On Teaching Myth and Fantasy Literature in a time of Pandemic and Black Lives Matter

For the past few summers, I've taught an online version of a literature and philosophy course focusing on the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The philosophical readings include Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill. The course is designed to help general education students think about how philosophers and literary artists pursue truth, increase their skills in literary interpretation, and formulate or evaluate their own ethical frameworks for decision making.

This summer the course had a different feel, mostly because of the strange situation my students and I found ourselves in. The class began in June, after most of the students had experienced the March quarantine/lock down due to COVID-19. They had had to leave campus and return home to complete their spring semester through remote learning. And before the course began, there was the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests in cities across the nation and the world, including in Portland, Oregon, about a thirty minute drive from George Fox University.

Entering the course, I admit to entertaining some doubts about the reading list. I wondered if our time might be better spent reading literature of authors of color and the philosophers of civil disobedience. Or maybe some medieval and renaissance texts dealing with plagues and pandemics. But the students already had their books, and the philosophical readings were mandated by the liberal arts director, so I had no choice but to forge ahead. What I did resolve to do is to pay attention as a I re-read these familiar books for material that could be applied to current events. Perhaps there were messages in these books that might offer guidance for our troubled times.

And it turns out there were--messages, that is. Often the students made these connections themselves and talked about them in their online discussion posts. In the video lectures, I tried to draw out and highlight some of the points of connection I saw. Herewith I offer reflections on some of the values of reading older, non-realistic literature and philosophy--even in these tumultuous times.

The value of escape

"Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home," Tolkien writes in his long essay "On Fairy Stories." The essay is essentially an apology (defense) of the writing and reading of fantasy literature, and Tolkien lays out four elements that he sees as fundamental to fantasy. This quote comes from the section on Escape, where Tolkien confronts the popular misconception that fantasy literature is mere escapism. For Tolkien, escape is not a negative term. And who can argue with his analogy in these times when we find ourselves trapped in prisons of our own making: greed, selfishness, and materialism. And in societal prisons of economic and health crises, prisons of environmental degradation and prisons of inequality and injustice. Of course, most of my students in the 18-25 age range don't need much convincing on this point. Not only have they grown up in a post 9/11 world and in a society where school shootings have become all too routine, most already are predisposed to love fantasy--whether it comes in the form of literature or movies or video games. For Tolkien, however, escape into the fantastic world led to another one of his four elements: Recovery. In the fantasy world, Tolkien believed, we could regain a clear view. We could "see things as we are meant to see them"--as things apart from ourselves. During the pandemic many have noted their renewed appreciation for the simple pleasures of food and drink, nature, and times of meditation and have talked about having a greater understanding of the truly fundamental and essential elements of life. As Tolkien notes, "It was in fairy stories that I first divined the potency of the words and the wonder of things, such as stone and wood and iron, trees and grass, house and fire, bread and wine."

The value of love

In the course, we read Aristotle's thoughts on the importance of friendship, and we read C. S. Lewis's The Four Loves. A couple of years ago, I started sharing with my students in this class a definition of love from a fellow C. S. Lewis scholar, Jason Lepojarvi. Jason's doctoral dissertation is entitled "God is Love, but Love is not God," and his definition stems from his reading of Lewis and Augustine. This time, I shared Jason's definition with them while we were reading Lewis's Till We Have Faces, a mythic novel that features a female heroine who loves fiercely but whose love is revealed as the novel progresses to be a selfish, possessive, and even devouring love. The definition goes like this:

"Love is an appreciative and responsive commitment to the other's flourishing insofar as possible and permissible."

I share with students several aspects I like about this definition:

1. It views love as an act of the will, not of the emotions (though to appreciate someone would involve emotions)
2. It places the focus on the other, not on the lover's needs or desires
3. It is comprehensive, encompassing many types of love: from affection, to friendship, to romantic love. It also applies equally to non-humans, to how we treat animals and the environment. For example, a pet owner who neglects to feed or take his dog to the vet is obviously not committed to his dog's flourishing!
4. It is aspirational. Like Paul's discourse on love in I Cor 13, it sets a high standard that I fail to reach daily. Yet think of what my life and relationships would look like if I were able to meet this standard--even some of the time.

While thinking deeply about the nature of love is always warranted, it seems particularly relevant now as quarantined family members have been spending more time at home together and as people of privilege think about the flourishing (or not) of their siblings of color. I find the discussion especially important for college students, many of whom are in the process of forming lifetime relationships. I hope that through reading about Orual in Lewis's novel they will become more aware of what love is not. It is not selfish; it is not possessive; it is not controlling. I warn them that if they find themselves in a relationship with someone who is controlling and manipulative, they should run the other way!

The value of anti-racism

One of the important legacies of the Black Lives Matter movement will be the recognition, on the part of the white and the privileged, that it is not enough not to be a racist; we must be actively anti-racist. We must confront systemic racism, and we must proactively identify and seek to eradicate racism wherever we find it. While the works and life of a white British professor of Old English Literature might seem an unlikely place to find literary support for anti-racism, I believe it is there, and I make a special effort to point it out to my students. I direct them to two pieces of evidence, one literary and one biographical.

For the literary evidence, consider Book II, Chapter 6 of The Fellowship of the Ring. The company wants to pass through the elvish land of Lorien. The elves are fine with this for most of the group including the men, elf, and the hobbits, but not for the lone dwarf. Haldir refers to the longstanding enmity between the elves and the dwarves, notes that dwarves are not allowed in elvish lands, and states that Gimli must be blindfolded and led through the forests of Lorien. Aragorn objects vigorously to this plan and notes that it is "hard on the dwarf" to be singled out. His solution to the problem is that all the members of the group should be blindfolded. "The company shall all fare alike," says Aragorn, in contemporary terms a great statement of solidarity. It's easy to see parallels between this event and traveling baseball teams during the days of segregation in the U.S. who said if the black members of the team were not welcome to stay at a hotel or eat in a restaurant, the team would look elsewhere for food and lodging. This is one of my favorite moments in the book, and it's even more interesting that Haldir blames the Dark Lord for the estrangement that divides the races and cultures of the dwarves and elves.

For the biographical evidence and proof that the Lothlorien chapter reflects Tolkien's own views, I share a letter that Tolkien wrote to a German publisher who, before bringing out a German translation of The Hobbit, wanted to confirm that Tolkien was of Aryan descent. Tolkien wrote two replies, the less civil of which included these lines:

If I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. . . . I have been accustomed . . . to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Clearly Tolkien had no time or patience for simple racism and was not afraid to call it out and denounce it in the strongest terms when he saw it, whether in a letter to a publisher or a fictional setting in his secondary world of Middle Earth. And the Lothlorien chapter becomes even more poignant given Tolkien's own statement that he thought of the Dwarves "like Jews, at once native and alien in their habitations."

