Lifesavers

Paul Ellie’s, The Life You Save May be Your Own, An American Pilgrimage, for me has become a baton. As I turned page after page I saw a runner gaining speed, getting closer, until at last my hand clenched the message and set my feet running. Ellie eloquently illuminates a frame-by-frame replay of that portion of the race that belonged to four mid 20th century American writers – Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy.

These writers, like you and like me, were often uncomfortable in their skin, they were individuals who, nonetheless, pressed into and acted upon a nagging burden to influence humanity with the talents that had been bestowed upon them. Looking back, they glimpsed the batons of their forbears stretched out to them – Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, Blake, Kierkegaard, James, Melville, Hawthorne – they reached, made the connection, and set off on a unique forward direction, each believing that his voice would positively influence a weary world, and in fact, save lives, hence Ellie’s title, borrowed from Flannery O’Connor.

Ellie hit the mark. Day, Merton, O’Connor, and Percy were truly men and women on a pilgrimage, they were writers honing their skills for the single purpose of carrying and indomitably passing the baton in the race set before them. Ellie says, “A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken in the light of a story. A great event has happened; the pilgrim hears the reports and goes in search of the evidence, aspiring to be an eyewitness. The pilgrim seeks not only to confirm the experience firsthand but to be changed by the experience” (Prologue, On Pilgrimage, pg. x). I will go a step further and suggest that the pilgrim, once transformed, must grab a baton, join the race, and pass the message to all who will open their hand. Passion is infectious, if we allow it to seep into our being.

Ellie suggests that these four individuals were heralds who courageously sought to challenge readers to embark on a pilgrimage of their own. While each of us has been designed for a specific purpose and inwardly yearns to embrace and develop that purpose, we dwell in a culture that values conformity over imaginative choice. Unselfish authenticity, like that modeled by these heralds, is an audacious move but perhaps the only move that will get us out of the blocks and into the race. Sadly, many of us will live our lives without embracing our innate design, our true self. Ellie’s book is a challenge to not only get in the race, but to do the hard work of training to become the specific racer that we are destined to be, regardless of the cost. He reminds us that Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy are holding out a baton, will you clutch it and run?

4 and 20, elucidation

mental note:
birds are resting, watching
on wires all over this city

a race is on
a race we must
fearlessly run

our place is given
we wait ready
for the signal

we will charge until
the handoff is received by
a new generation of runners

life. this is the glory:
that we may bear
and pass a baton


Shakespeare (in his day)
took up one of his own
gleaned from the cries of
tavern dwellers requesting song

he wove their language
to make his tale palpable,
relevant, then passed his wand
to those who would reach:

Act II, Scene III
Twelfth Night
“Come on, there is sixpence
for you; let’s have a song.”

Beaumont and Fletcher
were willing, weaving his wit
within, then handing the lot
into the willing arms of humanity
who would take it and run:
Act V, Scene II
Bonduca
“Whoa, here’s a stir now!
Sing a song of sixpence!”

Hence,

sing a Song of Sixpence,
A pocket full of Rye,
Four and twenty
Blackbirds,
Bak'd in a Pye.

When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Was not that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?

The king was in his counting-house,
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlor,
Eating bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes,
There came a little blackbird,
And snapped off her nose.

on wonderment:
medieval illusion
an offering from the host,
set live birds waiting inside
a pre-cooked crust willing to
fly free with the first cut

on time:
if the king is sun
if the queen is moon
24 blackbirds will
echo the hours
in our days
calling us to use
time wisely
for the hours, they fly

on genealogy:
what if, for our time,
blackbirds are community
connected by the transitory
shell of a pie, connecting
briefly, preparing to fly

on education:
blackbirds, blackbirds
nestled in a pie

flap birds, flap!
seek the giver of good rye

huddled in bleak shelter
dreams will surely die

flutter clumsy wings
toward the wide blue sky!

tethers disappear
soaring with the wind on high

willing-winged, reach beyond
four and twenty fly


“A song of sixpence?”
Now there’s a stir.

Gettysburg Directive

GETTYSBURG DIRECTIVE

a ghastly battle

272
painstaking
words

"my little speech"

revered,

"deep in feeling,
compact in thought
and expression,
and tasteful
and elegant in every word
and comma."

derided,

"The cheek
of every American
must tingle
with shame
as he reads the
silly, flat and dishwatery
utterances of the man
who has to be pointed out
to intelligent foreigners
as the President of the United States."

a house
divided.

flat? silly? dishwater?

or
a gripping plea?

compelling us
to carry on

despite
ourselves

his
masterpiece
born of grief
Lincoln’s reminder

“the world will little note,
nor long remember
what we say here…"

relevant?

breathe new life
into words
we thought we knew
(we ought
to know)
we ought to
live

“We are met
on a great
battlefield
of that war.”

