Worthlessness and the pattern of hope: an Advent meditation

In the spirit of Advent, I recently re-read CS Lewis's essay, "The Grand Miracle". This is not an obvious Advent reading, but a great one because in it Lewis hangs the meaning and purpose of all things on the Incarnation.

The story of the Incarnation, Lewis argues, is a story of descent and resurrection, and this particular motif sets the pattern for the entire natural (and supernatural) world. Seeds die in the soil to be reborn into great plants and trees. Likewise, many things in our spiritual lives must be killed and broken in order to become bright and strong and splendid.

Watching early daylight pierce the mist to invade a dark stand of forest outside my window, I felt deep gratitude for this universal pattern of light invading the darkness. But turning inward, I had to admit I felt areas of darkness for which I held no tangible hope of light and redemption.

Human life seems to entail an increasing reckoning with dreams and hopes that will never reach fruition. Youth is blessed with almost ubiquitous potential. Anything is possible. At the point you realize one of those hopes has fallen from that bright realm of possibility, a weight of sadness lands like a flake of snow in the night. We feel the slow pressing down of hope under accumulated sadness and the cold dark, not of waiting or yearning, but of forced giving up.

I pondered deep wounds incurably frozen behind the passage of time, but paradoxically present. "Will the light someday shine even here?"

This morning I happened upon Isaiah 49☨, because I wanted to read out of the sorrow, up into all that messianic hopeful stuff in the Isaiah 50s. I wanted to find the inflection point of hope and savor it a bit.

Chapter 49 begins with some wonderful Christmas hope from the messianic Servant's mouth: "The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword...and he said to me, 'You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.'"

But the next verse—4—befuddled me: "And I [the Lord's Servant] said, 'Uselessly I tired in vain, and for nothing I gave my strength. On account of this my judgment is from the Lord, and my toil before my God.'"

I am well-accustomed to the accounts of Jesus' profound suffering, and the many challenges that hindered his public ministry. Perhaps I tend to think more about his exemplary stamina and less about his actual discouragement, because he seemed to be aware that his task was ultimately to be a sacrifice. Whether I should or not, I tend to imagine Jesus facing immense hardship along with certain hope, not actually facing hopelessness.

But Isaiah 49:4 is a clear prophetic expression of God's suffering Servant undergoing hopelessness. He's not saying, "This is hard, this is painful, but it's worth it." He's saying, "I don't have the comfort that this pain will be worth anything in the end. I'm suffering for nothing."

This discouragement I understand. And it's exactly this feeling that has been the source of my most painful experience of separation from God. I wish I had noticed during that time the second statement, "my judgment is from the Lord, and my toil before my God." The Messiah at least still believed God would witness his useless pain, and that would mean something.

However, I believe he suffered real hopelessness. It should be asked, was he actually failing, or just needing to check his perspective and do a little spiritual-emotional bootstrapping? Arguably, he experienced real failure. He was actually rejected, both overall by his nation, and over and over in many particular instances.

When I've experienced hopelessness, I've suffered on top of that black weight the shame that my suffering is also a consequence of my own warped perspective. If I could just think in a more godly way, my inner critic whispers, I'd see the real value in the situation and be encouraged. (Talk about pointless suffering.)

But here is the beautiful thing for me in Isaiah 49: God's comforting response to his beloved suffering Servant can both legitimize the real failure (rejection by the Israelite nation) and at the same time overcome it:

It is too light a thing that you should be my servant, to establish the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the dispersed of Israel; behold, I have given you for a covenant of a race, as a light for the nations, for you to be for deliverance unto the end of the earth... Sanctify the one treating his life as worthless... Say to the ones in bonds, "Come forth!" and to the ones in darkness, "Be uncovered!"

In short, hope of redemption doesn't lie solely in the undoing of the wound or failure you see. You can grieve it. God doesn't de-legitimize hardship. God's pattern of hope changes the "about-ness" of hardship. Don't be surprised if you hear those same words, "It is too small a thing..." Because you are bound up in the same pattern as the Servant.

It is possible to see a particular aim as hopeless, but that does not mean the pain spent on that aim is worthless. The thing you desired may not come back to life. The dying and resurrecting is going on inside of you. If you're feeling the sting of suffering poisoned with the fear it is also needless and worthless, just know that God and CS Lewis disagree (and who else's opinion do you need, really?).