The value of hope

To return to Tolkien's essay, the final element of the fairy story is Consolation. Tolkien associates this with the happy ending, which he sees as essential to the form. He introduces his own created word, "euchatastrophe," to describe this literary phenomenon. Tolkien notes that often in fantasy tales the characters find themselves in perilous situations where all hope seems lost. But then a sudden, joyous turn occurs. It's easy to think of multiple plot points in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings that qualify as euchatastrophic moments, such as Gandalf or Tom Bombadill showing up at just the right time to save the hobbits or the dwarves.

Significantly, Tolkien uses theological terminology to label this feature of the fantasy story: "eucha," from "eucharist," and he makes his intention clear as he connects the concept to the biblical story. The greatest story of all, the story of salvation, according to Tolkien, is euchatastrophic. For Tolkien, the chief euchatastrophic events in the gospel story are Jesus's incarnation and his resurrection. At just the right time, the son of God entered the world to dwell among us, and at just the right time, God raised Jesus from the dead. It's hard to imagine a more euchatastrophic biblical text than Romans 5:6: "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." Some translations have "powerless," which connects even more closely with the events in the novels.

So what does Tolkien's literary theory of fantasy have to do with us, as we face a pandemic that has killed 150,000 Americans and as protests continue nightly in major American cities asking for justice for people of color? Perhaps it reminds us that it's no good ignoring or denying that suffering and sorrow exist in the world. Tolkien is clear that just because fantasy stories have happy endings doesn't mean they don't have their share of sorrow and suffering. In fact, we could argue that for a large percentage of the novels the characters are living with hardship and suffering and that the heroes in his stories are those who use the virtue of courage to face hardship and suffering to make the world a better place. And as a result of enduring suffering, those heroes develop character, which sound very much like Paul's statement in Romans 5: "suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." Finally, I can't think of a time in my own lifetime (unless it would be following the terrorist attack of 9/11) where, individually or collectively, we've been in more desperate need of hope.

The value of viewing life as a journey

At the Council of Elrond in Book II of The Fellowship of the Ring, after much discussion, Frodo agrees to be the one to bear the ring to the fires of Mount Doom. His words are significant:

I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.

At this point, I introduce students to a philosophical concept from Christians Among the Virtues, by Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches. While reviewing Aristotle's ideas about the development of virtues through practice and habit, the authors raise the question of whether life is best viewed as a trip or a journey. They make the following contrasts between the two: When we are going on a trip, we know well where we are going; we know roughly how long it will take to get there; and we know what preparations to make. But when we are going on a journey, we often have only a hazy idea of where we are going; we don't know how long it will take; and we may not know fully how to prepare.

Hauerwas and Pinches use the metaphor to explain why it is important for us to develop the virtues. If our life consists of a series of trips, we have little need of the virtues, but if our life is a journey, with many twists and turns and visions and revisions, we have the utmost need of virtues like courage and perseverance and hope.

Haurewas and Pinches point out that in life we make some of our biggest commitments without knowing exactly where those commitments will lead us. Marriage is a good example. When I made a promise to my wife 45 years ago at a wedding ceremony in Tulsa, OK, neither I nor she could have predicted where our journey together would lead: where we would live, how many children, if any, we would have, what jobs we would pursue, how long we would live--the lists goes on. I ask the students about their decision to commit to a college for their education. As they look back on the one or two or three years they've been at the university, most readily admit that they had no idea what they were getting into! And even if they remain happy with their choice of a college, as most seem to be, they can all talk about unexpected events that have occurred since they enrolled: changed majors, new relationships, trials and tribulations, etc.

Frodo's decision to bear the ring is a great example of a commitment that will lead to a journey, not a trip. Frodo knows where he is going (Mordor), but as he indicates, in a larger and more significant sense, he has no idea of how he will get there or what will be demanded of him along the way: "I do not know the way." As the Hebrew writer says of Abraham, when he was called, he set out, "not knowing where he was going" (Hebrews 11:8). After this discussion, when I ask my students how they would want to describe their own lives, to a person, they choose to describe their life, not as a trip, but as a journey.

The journey theme is featured in the "Walking Song," which Frodo learned from Bilbo and which he sings in Sam's presence early in the novel:

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can.

Pursuing it with weary feet,

Until it joins some larger way,

Where many paths and errands meet,

And whither then? I cannot say.

Ultimately this is one of the main takeaways I hope my students carry with them after reading the philosophers and the works of Lewis and Tolkien. Our life is a journey. We can choose to stay safe and secure in our hobbit hole or take the risk of stepping onto the road. If we do, it will be our faith and our virtues that will sustain us on the way. Only these can give us the courage to say, like Frodo, "I will take the ring, though I do not know the way." It is just such courage we need in these perilous times.

My First Best Friend

A photo from my birthday party in elementary school. Dave is on the left; I'm in the middle. Notice the matching white muscle shirts!

A few weeks ago I learned that my childhood friend, David, died on January 9, 2020, after a long battle with multiple myeloma. He was a man of many talents and was an accomplished attorney and mover and shaker in Washington, D.C. (see video, below). But to me he will always be my first best friend.

Anne Lamott says that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write about for the rest of their lives. I suggest a key criterion for surviving childhood is having a best friend. It would be impossible to overstate the importance. That first connection outside our immediate family with someone who gets us, someone who shares our interests, someone who makes us laugh, someone we can talk with about anything, share secrets with, and ask the questions we are too embarrassed to ask our parents  likely goes a long way toward establishing our healthy self image and giving us a model and comparison for all of the friends we will make in the future.

For C. S. Lewis, it was Arthur Greeves, a boy of the same age in his Belfast neighborhood, who invited teenage Jack over for a visit on one of his holidays from boarding school. On that first meeting the two discovered their mutual love of reading—especially stories about Norse mythology—and music, and they would maintain a lifelong correspondence and friendship in spite of their differences (e.g., Arthur was gay; Lewis was not).

Clive Staples Lewis had an unusual first and middle name, which is likely why he declared at the age of 3 that he wanted to be called Jacksie (later shortened to Jack). My first best friend also had an unusual name, but it was his last name, Tittsworth, that would lead to endless teasing by his classmates in elementary and junior high school and would cause him as a college student to consider legally changing his name. (Reportedly, when he approached his dad with the idea, George Tittsworth asked, what’s wrong with the name David?)

Dave and I met as members of the 4^th grade class at Black Elementary in Wichita, Kansas. We had been selected for the class as part of an initiative to provide a unique learning environment for “gifted” students. The class size was small, and the instruction was designed to interest students who, based on their test scores, were, presumably, ready for a greater academic challenge than was offered in their regular elementary school classes.

Of course, I wasn’t seeking, at the age of 10, greater academic challenges. All I really cared about was whether the teachers were nice and what the other kids in the class were like. The main change I noticed initially was that my mom had to drive me to school and pick me up each day. Before that, I had gone to my neighborhood school and I walked to and from school.

