“Gracious child, I was raveling a thread, wasn’t even thinking about your father, but now that I am I’ll say this: Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets. How’d you like some fresh pound cake to take home?’ {Miss Maudie}
I liked it very much.” ~ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, pg 51
When one walks through the unfolding with Atticus Finch, you can feel it pulsing in the pages.
The tug-of-war of the human condition. An intentional path following hard after self-control and compassion and empathy. A wrangling of emotions and staring dead into the eyes of hard and haunting questions. Questions carrying the echoes and undertones of “What sort of life will you choose to live? What sort of person are you choosing to become?”
Atticus tells Scout “if you can learn a simple trick, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
I read a few chapters in Kate Bowler’s new book, Joyful Anyway, before I slip my e-reader on the nightstand, pull the comforter to my chin.
“All of us live inside struggles that no one can entirely understand.” Kate writes in chapter 5 as she talks about the face of depression and “what happens, happens. And there will be no apology.”
If I were an artist like my niece The Meadowlarke or Scott the Painter, I’d love to illustrate that line. I can see the swirl of struggles, circling, circling, circling around me, around you, around the person-who-annoys-me-every-single-time. Tangled and web-like, tornadic and tempestuous, invisible to all who pass us by. We are central in the story, stuck in it, struggling alone.
As I started chapter ten in Harper Lee’s work, I found it funny and laughed out loud. “Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty. When Jem and I asked him why he was so old, he said he got started late, which we felt reflected upon his abilities and manliness. He was much older than the parents of our school contemporaries, and there was nothing Jem or I could say about him when our classmates said, “My father…”
Our father didn’t do anything. He worked in an office, not in a drugstore. Atticus did not drive a dump truck for the county, he was not the sheriff, he did not farm, work in a garage, or do anything that possibly aroused the admiration of anyone. Besides that he wore glasses.”
Fifty is hovering on my horizon, and I must admit, I’m finding it harder to swallow than forty. I hoped to be half as wise as how I perceived it to be, but mostly I hold questions and mostly I find myself in the feelings of Scout, and Anne, and other literary heroes who are children. This mightn’t be all bad. But it feels…….like failing. Like everyone else out there confidently Has. It. Together. Like being a beginner, and unfortunately, my pride and patience hate being a beginner.
Death and taxes come for us all, but after filing for twenty-nine years, I still feel confused about all those forms and what this farm can write off and why we put in so many hours for a mighty meager return.
And besides, I push glasses up the bridge of my nose and I don’t do anything, especially, I don’t drive a dump truck, and I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
Death and taxes aside, I laughed at an eight-year-old’s view of fifty. Feeble might nail it. Faltering encapsulate it and floundering be the feel of it.
And the question is, what race are we working to win?
Outside or Inside?
Country Club list or integrity of character?
Billionaire or Bounteousness?
In my friend Allison Bixby’s book, Journaling as a Spiritual Practice, she begins chapter nine with this quote: “Spiritual formation helps us to see the face of God in the midst of a hardened world and in our own heart.” ~ Henri Nouwen
A few paragraphs in, Allison writes about a child, her baby, their firstborn. His disability, as we call it because it’s all we have to differentiate. Maybe he’s the lucky one who lives into his fullest self. For, I ponder, isn’t that swirling unseen struggle we all live in, our own kind of disability? When it comes down to the brass tacks of it, each of us in this human experience, red-headed baby or feeble fifty-year-old, live only millimeters apart.
Allison bleeds these tender and raw words across the page. “Then, the Spirit gently whispers, “He’s the gift.” The gift of a red-headed baby. The gift of my firstborn. The gift of showing me a new way to see the world. Sometimes we hold gifts that, frankly, don’t feel like gifts. They seem like the wrong size, the wrong shape, the wrong everything. We can’t help but think that if this is God’s idea of a gift, we are pages apart.”
In a survey of my lived experience, I’ve fretted and fumed, wallowed and wailed, sulked and stewed at the hand I’ve held. Too often, over the merest uncomfortable detail, determined it was indeed the wrong size, the wrong shape, the wrong everything.
“What happens, happened,” says Kate in the next-to-last sentence of chapter 5.
“The third thing happened to Helen Robinson, Tom’s widow. Mr. Link Deas made a job for Helen. He didn’t really need her, but he said he felt right bad about the way things turned out. I never knew who took care of Helen’s children when she was away. Calpurnia said it was hard on Helen, as she had to walk nearly a mile out of her way to avoid the Ewells, who according to Helen “chunked at her” the first time she tried to use the public road. Mr Link Deas eventually received the impression that Helen was coming to work each morning from the wrong direction, and dragged the reason out of her. “Just let it be, Mr. Link, please, suh,” Helen begged. “The hell I will,” said Mr. Link. He told her to come by his store that afternoon. She did, and Mr. Link closed his store, put his hat firmly on his head, and walked Helen home. He walked her the short way, by the Ewells’.”
~ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, pg 286
Helen is a bit of a secondary character in To Kill a Mockingbird, but her life was the most impacted by the actions and inactions of other people. Decisions ripple far.
“And there will be no apology.”
You can’t apologize for someone else. You can help ease the sting. You can fix a few things, but “what happens, happened.”
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis was written in 1935.
George Orwell wrote his novel 1984 between 1946 and 1948.
To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960.
Fiddler on the Roof was first performed on Broadway in 1964.
Jodi Picoult wrote The StoryTeller in 2013.
Jesus Christ taught by example, through the Sermon on the Mount, in parable after parable, circa AD 27-30.
Does the future ever learn from the past? Does today feel the impact of yesterday? Will we let history be our professor or will we simply re-write it? Will we ban books and burn books? Write about the toxicity of empathy rather than “climb into their skin and walk around”?
I know my own duplicity. My tendency toward selfishness. My desire to believe I am a generous person and my desire to be all about me, me, me. It’s easier to create an image in my mind than to live with earnest intention and open humility. Who wants to admit I had it wrong?
“Yes, sir, I understand,” I reassured him. “Mr. Tate was right.”
Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’d be sort of like shooting a mocking bird wouldn’t it?” ~ Harper Lee, pg. 318
Perhaps the question I am carrying is this: Do we ever learn that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird?
Will we forever be caught up in our own swirling storm so we cannot see the pain on another’s face or pause to listen and believe the experience of our neighbor?
Maybe success looks like becoming a person your children want to be around when they grow up. What if that’s what happens? What if we’re the same person in our house as on the public street?
What if the gifts that come in the wrong shapes and the wrong sizes, when opened, reveal the most beautiful music of all?
2 Timothy 4:1-5
“I solemnly urge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will someday judge the living and the dead when he comes to set up his Kingdom: Preach the word of God. Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching. For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. They will reject the truth and chase after myths.But you should keep a clear mind in every situation. Don’t be afraid of suffering for the Lord. Work at telling others the Good News, and fully carry out the ministry God has given you.
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