Four & Twenty

blackbirds, blackbirds
nestled in a pie

flap birds, flap!
seek the giver of good rye

huddled in bleak shelter
dreams will surely die

flutter clumsy wings
toward the wide blue sky!

tethers disappear
soaring with the wind on high

willing-winged, reach beyond
four and twenty fly

Gehry Day

On the day after Halloween walking silently across a cordoned off street my son’s nine-year-old eyes keenly read giant silver shapes like so many words on a page. He was six when our watching years began. We watched in searing summer and in the calm of winter, at times nonchalantly, at others wide-eyed. We watched in anticipation as one man’s vision took shape before us, now we walked together toward what has become for my son the archetype of imagination’s potential.

Climbing the stairs a few paces ahead of me, donning his idea of the perfect costume–Gehry’s concert hall in the form of a hat–my son was deaf to the buzz that his presence created. Surveying the lay of the land, connecting one by one with the massive shapes, he was unaware that his presence detracted attention from the icon itself.

While gazing at the shimmering rose pool, a couple shaking their heads in amusement walked right up to my little boy and invited him to be part of their photo, a photo I was asked to snap. As quick as the fascinated strangers wrapped their arms around my son’s small shoulders, the shutter clicked. Handing the camera back to a man I will surely never see again, he flashed a grin and thanked me for the experience as my son quickly resumed his voyage of discovery.

At the very edge of the structure he reached for silver as I watched a man approach the hat only to discover, eyes dropping, that it rested on the head of a small boy. Introducing himself to my son as an award-winning architect he listened intently to the tale. Head shaking, eyes twinkling, he patted my son’s back, and looked to the sky in wonderment. In the end he asked for my son’s name and promised to commit it to memory, “I’ll be watching for you Taylor.”

Then came a barrage of curious strangers—tourists who spoke foreign languages, fascinated parents, students, security guards, and weary teachers–who all demanded a moment with my boy and his great silver-winged hat. Taylor gladly shared the story of watching the icon slowly come to life, of the man named Frank O. Gehry who made buildings inspired by fish, and of his own architecture research project that gave him the idea for the Halloween hat that triggered the storytelling in the first place.

For two glorious hours I watched a swarm of people who came to experience an architectural inauguration catch a glimpse of something they had no intention of seeing, a boy wearing an architectural hat. As I stood surrounded by Gehry’s silver sculpture pondering my son’s interactions with perfect strangers a man touched my shoulder, interrupting my reverie, and looked intently into my eyes, “You must be doing something right if your kid is into Gehry.”

Finally I realized that these strangers were starving for something to reach out and touch, starving for hope in a bland world. It struck me that creativity is indeed a great magnet. People had come in droves to honor a man who encourages them to believe that outrageous dreams are possible. This was a slice of humanity that had journeyed afar to identify with a silver-winged exclamation point. My son went a step further audaciously locking arms with Gehry imploring, “Look, me too!”

Donald Justice’s, Poem to be Read at 3 A.M., and Edward Hopper’s painting, Early Sunday Morning, remind us of our longing to eradicate a haunting sense of disconnection. We speed self-centered through life, avoiding our humanity and occasionally, if we are lucky, we come face to face with images that halt us. Like Justice’s poem, Hopper’s painting forces us to face our chaotic lives, to slow down, hang our heads and whisper, “What have we done?” Gehry’s architectural masterpiece begs the question, “Why do we hide in dimly lit boxes behind blinds that keep us safely isolated from the risk of imagination?” Like Justice and Hopper before him, Gehry presents an ominous challenge to chase away the complacency that isolates humanity. My son, wearing a hat inspired by an architect he has never met, opened (and left ajar) the door of imagination for people he will likely never meet again. His hat drew connections like a magnet, broke down walls, and briefly caused lives to intersect in a way that is noteworthy. Like Hopper, Justice, and Gehry before him, my son responded to the question, opened the blinds, and let the real thing in.

On Assumptions

Believing things that are not necessarily true. We all do it. Assumptions. We can’t escape. Our babies turn five and off we set them, for better or for worse, on a life molding march. The course: School. Seems simple enough? Left to the experts, children will certainly effervesce curiosity. Left to the experts, children will critically solve problems, exercise discipline, and blossom into their unique innate potential, right? Sure, traditional approaches to “schooling” have endured the test of time — countless children have made it through the system. Still, is it not worth considering the spirit of the child before enlistment? Why not forge less worn paths, eschewing assumptions?

Games We Play

What is education
anyway?

Dashing like some
frantic player
in a scavenger game?

Marching, marching
growing gray
faster each
and every day?

We hide
and seek wisdom?

Can’t we see?

“Ollie ollie oxen free!”

Welcome