I liked the other students in my new school though I only remember a few of them today. I remember Eugene Gilden, an extremely outgoing fellow, who greeted me on the first day of class with a hearty “Hi, I’m Eugene. Welcome to Black Elementary!” I remember Brian Slabosky, who had a sizeable gap between his two front teeth that allowed him to perform impressive tricks at the water fountain, much to our amusement. And I remember David Tittsworth. He and I hit it off immediately and were soon spending afternoons after school at each other’s houses.

Dave lived in the Riverside neighborhood, about three miles from my house in the Indian Hills neighborhood of Wichita. Dave’s mom would have passed our house when driving her son to and from school at Black Elementary. Our moms had the thankless task of chauffeuring us back and forth between each other’s houses.

C. S. Lewis suggests that friendship has to be about something—some common interest that causes two acquaintances to become friends. What did Dave and I have in common—besides being two boys in the same small elementary school class? First, sports. I had fallen in love with basketball early. I don’t know if Dave had before we met, but I remember we spent lots of hours refining our jump shots on the hoop that my dad had installed at the edge of our garage roof at the 13^th street house. The long driveway provided ample room for us to practice, not only layups and mid-range shots, but what would have been three pointers, had the three-point shot actually existed in those days. When the Kansas winter set in, we moved to the basement of our house where we could play ping pong or pool. We spent most of our time at the pool table. My Uncle Jim had managed to find a couple of sturdy, slate pool tables in a bar/pool hall that was closing down in a rural Kansas town and had purchased one for himself and one for my dad. Moving the heavy slate and solid wood table down the long, narrow steps to our basement was a complicated operation, but, once accomplished, I thought I was the luckiest boy on earth to have a such an entertainment oasis at my disposal.

I loved playing pool with my dad, but he was a busy man. Five days a week he was a junior high English teacher; on weekends he was the preacher for the Northside Church of Christ. So Dave became my consistent pool playing partner.

Two boys with lively imaginations, however, can only play so many games of 8 Ball before boredom sets in. So Dave and I would invent new games—games that used the equipment of the table but were unrecognizable to any player of traditional pool or billiards. The game I remember most we called “Lag.” It worked like this: The pool balls were divided equally between the two of us, and we would engage in a series of lag challenges. A lag in pool is when the player strikes the ball from one end of the table to the opposite end. The ball strikes the bumper and returns the length of the table. The goal is have the ball come to rest as close as possible to the bumper nearest where the player struck the ball originally. Some players use the lag contest at the beginning of a game to determine who shoots first.

The wrinkle in our invented game was that lagging became the game itself. Now that probably sounds like a boring game, but there’s more. Dave and I had created names for each of our pool balls. Over time, each ball became a team member—a character with a name, a nationality, a back story—all of which would be narrated with great detail and seriousness before and during each lag contest. We even created a poster with a color-coded key showing each team member and including some significant stats about them. While I can’t remember the specific stories we narrated about our team members, I do know the game provided us with hours of fun and laughter.

As I write about the Lag game my friend and I invented, I’m struck by its nerdiness. It also indicates the relative affluence and privilege we both held as members of the white middle class. We obviously had a lot of free time on our hands. Our parents were not asking us to do chores after school, for example. However, another game Dave and I invented to pass the time is embarrassing to remember. It was a game we only played once, but because it was connected to a historically significant event, it’s one neither Dave nor I could ever forget. I can even attach a date to this game: November 22, 1963, the date President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. As I recall, our teacher had announced to our class that the President had been shot and that we would have an early release from school as a result. David came to my house, and we were in the basement when one of us came up with idea for a new game called “Shoot the President.” I know, it’s horrible, but, in our defense, we were 10 years old and did not grasp the seriousness of the moment.

I recently recalled this event when reading Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street with my freshman class. Cisneros tells the story of a sickly aunt who was confined to her bed and who she and her siblings and friends would sometimes visit and help. Cisneros relates how when she and her friends would play pretend, she would imitate her aunt’s awkward movements. The other children would laugh, and Cisneros confesses to enjoying their laughter. She also confesses how bad she felt when she gained enough maturity to recognize how cruel and insensitive their pretend games were. In one of our last email exchanges before my friend’s death, we recalled our twisted game from childhood. Ironically, Dave went on to have a distinguished career in government and politics in Washington, D. C., so he told me there were few people with whom he could share the story. Probably better that it remained our secret—at least until now.

Besides our love for playing and watching sports, another common bond that Dave and I shared was that we came from families where church was central to our home life. Dave and his family were members of the Methodist Church, and his father, as I recall, was the music minister and choir director. Like my dad, Dave's father worked two jobs: in addition to his church work, he was a State Farm insurance agent. My family were members of the Northside Church of Christ where my dad was the preaching minister. As mentioned above, my dad’s other job was as a junior high English teacher.

I think this similarity between our family priorities was significant for our relationship. In our younger years as friends, it provided some shared boundaries of behavior that no doubt made our parents feel good about the two of us spending time together. As we moved into our teenage years, we shared the experiences of testing some of those boundaries as we experimented with smoking and drinking—practices that would have been prohibited in each of our households. Finally, I’m sure both of us felt the added burden of being sons of church leaders. In those days it was not uncommon for church leader parents to put added pressure on their children to be “extra good” so as to be role models for the other kids at church. Of course, that same pressure often backfired with certain kids—thus, the experimentation mentioned above!

Though Dave and I attended different churches, one event from our high school years stands out. It was one of the only times we participated in a Christian gathering together. Dave’s Methodist church hosted an evening Young Life event where teens from many different churches (or no church) would gather to eat pizza, sing, and hear a speaker. Dave was asked to lead the singing part of the gathering, and at some point he invited me to join him in that. We would play our guitars and lead the group in singing Christian songs—not hymns, but more folky singalong, camp type songs. Dave was an accomplished musician but more on the piano than the guitar. He had only recently taken up the guitar. I had been playing guitar since fourth grade, but I was pretty introverted and shy in those days, so it was a big step for me to be on stage in front of a hundred or so peers. I’m sure I would not have been able to do it without my friend to encourage me.

There was another way in which these events called me to step outside my comfort zone. My church sang only a cappella in its worship services. No musical instruments were allowed in the sanctuary in the tradition I grew up in. So I’m sure at the time it was something of a shock to my parents that I was singing Christian songs in a church to guitar accompaniment. To their credit, they did not forbid it—and even came to one of the events at my invitation and, as I recall, never said anything critical or negative about it. It was lots of fun. Dave was a ham, who always loved to be in front of an audience while I was a wannabe ham. I was scared to death the entire time but still enjoyed the experience. The only song I remember from those singalongs was one Dave and I invented called the “Romp-Stomp Medley.” We strung several bouncy Christian songs together (one, I think, was “This World is Not My Home/I’m just a passin’ through”) and that was our big finale.

