The Journey from A to B and the Chance for Greater Love

I think most of us seek to get from A to B in the most efficient, least dangerous, most pain-free, worry-free, pleasant, comfortable way. If it's at all possible for us to get from A to B while enjoying a drink with a small umbrella in it, or while having our feet massaged, or while having someone read aloud passages from Fyodor Dostoevky's The Brothers Karamazov while enjoying a drink with a little umbrella on it and having our feet massaged--then we'll go for it.

But the thing I am noticing again, and again, and again, and again is that around this particular day, when we think of Christ's birth, is that the whole nativity story makes absolutely no sense. Zero sense.

On a scale of sense-making, where zero is the idea of trying to squeeze an oversized lampshade down a red stirrer from Dunkin' Donuts, and ten is try to use a Dunkin' Donuts red stirrer to stir your coffee, the nativity story is a zero.

Forget zero, the nativity story nets a negative number.

But maybe that makes a whole lot of sense. God decides to send the savior of the world to earth, and if we were God, we'd be running the numbers. Immediately, we'd have cost-effectiveness graphs--bam!--and we'd be searching all the crime stats for the absolute safest possible town in the absolute safest possible country in the whole planet. And we'd be choosing the most experienced--and wealthiest--couple to find as his parents. And we'd be sure to load up our savior with heavy does of life insurance, health insurance, fire insurance, home insurance--the whole deal. And we'd hire the best consulting firm to process exactly how to raise that savior, and how to prepare the 'consumer' to meet and greet that savior. And--no doubt!--we'd have a few book deals lined up for the uncles, aunt, parents, and for the savior himself. From the get-go,., we're talking multiple deals, at auction.

But God didn't work that way. Instead, God choose the absolute most culturally dangerous situation--a young, unmarried virgin--to become pregnant. Then, God choose the exact moment before a census, so that Joseph and Mary would have to travel during her pregnancy. And we're not even talking here about a three-hour jaunt to the in-laws. We're talking about a multi-day journey wherein food is in short supply, nights are cold, an old donkey is exhausted. And then--to top it all off--God chose to lead Joseph and Mary to the barnhouse to birth the savior amidst hay (which is really quite pokey, prodding stuff, no matter what anyone says), animal poop, and absolutely no plan.

Bam. There they are: new parents away from home with no help and no money and no place to stay.

In essence, then, God brought Jesus into the world in the precise, most specific, utterly exact opposite way any of us in our sense-making minds would choose to do.

But, if we really think about it, it does kind of make sense in a weird way.

It makes sense, especially, if you think about life before children and life after children.

Sure, the journey to get anywhere before kids looks enticing. That nice, slender, thin line. And then before we know it: B! We made it to B! But the thing about the ridiculous journey to get from A to B after kids is this: by the time we get to B, we're different.

B is the same no matter how we travel, but we're different. All those crazy spikes and drops and whirls and twirls have changed us. And a lot of times, not for the better. I wish I could always journey from A to B and encounter those loops and swoops with great hope, faith, and even love. But I don't. However, I think the latter journey affords us the opportunity that we all are desperately seeking beyond the quick fixes and the cost-effectiveness strategies.

The second journey allows us the space to become what we could become.

Which leads us back to God. If he allowed Mary and Joseph to have that first kind of journey to welcome their son Jesus, I wonder what kind of parents they'd be. My hunch is maybe not as good. Something about the danger of the journey, the lack of safety and insurance and the crazy loops and swoops got them to point B as different people--stronger, more faithful, more loving.

Tonight, on the eve of Christ's birth, I keep thinking about this prayer Mother Teresa used to pray whenever something truly difficult occurred: Lord, help me see this moment as a chance for greater love.

And maybe that one part of what God was thinking when he gave Mary and Joseph that second kind of journey from A to B. The nativity story isn't easy, but maybe that's because God knew that to get them to point B in the fastest, most comfortable, easiest way possible wouldn't prepare them for the great love that was about to be unleashed in and through and for them.

And maybe the same is true for us. On whatever loop or swoop or curl or twirl or whirl we're on in our journey, maybe part of the reason we're on it is to prepare us to be the kind of people we need to be so that when we finally reach point B, we'll actually be ready. We may fall down, exhausted, when we get there, but our arms will be open and we'll be smiling and maybe we'll even look back and see everything we went through as those chances for greater love.

Firsts

First article publication.

First day at a new job.

First time watching son using the potty (assisted).

First time watching son using the potty (unassisted).

First time trying fish (for whatever reason, with eyeballs intact).

