one of those delve-deep-and-reflect missions than accomplishing much reading. (But hey, later that night, Jen would be elbow deep in research and I would be teaching a Public Speaking class, so we gave ourselves the leeway to let the momentum carry us where it would.)

It also happened to be our eight-year anniversary of when we first became engaged. I had proposed on the rocks of Bearskin Neck, Massachusetts right outside of My Place by the Sea restaurant (where we dined after Jen had said yes, and a bus-tour of senior citizens from Texas had clapped heartily to celebrate with us). So it felt particularly appropriate for us to have one of those conversations where inspiration sparks inspiration sparks inspiration, and love just kind of hangs out all around.

The floods that swelled from the River Ouse here in York only a week ago had dissipated, leaving the bike trail along the river free and open. So we rode it, then rode the caffeine of the coffee, then rode the words and meanings and messages of the conversation. And I'm still thankful, thankful, thankful, that my bride said yes eight years ago.

After our conversation, we did actually do a little "work." And during that space of literary-focused time, I wrote the following poem:

Acceptance

We walk, and should our shoes scuff silence
Shame balloons and we cling
To its strings.
Higher, higher we rise
In condensating skies until we
Can view every mistake we ever made.
From that vantage point (as the
Strings stretch the skin of our hands
So tight we bleed)
We learn--nor know--nothing.
Should we sink back down to
Where the divine is always married
To reality, we find
Space for silence, and words for shame
So that it cannot rule our lives again.

Why Literature?

I'm at the University of York Library now, sitting across from Ali, a man who emigrated from Turkey to the UK in the 80's, and after a couple decades in London, is now at York earning his MA in Social Work. Ali talks with a wide smile, laughs often, and after a few minutes, we connected about our common love of the Russian novelists.

"Dostoevsky!" Ali shouts in a whisper, above the construction noise from three floors below us. We sit at opposing desks by a window that opens onto a panoramic view of the upper portion of campus.

"What was your favorite novel of his?" I ask.

"Crime and Punishment, definitely Crime and Punishment. I read it three times--and every time Raskolnikov's inner life is more and more rich, more complex than the time before!"

I remember reading the book a decade ago when I was in England for a year abroad. My professor gave me one week to read the thing, and--as a slow reader--I spent about nine hours a day reading. I was enthralled by Raskolnikov's mental premise that God does not exist, and that truth and love, therefore, are imagined notions whereby no absolute actually justifies or negates any of our actions. Instead, Raskolnikov posits, how we think about things is what makes them so.

So Raskolnikov commits an act of murder against someone towards whom he feels no hatred. If his premise is substantiated, then he will be able to continue on with his own life and feel no deep remorse, no inner turmoil.

He cannot.

Raskolnikov's every move becomes more and more laborious, his very heart is ripped inside of him, and it is only the love of Sonia--a woman who sees the very depths of his violent action and loves him nonetheless--that "saves" him from being forever lost to his own notion of nothingness.

In short, Sonia, thorugh action, shows Raskolnikov both the power of love and the power of grace--and that our words, our actions, our lives matter. Nothing is for nothing. God exists, and Dostoevsky writes his soul out to prove love in a way that no research, how-to, scientific, or analytical book can.

In short, literature proves love.

Ali asks me what I'm working on in the library, and I tell him about the novel in progress, Fortress, about a Palestinian boy and a Jewish girl--both of whom have emigrated to America due to violent attacks on each of their families near Gaza. They become friends through an unlikely encounter at the high school, and through a  run-down movie theater in their town, a Grandma with Alzheimer's and her precise recollections of 12th century York, England, and a court case, their friendship creates something neither of them could have expected.

Ali nods, explains that he is from Turkey, and says that we need literature that aren't often popularized in the mainstream.

When I ask him what purpose literature serves, he looks away for a few moments, then looks back at me with a broad smiles and he laughs. "Novels show us voices and stories we might never have known."

As Ali continues working on his essay for his Social Work class, and I work on the novel, every once in a while we look up and talk over the small end-boards on our desks. I ask him what the essay is about, and he says it explores mental health care in the U.K. He asks me why I type so fast with my pointer fingers. I can only laugh for a reply.

Working across from Ali, the world feels small. In a good way. Not only is literature a bridge for compassion and understanding of other characters and situations, it is also a way to enter into the life of another--however brief that entrance might be.

And when a man from Turkey and a man from America can meet in a library in Britain and talk about their love for Russian literature, it the truth of Dostoevsky's claim feels pretty dang solid: literature proves love. And maybe that's why we get lost in a truly great novel: because as we read, something about us is found.