Music would continue to be a shared interest that drew us together. We listened to albums together and would often try to work out our favorite songs on our guitars. In the summer before our senior year of high school, Dave began hanging out with a kid named Matt Mitchell. Matt was funny, quirky, and highly intelligent. Initially, the friendship was primarily between Dave and Matt but eventually Dave invited me and we became a threesome. We spent many evenings at Matt’s house, where I was amazed to find that Matt was allowed to smoke in his room, his parents obviously being much more open-minded than Dave’s and mine. Matt introduced me to lots of great music, and he also introduced me to Lark cigarettes, which I began to smoke occasionally and furtively during my last year of high school Many evenings of my senior year were spent in Matt’s room, listening to music, playing music, and singing. Matt was super creative, as was Dave, and the two of them composed their own graduation song (“Oh, we hate, hate, hate to graduate/When we leave, we’ll feel bereaved” etc.).  I would go on to have some great musical experiences and meet other good friends, but for sheer fun and camaraderie, I don’t think anything eclipsed those evenings of music with Dave and Matt.

Today as I look back some fifty years, it’s difficult to pinpoint the times when Dave and I would both have said we were best friends. Our closeness tended to wax and wane. For sure, during the period of time when we were in 4th through the 6th grades, I think we both would have used the best friends label. When we moved on to the more expansive junior high population at John Marshall Junior High, things changed. While Dave and I continued to hang out and still visited each other’s houses, we both met new friends at our new school. Dave was more outgoing than I and made friends more easily. I tended to be shy and quiet and was probably much less widely known at the school. We both made the 8^th grade basketball team, but Dave also made the 7^th and 9^th grade teams. Dave, with his musical talents, participated in music and theatre, which I did not, so I’m sure he met a whole new set of friends there. I would say in Junior High we probably moved from best friends to good friends status. In high school, we maintained our friendship and still were often together outside of school, but we were not together constantly as we had been in elementary school. In our senior year, however, because of our friendship with Matt, I probably spent more time outside of school with Dave than I had at any time since elementary school.

Dave and I also played on the tennis team together. North High was a large public school, at the top of the sports classification system in Wichita, and while basketball remained our favorite sport, Dave and I both found the competition for spots on the basketball team too fierce. So we opted for tennis. North High had a terrible tennis team, led by the Driver’s Education instructor, who knew absolutely nothing about coaching tennis. However, for me it was the easiest path to achieving a letter in sports and obtaining the coveted red leather letter jacket that helped one achieve a certain status among one’s high school peers. Tennis, however, was still a good experience. Though our team was terrible and lost most of our matches, we had fun at practice and enjoyed making fun of our coach behind his back. I was the sixth man on the six-man squad. I can’t remember where Dave fell, but I know he was ahead of me.

Both tennis and basketball illustrated a dynamic in our friendship. Dave’s family did not place much emphasis on sports while mine did. My dad had introduced me early on to several sports, including basketball, golf, and tennis. If I remember correctly, Dave had not played any of these sports much until he met me. So I think of myself as introducing him to basketball and tennis. The other reality was that Dave was a more gifted athlete than me, so in both cases, after being introduced to the sport, he would quickly excel me in that sport. This was a reality I had to learn to accept because no matter how much I practiced, I was never able to match my friend in these sports.

When it came time to move on to college, Dave chose Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, while I chose Oklahoma Christian University in Oklahoma City. One of my strongest memories of my early years in college was how much I missed my high school friends, Dave and Matt. I remember writing a poem in my sophomore year where I compared my friends to trees and bewailed the fact that they were growing without me. Dave and I did stay in touch during our freshman years, and we even visited each other once or twice at college. After my freshman year, I returned to Wichita, worked a summer job, and resumed hanging out with Dave and Matt. Dave only completed one year at ORU before returning to Wichita and enrolling in Wichita State University. Dave and I were both English majors. I stayed all four years at Oklahoma Christian. Throughout the college years, our interactions were less frequent, but we always stayed in touch and every time I visited Wichita one of my first priorities was to see him. However, since after my freshman year, I never lived in Wichita again, opportunities to hang out were less frequent. I did attend Dave's wedding and played a Bob Dylan song at it. David went on to the University of Kansas Law School. I married Janet and moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, to begin graduate school in English, and at that point we began to lose touch.

And so from the time we were around 22 years old until our late fifties, Dave and I had very little contact. I would hear bits and pieces about his life in Washington, D. C., as an attorney who was becoming influential in politics and government but these snippets often came from his mom running into my mom at the grocery store or the mall and sharing stories about their kids. I continued to cherish memories of my best friend, but we had each moved on to very different lives in very different parts of the country.

Then about seven years ago, Dave and I reconnected—first on Facebook and then through a series of email exchanges where I learned about his diagnosis of multiple myeloma. Interestingly enough while we talked about his health challenges and what our lives were like currently, we talked mostly about the old days and how much we loved growing up as friends in Wichita. We recounted our favorite memories and laughed about them. At times we would remind each other of events the other had forgotten, thus having the pleasure of re-remembering and reliving those days. I will cherish those communications forever because there’s nothing like a best friend.

Here’s something strange: a couple of days before getting news of David’s death, I had mentioned to Janet that I had been thinking about him a lot lately. Over the Christmas break, I had gone back to rescue some old emails from my inbox, which is when I discovered a long email string between Dave and me when we reconnected after I learned of his health problems.

I had been mulling over the possibility of doing a road trip to visit some of my friends from the past, including Dave. Janet said I must have sensed something about his condition since he was so much on my mind. And this is true. Though I had thought about other old friends—like Roger and Richard—it was Dave that was on my mind most. They say parents often sense when their children are in trouble or hurting, so maybe the same thing happens with old best friends.

About two years ago I learned of the death of Matt Mitchell, the third part of the trio of friends from my high school years. It’s weird to think that those friends I spent so much time with no longer walk the earth. I’m now experiencing that sense of loss again that I felt when I left my friends to go off to college, yet in a more ultimate manner. In another, deeper sense, I know that Dave and Matt are always with me because I have those memories, and I know that part of who I am today is a result of those early friendships.

I miss you.

May you rest in peace.

Your friend,

Gary

Clouds of Mourning, Sunbreaks of Grace

My wife received the call on Monday afternoon.

It was the Monday of a busy finals week for me, but the day had gone well. My department had met for our traditional finals week lunch, sharing Mexican food and stories and laughter. The scheduled all-morning Faculty Senate meeting had mercifully been canceled, allowing me to make some additional progress on my grading. If my luck held, I thought, I might be able to get all my papers graded before my final exams. Maybe, just maybe, I could grade those finals by commencement on Saturday when I could begin enjoying my four-week break early.

Then the call that changed everything came.