First time getting dizzy after trying fish (eater's eyeballs not so intact).

First time weeping.

First time laughing so hard milk comes out of your nose (even though it's been awhile since you've had milk).

First book publication.

First child.

First sleepness nights without choosing to have a sleepness night to prepare for an exam which you should have studied for throughout the term rather than on the last (sleepness) night.

First letter from a reader.

First kiss.

First kiss representing a lifetime of further kisses from that one, first forever love.

First time becoming clueless about everything you thought you knew but now know that you really (really!) do not.

First time weathering a severe storm and realizing, hey, it's gonna be okay.

First time realizing, No, it's NOT gonna be okay; I was wrong!

First time getting past both previous firsts to a more substantial first that lasts: yes, it is. But it takes time.

First rejection of a book which reveals that the editor thought it was really, really awful.

First rejection of a book which reveals that the editor thought it was really, really strong. (But still didn't buy it.)

First request to see the book again with revisions.

First rejection of re-considered book with revisions.

First time being without our son at two in the afternoon, as he attends his first afternoon session of pre-school in York, England, with five teachers who seem as wise as Yoda and as kind as Mother Teresa, yet still feeling vaguely filled with terror, worry, fear, anxiety that something will happen, and what if something happens and WE'RE NOT THERE TO HELP and what if he cries and cries because he doesn't realize that pre-school is a good thing, where he can shed his overbearing father for a bit and play with other kids on his own, even though he doesn't know that this is a good thing yet but will soon, but maybe not until AFTER many rounds of afternoon pre-school have already passed and what am I supposed to do about that in the meantime?

First time writing a hard-to-follow, nervously crafted, fingernail-biting blog while our son is at pre-school.

[Breathing. Breathing. Breathing.]

First time realizing, it will be okay. Son will be okay. Letting go a little is okay. Life is okay.

The "It" That "It's" All About

Rather an auspicious title. I know.

The nerve to render language to such a title! After all, our greatest poets claim that "it" simply can't be said. A.E. Housman once quipped, "Poetry is not the thing said, but a way of saying it." Frost told us that poetry is "words that become deeds" -- language that translates into action because we simply do not have more words to express what the "it" of words is, in the first place. Eliot--well, most everybody doesn't have much of a clue as to exactly what Eliot meant, though it's an art in itself to decipher his "it" and to come up with increasingly more ornate and complex language to describe what is already ornate and complex in its original inception.

Whew.

So, then, what is the "it"? What does this mundane blog post really want to claim?

First, let me say I agree with the poets: there are some things in life deeper than language, things that we cannot begin to hold in our hands because they're too inflamed, too deeply real and, more colloquially, devoid of crap.

The things that are devoid of crap don't lend themselves to sitting on some mantle somewhere so we can look at them and remark, Ah! Yes, indeed, the shading there does suggest a bit of nuance.

But another poet made a rather stark and fairly blunt statement of "it." And the "it" this poet articulated has driven the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, John Wesley, William Wilberforce, and others who have radically altered everything about what we previously thought possible.

The "it" the great poet claimed was: love God; love your neighbor. With everything. All you've got.

No insurance policy on this kind of love.

No receipt for return of transaction.

No helmet, life preserver, or bulletproof vest.

No back-up plan.

No allowing logic--which Marx called the "money of the mind"--to trump compassion.

No glance to self-benefit, interest rate on giving, APY.

In essence, the love that Jesus preaches is exactly the love with which he lived. That's why Gandhi viewed him as a model. That's why King believed it could be done on this earth. That's why Mother Teresa could live in the slums and wipe the sores of lepers for her entire adult life.

It wasn't because any of these individuals possessed any greater human capacity than you or I. It was, entirely, because each allowed the relentless, unconditional driving force of love to be more important than self.

Conditional love is everywhere we look.

In the middle and high schools where I taught, conditional love is an ever-present reality: look a certain way, speak a certain way, think a certain way.

But I think we all like to play a game: the game is call Once High School is Over We All Grow Up and Become Mature and Act Better. The truth is, I think we operate with the same kinds of conditional love that we became experts at wielding in our schools.

I recently wrote a book called How to Survive Middle School (Without Becoming an Advertisement or Losing Your Inner Voice), and what struck me as I wrote it was this thought: everything in here could just as well be applied to thirty-year-olds.

But I was writing for my 7th graders. I was writing to address all the fears, insecurities, petty competitions, jealousies, and cravings for unconditional love that they felt. So, something doesn't change in us. Some deep need that we all possess doesn't get fed, and therefore what we have to offer others is always and necessarily conditional.