It was Janet's brother. He said the staff at the assisted living facility had been concerned about their dad. Monte's speech was slurred, and he seemed listless, struggling even to sit upright in his chair. Mark had taken him to Mercy Hospital emergency room, and they began the evaluation. Hospice had been called and would be there the next morning.

I remembered the calls I had received about my parents. Though they were some years ago, I could recall clearly the circumstances and the setting when each call came. When my brother said, "we've talked to hospice and they said you should come."

When you live 2000 miles away, those calls initiate not only a flurry of activity but lots of anxiety. Will I get there on time? Will I get there, stay for a week when nothing changes, then have to return?

The next day we got the second call. We learned Monte had been sleeping a lot since entering the hospital. The hospice people were saying it could be days, it could be two weeks. This information was not very helpful, but as we talked about what to do, it became clear that Janet needed to get there ASAP.  We changed our reservations from Saturday to the next day, Wednesday. I immediately began making arrangements with work study students and colleagues to proctor my finals scheduled for the next couple of days. We started packing, rescheduling appointments.

Then the third call came. Janet was in our bedroom when she got the news from her brother that her dad had passed--peacefully, thank God--but also much more quickly than any of us had expected. He would have been 93 on his January birthday, had lived a long, full life. The last year and a half since his stroke had been hard. Janet tried to take comfort in the fact that her dad was no longer weak and struggling.

The next 24 hours brought a flurry of activity interspersed with tears and hugs. We asked our youngest son, Garrison, to go with us if he could get off work, and he said he could. Before we knew it, we were in the back of an airporter van, beginning the trip south.

In my experience, saying goodbye to a parent is one of the hardest things on earth. For me, this was the third time: first my mom, then my dad, and now, Janet's dad. No matter the age or circumstances, when it comes, it seems an event of enormous proportion. It's not an eventuality most of us prepare for because we think, contrary to reason, that our parents will always be there for us. And unlike mourning the death of a friend, when it's a parent, there's that sense of responsibility, the feeling that the mantle is being passed on to us--and we realize there's no way we are ready to take on that role.

Grief is a fickle emotion. It comes in waves and it arrives at unexpected moments. I can remember when my mom died, my dad had asked me to call several old friends who were out of town and tell them about her death and inform them about the memorial service. I was doing fine until I was on the phone with Barbara, one of Mom's good friends. In the middle of telling her about the time and date of the service, I broke down and cried, blubbering, unable to continue talking.

When I returned from Kansas and began the spring semester at the small college where I taught, I thought getting back to work would help. I would be fine, I told myself. I've had a week to grieve; now it's time to get on with life. But I was mistaken. At a college of 350, you know everyone and everyone knows you. Students are friends, as are fellow faculty members. So I couldn't walk across the courtyard to my classes without having conversations, and each conversation brought back the loss of my mom to the top of my consciousness, unearthing feelings I didn't even know existed. I realized that grief does not contain itself in a week or two week's break. It continues coming in waves and according to its own rhythms.

Yet in the midst of mourning, this trip to Oklahoma and Arkansas reminded me, there are moments of grace, moments that interrupt the grief and bring joy and healing. Some are sad moments but they carry a weight of meaning that we don't often experience in our day-to-day existence. Here's some of the moments I'll remember:

• Phoning my pastor. Hearing the caring and compassion in her voice. The comfort I took from her prayer over the phone with me. Knowing that my family and I would be in the thoughts and prayers of many good people.
• Emails and hallway conversations with my colleagues at school. Their ready offers to proctor finals or help in other ways. The comfort of knowing we were not alone.
• Asking one of my classes to email their final papers rather than leaving a hard copy in my mailbox, which I would not be around to receive. (For some reason, I thought I would be able to grade papers on the trip. Silly me!) My students not only sent their papers but expressed their sorrow at my loss and made thoughtful comments about how they were praying for me and my family.
• In Oklahoma, being welcomed upon our late-night arrival to Janet's brother and sister-in-law's home where our beds were ready and when I went to the kitchen the next morning, I saw the Peter Pan crunchy peanut butter Beth had left for me. (It's my favorite brand of peanut butter, but it's hard to come by in Oregon.)
• Janet and Mark's first hug, sharing for the first time, in the flesh, the reality of their dad's departure. Mark's obvious relief that his sister was there.
• After the 6-hour drive to Arkansas, being welcomed into the farmhouse home of Janet's aunt and uncle. Sitting at their kitchen table as multiple grandfather clocks chimed the hours and minutes, writing down what I would say about Janet's dad at the chapel and graveside service the next day. 
• The country breakfast ready for us when we woke up Saturday: eggs, bacon, biscuits with homemade apple butter and jellies--with all the coffee and tea we could drink.
• Not long after that hearty breakfast, a potluck lunch for the family at the church building with fried chicken, ham, potatoes, green beans, pie because, as Janet said, the way you show love to people in these parts is by feeding them.
• The joyful, tearful reunions between Janet and her aunts and uncles and cousins.
• The shared stories by family and friends at the memorial service of their memories of Monte. One of his grandsons, a Navy man, had difficulty sharing through his tears but, more meaningful than his words perhaps was when he turned to Monte's casket and saluted his grandfather, a WWII veteran.
• The funny and poignant stories sent by our son from South Korea, which Janet read, including the story about when Pops was teaching him to ride a bike and Jackson wanted to ride barefoot and Pops told him if he did his toe would get stuck in the concrete, this being warning enough to ensure that he would never ride a bike barefoot again.
• Hearing stories about Monte as a child from his three surviving sisters including one about his teasing the girls in high school by hiding a mirror from them.
• At the graveside, hearing Taps blown by the military honor guard--complete with a cow in the field next to the cemetery mooing along.
• Watching Garrison and his two cousins serve as pallbearers, carrying their Pops on the last leg of his earthly journey.
• The mercy of a dry, sunny day for the graveside service after it had rained hard all day on Friday.
• At the close of the graveside service, Janet asking the family members to join hands and sing "Silent Night." With Christmas being a few days away, she thought singing together about peace and new birth an appropriate way to end this day of mourning and celebration for a good man--a loving son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather--and so we did and so it was.
• On the return trip, stopping by the Tulsa neighborhood we used to live in and seeing the house that Janet designed and had built, remembering those times when our kids were young and fed the ducks in the pond in that neighborhood.
• Back in Oklahoma, at Starbucks, having a chance meeting with some best friends from our Tulsa days. Spending an hour remembering good times with Darryl and Cathy and their four kids and our three and catching up on what all our kids were up to now. 

Each of these moments was like a sunbreak--a word I only learned when I moved from Oklahoma to the Pacific Northwest. There's not much need for the word in the Southwest where the sun shines pretty much all the time. But, in Oregon, where most any day from November to June can be cloudy and grey, it's a word that comes in handy.

When I served as academic dean at a small college in Portland, my office window looked out onto the soccer field. Most days during the spring semester, the soccer field was empty or, at best, home to a few birds. But when a sunbreak came, I could look out my window and be sure to see lots of 18-21-year-olds, throwing frisbees and footballs or just sitting on a blanket talking, reveling in the warmth of the sun.

It seems to be human nature to appreciate those events that seldom come: Like sun in winter in the Pacific Northwest. Like times when we can express our appreciation for the life of a loved one. Those times, as Shakespeare said, where we speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. Those times, like Christmas, when we can sing Silent Night and reflect on birth, and death, and love that never ends.

The Road Goes Ever On and On

Just over a week ago, my wife, Janet, and I drove from our home near Portland, OR, to Washington's Olympic National Forest where we dropped our son, Garrison, at the Bogachiel trail head. We said our goodbyes and wished him happy trails, knowing that we wouldn't see him again for about six weeks. In a few minutes he would be taking his first steps down the trail on a solo backpacking journey that would span many miles and numerous campgrounds, where he would eat lots of beef jerky and Clif bars, see incredible sights, and (his parents hoped) not have an up close and personal encounter with a bear or a cougar.

Garrison had begun planning this trip months ago after deciding to leave the winery where he had been working for over two years. He left his apartment in McMinnville and moved in with us in Newberg for a few months to save money for his trip. His plan was to work at his current job until early July and then take about six weeks off before beginning a new one.

I learned from observing Garrison that a journey like this takes lots of preparation. He spent many hours researching on the Internet, learning about the trail, downloading park maps, reading the stories of other backpackers and their experiences. He learned that the Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT) was a rugged 1,200 mile path spanning Montana, Idaho, and Washington. Most hikers begin in Glacier National Park in Montana and hike westward to the Washington coast, ending in the Olympic National Park. But he decided to take the opposite route, beginning in Washington and ending--well, wherever he has time to get to in six weeks. He won't be able to complete the entire 1,200 miles in that time frame. It made sense to me that he chose the opposite route of most hikers. Garrison's always been his own person and frequently makes choices that the rest of the family didn't see coming. As his older brother, Jackson, once said: the one thing you can count on with Garrison is that he will surprise you.

In addition to researching the trip, Garrison spent time training to be sure he had the stamina to walk 16-22 miles per day. Almost every weekend between April and June, he found trails from near Portland to the coast where he could do practice hikes. As the date drew closer he made several trips to REI for equipment he needed--including a GPS device so he could message us from the trail, allowing his mom to  keep track of his longitudes and latitudes. Though I had moments of apprehension about his doing this trip alone, I was somewhat comforted by the extent of his preparation and training. Suffice it to say that he was much, much better prepared than Cheryl Strayed was for her Pacific Crest Trail hike recorded in her memoir Wild.

So the day finally came. Garrison packed all the possessions he would have for the next six weeks and hoisted his backpack in our living room, testing the weight.

We loaded the Outback and, after a final stop at REI, headed up I-5. Janet and I were excited about our trip as well. Though we've lived in Oregon for 24 years, we've never been to the part of Washington where we would be driving today. I was excited to see Forks, WA, where the Twilight novels were based. Though I've never read the books, as an English prof, I'm always up for a literary landmark. I got the obligatory tourist picture by the sign.

As we drove on the beautiful road leading to Port Angeles, by Sequim with its lavender farms, and into the Olympic National Forest and its dense trees, I was surprised at how much this journey of Garrion's was affecting me. It was his journey, after all. Janet and I were just his means of transportation. Yet having observed him plan so carefully for something that obviously meant a lot to him, I felt I had become, if only vicariously, part of this adventure. And it was an adventure, a challenge--far different than a weekend at the beach. He never said, but I wondered if this was his way of testing and challenging himself. I certainly admired his resolve, moreso because it was something I would never have had the courage to do. When I was his age (he'll turn 29 in October) I was trying to complete my personal challenge of getting my Ph.D. by the time I was 30.

William Butler Yeats says somewhere that our lives are like a spiral staircase. As we wind closer to the top, we can look down and mark points in our lives that feel similar to what we're currently experiencing. So a grandfather might look down and recall that turn on the staircase when he first became a father. Maybe that's what I was doing, reading my own experience into my son's. I can tell you this: if you gave me the choice of completing another doctorate or going on a solo six-week backpacking trip, I would immediately begin researching seminaries!

As we drove toward Port Angeles, my mind turned to the summer online literature and philosophy course I was teaching and to a text called Christians Among the Virtues. The authors, Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches, after discussing Aristotle's theories of happiness, suggest that it's useful to think of our lives as a journey rather than as a trip. Around the time Garrison moved in with us and told us about his plans, I had read these words in my course text:

When we go on a trip, we know well where we are going, roughly how long it will take to get there, what preparations to make, and so on. When we undertake a journey, we often have only a hazy idea of where we are going, how long it will take, or how to prepare.

The authors go on to note that virtues are required for a journey but not for a trip. Well, there was no doubt in my mind that Janet and I were on a trip (to Port Angeles and back home to Newberg) while our son was embarking on a journey--a journey that would test his virtues and his mettle and one in which there would likely be twists and turns and revisions along the way. This last point was confirmed when Garrison visited with a park ranger who looked at his trail plan and informed him that two of the campgrounds where he had planned to spend the night had been washed out and were closed. So even before he started, he had to revise the plan.  I also had no doubt that not only his plans but Garrison himself would be changed by this journey.

I was also thinking of the last two books we had read in my summer online course: Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring. I've always identified with the Bilbo at the beginning of the book more than the Bilbo that emerges at the end of his adventure with Gandalf and the dwarves. This tells you a lot about me, of course, that I resonate more with the comfort loving, second-breakfast eating, "Adventures make one late for dinner" Bilbo than with the spider-taming, master thief, courageous Bilbo. It also struck me how much of the narrative content of both books is basically the recounting of a long backpacking trip. Of course, the hobbits and their companions encounter extraordinary obstacles on their journey, but at least they have Gandalf watching out for them once in awhile. It's amazing how much literature involves a journey and that the external journey is always less important than the internal journey of the hero. Somehow I wasn't surprised when Garrison told me on the ride up to Olympic that one of the audio books he'd downloaded for the trail was The Lord of the Rings.

After the Forks photo op, we wound our way further into the park and located the even curvier gravel road that led to the trail head. It felt like we were leaving civilization far behind as we went deeper and deeper into the forest. I thought about the quiet and solitude that Garrison would be experiencing over the next few weeks and was grateful that he's someone who's always needed his alone time and his space. (He's not even on Facebook, for goodness sakes, which is why I have to do posts to let his friends know about what he's up to.) And I thought of the beauties of nature he would experience and was grateful that he's always loved, like his mother and older brother, the outdoors. He told me when he was graduating from college that working a 9 to 5 job in a cubicle in an office building was pretty much the worst fate he could imagine. I was grateful too, I guess, or trying my best to be grateful, that he was the type of man who would plan and execute such an adventure--though I wonder where it came from. There must be some long-lost ancestor adventurer on Janet's side of the family he takes after. Like Bilbo, whose unhobbitlike wanderlust was attributed to his Tookish blood, there has to be some explanation.