And that is not what it's all about.

It's hard for us to image what unconditional love even looks like, so trained are we in the arts of acting to gain approval of others and living to prevent disapproval. But unconditional love, perhaps, can best be summed up in this pithy gauge: if you earned it, then it isn't unconditional.

If in any way you earned the praise you're getting, then it isn't unconditional.

If your performance, your words, your actions, your decisions, caused feelings of warmth to seep from other human beings to you, then it isn't unconditional love.

Because as soon as you stop making the [all-star-slam-dunk-rock-this-party-live] movements in your life, so stops the love. And if we really think about it, that's an incredibly depressing and demeaning and degrading way to live: nothing is for certain. We can count on nothing. Nothing remains. Everything is always and necessarily a crapshoot in the cosmic game of love-attempt.

Everything becomes a rolling of the dice to see if our numbers reveal that we'll be able to receive some love this turn around.

And if that's all we ever had as models of the possible on this earth, then that would be all well and good. We could straighten our ties, shift our dresses, and get on with life, heads dirt-bent and ready to work to earn as much love as we could before we kicked the bucket and slowly became the dirt that the next slogger would work until he, too, kicked a similar bucket.

But we've seen something different.

We've glimpsed other possibilities.

We've watched the way Jesus did this thing called life, and as scientists tell us, all you need is one instance where the theory doesn't hold, and the law is broken. It can't be a law anymore. Gravity can't be gravity unless all physical objects obey it.

If a rock just started floating upwards to the sky, then we'd be forced (or, rather, much smarter people with a trail of letters following their names would be forced) to come up with a new law because Gravity's turn would be done.

So, if Jesus broke and breaks the Law of Conditional Love, then it can't really be a law.

Furthermore, if Gandhi can look at the life of Christ and proceed to break the Law of Conditional Love, then it takes another serious knock. When King comes along, followed by Mother Teresa, and a host of others...well, the Law of Conditional (or Marketplace) Love starts to look fairly shabby. It doesn't hold up as a law, a scientific theory, or even a good bet anymore.

So. The "it" then.

Unconditional love. Love that we can't earn. Love that results not because of the work we do, the way we make another feel, or the cha-ching we gather like squirrels.

Few things strike us as strange, as rare, or as dang hard to classify as Unconditional Love. Maybe that's why, when we see it, we innately and suddenly know it to be, indeed, the "it" that "it's" all about.

Writing (And Living) Through

Sometimes, the only thing worse than making a mistake is doing nothing.

In writing, yes, and in life.

As writers, we often find ourselves stalled at important moments. A character just had an epiphany about how she has allowed herself to be controlled by others. Another character has finally admitted the fear and lies he harbors within. The story's climax is approaching, the action climbs, the mystery mounts.

And we stall.

In life, we also tend to stall right before the biggest moments of opportunity. Right before our own stories are about to break open, break free, break the rules, and break barriers.

What connects figures like Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Atticus Finch, Lisbeth Sanders, Mark Twain, Sojourner Truth, King Arthur, and John Prendergast? My list--randomly chosen figures whom I admire for their commitment to justice and truth--is peopled by fictional and real-life heros and heroines. Each one of them possesses a single characterteristic that, I think, is essential to be who we truly are as writers and as human beings.

Each one of these people does not stall.

This does not mean that they haven't faced the same kinds of crises we all face. It does not mean that they have not fallen on their knees or felt their souls crumble in heaps as they cried out, What's the point!? Indeed, many of them have, and for the real-life figures, it has often been well-documented (as in the case of Mother Teresa, who reveals in her posthumously published letters and journals, Come Be My Light, that she often felt God was absent from her life, even as she chose to continue doing the work He had called her to do).

There is a very big difference between stalling and resting. Or, perhaps a better way to phrase that asserttion would be to borrow a line from Mr. Han in the new version of The Karate Kid: "Being still and doing nothing are two very different things."

As we write or as we live, we need to be still. We should take the time to listen, think, pray, recollect, prepare and all of those other things that lend energy to our pursuits.

But once we stall, the fight is over. The Chinese have a proverb for it: "He who hesitates is lost."

Living through the confusion, the pain, and the uncertainty does not mean that we deny the fears we feel or the failures we face. Instead, it means that we look these foes in the eyes and speak honestly and authentically, growing those muscles that gather invisibly to push our voices out from our mouths and into the world.

The only way to go through something is, in fact, (and rather redundantly) to go through it.