After taking a few last family photos, we said goodbye and wished our son happy trails.

Janet and I retraced our path over the winding road back to civilization. I was feeling lots of emotions: a little sadness that I wouldn't be able to drink coffee with Garrison in the mornings and talk about his plans, a little concern, hoping he wouldn't run into danger or injury on the trail, and lots of admiration and pride that my son was doing this hard thing. I realized it wouldn't really matter if he completes his original plan. If he decides to catch the train back to Oregon in two weeks, he will still have done a remarkable thing. He will have seen things in nature and in himself that he will remember for the rest of his life. As Gandalf says of Frodo, there is more to him than meets the eye; there will be still more to Garrison, when he returns, changed, from this journey.

          The Road goes ever on and on
                  Down from the door where it began.
          Now far ahead the Road has gone,
                 And I must follow, if I can,
          Pursuing it with weary feet,
                 Until it joins some larger way,
          Where many paths and errands meet.
                 And whither then? I cannot say.

C. S. Lewis on Patriotism

 In chapter two of The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis recalls a conversation with an old clergyman who was maintaining, with patriotic fervor, the superiority of England over all other countries. Lewis ventured a challenge: "But, sir, aren't we told that every people thinks its own men the bravest and its own women the fairest in the world?" The clergyman replied with total gravity (as grave, Lewis says, as if he had been saying the Creed at the altar) "Yes, but in England it's true."

This anecdote seems instructive for our time in the United States as we hear renewed calls for patriotism, demands for forced respect for the flag and an anthem, and insistence that, apparently, America has lost its place in the world as the most powerful nation and must be returned to its former glory.

In confusing, perplexing, and, frankly, scary times like these, it helps me to return to Lewis's voice. While I don't always agree with every idea expressed by Lewis, I can count on him to bring a reasoned and analytical approach to any question--and to do so from a perspective that is thoroughly Christian. One of Lewis's friends called him the most thoroughly converted man he had ever met, so it was impossible for Lewis to examine any realm of life without bringing a theological perspective to bear.

With that, here's a few gems about patriotism I learned from Lewis in my latest reading of The Four Loves.

• First, Lewis thought patriotism a topic worth considering in some detail. In a 24 page chapter on the "Likings and Loves for the Sub-Human" Lewis spends 9 of those pages discussing patriotism.
• Lewis suggests that patriotism is complex and has several elements, pointing out that two very different writers--Kipling and Chesterton--expressed it vigorously.
• Lewis sees clearly both the values and dangers of patriotism. Returning to the story of the patriotic clergyman, we should note that Lewis grants that the clergyman's conviction has not made him a villain, "only an extremely lovable old ass." But he immediately warns that the same conviction (the firm belief that our own nation, in sober fact, has long been, and still is markedly superior to all others) can produce asses that kick and bite. Lewis even notes: "on the lunatic fringe it may shade off into that popular Racialism which Christianity and science equally forbid."
• Lewis notes that this dangerous patriotism is often based on a distorted view of our country's past. Lewis states: "The actual history of every country is full of shabby and even shameful doings," yet the patriot tends to ignore the shameful past, preferring heroic stories which cast the country in the best possible light--in spite of the fact that the glorious past celebrated is open to serious historical criticism. (Think of Trump's recent statement about our ancestors "taming" a continent.) To be fair, Lewis believes it is possible to be strengthened by the image of the past, but warns: "The image becomes dangerous in the precise degree to which it is mistaken, or substituted, for serious and systematic historical study."
• As he does throughout the book, Lewis constantly reminds us that love of country (like all loves) becomes a demon when it becomes a god.
• Lewis reminds us of another danger: "if our nation is really so much better than others it may be held to have either the duties or the rights of a superior being towards them." As evidence, Lewis cites the colonialism of Great Britain, noting "our habit of talking as if England's motives for acquiring an empire . . . had been mainly altruistic nauseated the world."
• In summary, Lewis takes a balanced view of patriotism. He does not reject it entirely and sees cultural and social value in it. Yet he closes the chapter with some extremely strong statements about the dangers of equating our country's cause with God's, noting "if our country's cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world." 
• Finally, Lewis closes the chapter with a bold statement about what can happen when the church mingles patriotism with the transcendent claims of the church and uses them to justify abominable actions. 

If ever a book which I am not going to write is written it must be the full confession by Christendom of Christendom's specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery. Large areas of 'the World' will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Moloch.

Now this is not a quote from Lewis that I've seen made into a meme and posted on Facebook! But perhaps it should be. I hope Lewis's reasoned, common sense approach and Christian worldview can help us navigate the troubled waters we find ourselves in today. Lewis, of course, is not writing about the American situation, but his definitions and warnings seem more relevant every day.

Happy Independence Day!

The Paradox of the Cross

“For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.” I Corinthians 1:25^*

Before the gospel is good news, it is paradox, so when Paul describes the cross of Christ, the only way he can do so is with paradoxical statements: foolishness is greater than wisdom and weakness is better than strength. Might as well say green is yellow and down is up!

In our world, from sports to entertainment to business, we love and celebrate winners. We don’t waste our time on the losers—in fact, we ignore them. Who can recall the loser of the last year’s Super Bowl?

In King Lear, Shakespeare pictures a world is which the philosophy of winning at all costs has prevailed. The characters who seem to be winning are those like Regan and Goneril and Edmund who are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and bully to gain power. By contrast, the characters like Kent and Edgar and Cordelia who demonstrate love and loyalty and self-sacrifice appear weak and ineffectual—in short, losers. Paradoxically, the characters who appear to be weak and foolish by human standards are strong and wise when measured by divine standards. As Lear says of Cordelia’s death, “with such sacrifices the gods are pleased.”

Paul, it seems, wants to encourage his readers in Corinth not to view Jesus’s death on the cross as a loss, but rather as a victory—one that demonstrated once and for all the rejection of the values of power and violence in favor of those values that Jesus lived: welcome, acceptance, inclusion, and self-sacrificial love. It demonstrated once and for all that love conquers hate, that the foolishness of God is wiser than the world’s wisdom and that the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

Loving God, grant us a clear vision so we may reject the violence and abuse of power so evident in our world and practice instead your radical welcome and self-sacrificial love. Amen.

^*Third Sunday of Lent

Keep Always your Fire and your Silver: Why I Teach

Why do we do what we do?

The question appeared in an email the other day. It was asked by a fellow college English professor who I don't know personally. We're part of the same listserv group. He was suggesting the summer is a good time to reflect on larger questions like this. I agree.

Keep always your Fire and your Silver.

This phrase appeared on the Facebook page of one of my high school friends, Matt. I hadn't seen Matt since my college days. In high school we were not best friends; he was more a friend of a friend, yet during the last couple of years in high school we hung out quite a bit--enough that I can still remember details about him: Matt was among the funniest, wittiest, and quirkiest people I've met. He loved poetry, and he introduced me to some great music.

It was from a post from Matt's wife, Ann, on his FB page I learned Matt had died: January 17, 2017. Through a link on Matt's FB page, I was able to read his obituary, catching up on what he'd been up to in the 43 years since I'd seen him.

From the obituary I learned that Matt left university to work for a machine shop, then a tractor company; eventually returning to finish his degree and going on to receive his Master's in Education. He then worked in Substance Abuse education for the Wichita public schools before ending his career as a language arts teacher at two different high schools. He was said to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the works of Tolkien and George Martin and was described as a true wordsmith and grammarian who inspired his students to love words as he did.

On Matt's FB page, following his death, one of his students (I presume) posted a photo of a note that Matt had written to her. "Keep always your Fire and your Silver," the note said.

Intrigued by the phrase, I spent awhile Googling to see if Matt had been quoting from a poem or a song. No luck. The closest I came was a rap song ("Keep your silver, give me that gold") and the Scout song about making new friends but keeping the old; one is silver and the other gold. I doubted that either one was what Matt had in mind, so I'm going to guess the phrase was original with him.

When I saw my colleague's question about why we do what we do, I thought about why I teach; then I thought about Matt's note to his student. I hope my friend won't mind if I draw my own conclusions about his phrase and apply them to explain why I teach.

Fire = passion/intellectual curiosity/loving your subject/valuing the life of the mind. It's why I decided teaching was my calling so many years ago. I can't tell you the exact moment, but at some point as I sat in a college literature classroom at Oklahoma Christian University a professor sparked something within me. It might have been the way he got excited when explaining why Emily Dickinson chose this word and not that one or when asking why Donne began his poem with a trochee rather than an iamb. Whatever it was, the spark was lit and there was no turning back. That spark would eventually grow into a flame as I began to think about a career as an English professor. Later in grad school, I remember Dr. Bratton stopping in the middle of our discussion of Wordsworth's poetry and saying, "This is so much fun! I can't believe I get paid to do this."

I can't believe I get paid to do this. That's been pretty much consistently true for me over my 25 years of teaching writing and literature. But, of course, while it's true I love what I do (I get paid to read Shakespeare plays and Anne Lamott books and C. S. Lewis fantasy lit over and over, after all!), there's something else I've learned in those 25 years. Without students, my passion and love of my subject would be pointless. It's the chance to be the generator of that spark that eventually lights the fire in a student that brings true joy. It's seeing the light bulb go on for a student during a class discussion. It's reading the final essay of a student who has struggled mightily with the first two papers and realizing she's really understanding how to write an academic argument. It's sitting with a student in my office talking about graduate programs or how he hopes to use his writing skills in the nonprofit world. It's getting an email from a student who's just successfully completed her first year of grad school or teaching and having them thank me and our department for preparing her well. That's where the fire is. It's the fire that keeps me warm during the wet Oregon winters and keeps my spirits up in the long stretch between Christmas break and Spring break.

Silver = unique gifts/what makes students different, special, and memorable/style/personality/quirky habits/connection
If students were all the same, my job would be incredibly boring. I teach many of the same texts year after year, but it's the differences among the students who encounter those texts that keeps me interested.  There's some students I'll never forget. Like the one who, on the first day of freshman writing was sitting in the windowsill at the back of the classroom. He had not merely scooted his chair near the window; no, he had gotten out of his chair, raised the lower part of the window as high as it would go, and was sitting on the windowsill, as if he wanted to get as far as physically possible away from me and that classroom. Oh boy, I thought, this one's going to be a problem. He turned out to be the brightest light and best writer in the class, going on to become a medical doctor. While in my class, he wrote his persuasive paper on why a persuasive paper was a dumb assignment, using the argumentative techniques covered in class so effectively I had no choice but to give him an A.

There's some students I'd like to forget. No, I won't go there.

Some of my most memorable students have been the ones who've had great challenges to overcome. Like the student whose twin brother had been killed in a freak car accident when they were teenagers. She survived the accident and had to live with that painful memory. She also had impaired hearing that was not entirely compensated for by the hearing aids she wore. In spite of these challenges (or perhaps due to them), she was one of the most cheerful, compassionate, and encouraging people I've ever met. She took on leadership roles at the college including president of her service club and asked me to be the faculty sponsor. Though it was an all-female club, I couldn't say no to this student. After graduating with her English degree, she went to seminary and today serves as a hospital chaplain. Her story and those of many other unique students I treasure in my heart.

Of course, as any teacher knows, each class has its own personality as well. This explains the phenomenon I've often experienced where I use the exact same material and class plan in two sections of the same class. In one class, it leads to the best session ever; in the other, the worst. A few years ago, I had a writing class of English majors who, for whatever reason, clicked as a group. Instead of a collection of individual learners, the class became a community with its own, rather quirky, personality. Someone decided it would be fun to have themed dress days in class and convinced most of the class members to go along with it. So one week would 90s garb, the next 80s, etc. During 60s week I wore my tie dye shirt and received great applause when I revealed it by unbuttoning my long sleeve shirt. My outer shirt was one of those with the western style buttons, so I was able to make the reveal rather dramatic. Needless to say, discussion was not a problem in this class though I did sometimes have to redirect them to the topic for the day.

So why do I do what I do? I teach with hope that something I do or say or emote in the classroom will light a spark in a student. I teach because I recognize what a difference fire can make in forging a life well lived. I teach because I hope each of my students will recognize his or her unique gifts, what he or she is especially good at, what makes him or her special, will value his or her silver. I don't expect them all to become English majors, but whatever they do, I want them to do it because they've identified what their passion is (their fire) and what makes them unique (their silver). I also figured out long ago I can't expect to connect with every student. That's why I have colleagues.

Recently, I was reading some of Thomas Merton's reflections on the nature of the Bible. Merton quoted the passage from II Corinthians where Paul says to the church members at Corinth: "You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men."

Just so I would hope whatever small part I have in helping students nurture their fire and find their silver, those students would become my letter of recommendation, taking what they can from me and using it in even greater ways for a life well lived.

To shift the metallurgical metaphor, here's what I want my students to know, in the word of John Prine:

"You've got gold, gold inside of you.
Well I've got some gold inside me too."

Postscript: I wish I could revise all those graduation notes I've written to students over the years. If I could, I would boil them all down to a single line: "Keep always your Fire and your Silver." I may use it from now on, but if I do, I'll be sure to credit my friend, Matt.