As writers, we may need to write through scenes time and time again. We often find the paths our characters need to take by watching them walk down one and then realizing, Nope, that ain't it.

The same is true in life.

But making a mistake is a far better choice than doing nothing. We learn from our mistakes; our souls grow and our voices learn to speak more boldly. From doing nothing, we learn only how to continue to do more nothing (granted, in more modern ways perhaps).

The journey towards going through has certainly been a long one for me--and it continues to get longer when I stop and view the trail ahead each time I take a water break. But when I look back at the path I've already walked, I can smile and see that, at the very least, I don't stall my way through life or writing nearly as much as I used to.

I still do sometimes, and indeed, old habits die hard.

But when I'm writing a character now, and I find him getting close to the climax of the novel, I push him forward on his dragging feet--sometimes kicking and screaming the whole way. He argues with me, and he often offers an excellent list of reasons why I should let him stay the heck where he is.

But my characters aren't winning those arguments nearly as much as they used to.

And I sincerely hope that the same is true of my own life.

You Be Mr. Han

A little under a year ago, one of my 7th grade students and I went to see the new Karate Kid, starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan. Sitting in the theater together, my heart went out to this kid beside me--a young man who has energy, joy, and hope, but who also seemed to be constantly misunderstood.

I kept hitting his knee--a bad habit of mine when I watch a movie with someone--saying, Wow! Check that out! See what he just said there?! I don't know why, but it's like when I watch a movie, I want to constantly tell the other person what amazes me, and I want their eyes to glimmer and glow and say, You're right! So cool!

In any event, we watched the movie and I loved it. Now, I am completely against male bravado. I hate the idea of male toughness. And my all-time most noble example of what it means to be a man lies with Atticus Finch, from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

So what I love most about Karate Kid is not, in fact, the karate. Instead, it's the relationship of a boy who doesn't have a dad and a kind, wise, older man who society sees as something to laugh about. But their relationship infuses a sense of purpose in each and, eventually, love.

A month ago, Jennifer had surprised me with the UK DVD of the new Karate Kid--the same version I had seen with my student--for my birthday this past December. Like his Dad, Tyler started enjoying watching a clip of the training scenes with the karate kid and Mr. Han--his mentor and father-figure.

Tyler loves it. He loves watching the breathtaking clips of China in those training scenes, and the way the karate kid falls asleep on Mr. Han's shoulder on the train ride home from their day training in the countryside.

Before Jen left this morning, she helped tie a swath of toilet paper around Tyler's head. "Now, you are karate kid!" Jen told Tyler with excitement. His reply: "I karate kid!"

Then, Tyler walked over to me and said, "You be Mr. Han."

Now, readers of this blog will already know that my heart jerks around far too easily, and this moment certainly provided a wave of emotion through my heart. Tyler then went back to Jennifer and said, "You be Mr. Han too, Mommy."

Before long, the three of us sauntered around our home wearing swaths of toilet paper on our heads: one karate kid and two Mr. Hans.

And this morning--now that T man is sleeping peacefully after a bit of a rough go of it to get into the nap-stage--one reason why I love the Karate Kid story so much crystallized in my mind: because it's like Mother Teresa.

If you're still with me, you're probably saying, Hey Luke, buddy, I know you titled this whole blog-thing Intersections so that you could make connections between all kinds of stuff. But Karate Kid and Mother Teresa? I don't think so, bro-ster.

But here's the thing: Mother Teresa said, "We can do no great things, only small things with great love." And in this new version of Karate Kid, there's a great scene where Mr. Han makes his mentee practice taking off his jacket, dropping it on the floor, picking it up, then hanging it up. he practices it thousands, hundreds of thousands, of times. Just when he starts to lose it, calling Mr, Han and his methods stupid, the great teacher shows him what, in fact, he has already learned: powerful methods for the art of karate.

A small thing. Very, very small thing. With the jacket. But its effect was to teach, through repetition, a beautiful ability.

I wonder how often I refuse to do small things with great love because I think they are insignificant, or because their worth seems infinitesimal. Mother Teresa always did the small--the tiny--things, and she did them with great love.

As Jennifer and I chatted last night, so many of us claim that we want to do big things. BIG things. If we're following faith, then we change it a little and say, we want to do big things for God.

But Mother Teresa's plea was different. her goal--her only goal--was to "do something beautiful for God."

It's not about the size of the result; in fact, it's never about size at all. It's about the great love that propels any tiny thing we do in this life. And the only actions that ever change hearts--whether one heart or a million hearts--are those actions that are done with great love.

However infinitesimal they may seem.