Advent isn't chiefly about gifts—material or divine. Advent is an archetype, the fulcrum of the universe where light overcomes darkness. Advent is about the implications—the hope of that universal pattern pervading all things, material and divine, displaying God's power in them.

Light overcomes darkness always and everywhere, even in the human heart. Failure is real. Death is real. But the pattern of hope co-opts them. It takes time, often long and painful time. But God's universal Advent pattern always means hope for the hopeless, including Jesus himself.

Sanctify our worthlessness, O Lord.

☨ Bible quotes from ESV and Greek interlinear

Photo credit: Kevin Dooley

Adversity: Death by a Thousand Cuts, or Practice for Greatness

Adversity: a matter of perspective

Relatively little in our daily circumstances is under our control. But how we frame our circumstances greatly influences our actual experiences.

Matt was spending his precious time off work toting his young son through the cavernous aisles of Home Depot looking through dozens of samples of flooring and light fixtures.

He didn't care about how the floor in his new home would end up looking, but he and his wife were pushing hard to move out of their apartment, and their gutted future residence had to have something for floor and finishings.

Thought it didn't feel worthwhile, Matt had no choice to but to burn his time off on trivial details. He had co-founded a tech company, and he could face almost any kind of challenge. But an endless sea of mind-numbing trivialities felt like it could be his undoing. Shadow work, though often necessary, lacks the satisfaction of real accomplishment, and it made Matt feel petty, unproductive, and depressed.

Frame 1: death by a thousand cuts

Lingchi is the ancient Chinese torture known as "death by a thousand cuts." It was intended to rob the victim of physical and spiritual dignity by killing him slowly with petty strokes of a knife, leading up to dismemberment and sending him to the afterlife in useless pieces--a non-being.

This happens on a metaphorical level to 21st-century mankind through subtle daily adversity that eludes full recognition. Our historically unprecedented standard of living doesn't mitigate our petty hardships; on the contrary, it deepens them with the unsettling guilt that we somehow ought to be happy yet aren't. Our minor adversities feel trivial when stacked up against our privilege--embarrassingly so--but their incessant slicing bleeds out vital energy nonetheless.

Left unchecked, this perspective on adversity, like persistent laceration, deepens and can ultimately leave one feeling he's in a cruel kind of "Meet the Parents" world, where everything and everyone just seems to be against him. Sarcasm and cynicism can drag one down even further, into life-threatening clinical depression, even with a loving family and a full bank account.

Fortunately, it's not typically our circumstances that are the problem, it's a matter of framing.

Frame 2: practice for greatness

Adversity is what happens to someone. A challenge, on the other hand, is a test one willfully accepts. Adversity is passively suffered for no meaningful purpose. A challenge is meaningful, and is passed or failed--and, pass or fail, leads to growth.

Accepting daily annoyances as challenges rather than adversity effects a subtle change in your view of the world.

Ten minutes on hold to speak to an unhelpful customer service rep may seem beneath you and a waste of time. But what if someone put that challenge to you--just to see if you could endure it and, like a decent human being, be genuinely polite at the end of the call? You might not even consider that a worthy challenge, but chances are you would feel a small, satisfying sense of accomplishment after proving yourself.

This paradox of framing shows up in C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape, a senior devil, instructs his junior tempter Wormwood to keep the human subject from recognizing his daily, trivial trials are actually tests of obedience and grown from "the Enemy" (God):

He also, in theory, is committed to a total service of the Enemy; and if the Enemy appeared to him in bodily form and demanded that total service for even one day, he would not refuse. He would be greatly relieved if that one day involved nothing harder than listening to the conversation of a foolish woman; and he would be relieved almost to the pitch of disappointment if for one half-hour in that day the Enemy said, "Now you may go and amuse yourself." Now if he thinks about his assumption for a moment, even he is bound to realize that he is actually in this situation every day.

Consider the value of co-opting life's mundane challenges as "practice" for what matters most in your life--your character.

Accepting these challenges regularly works a lot like the diligence of showing up to practice. One can look at life's annoyances and stresses as random hardship in a chaotic world, or one can find purposefulness and beautiful utility in how the very exercises one needs most find their way to him.

The artificially imposed challenges one finds in self-improvement books get applied to us based on our own self-knowledge, which can be wildly inaccurate. These naturally occurring challenges, however, brilliantly target our weakest areas, because that is what makes them "challenges" in the first place. Though we often don't know what our own weak areas are, we intuitively tend to give them a wide berth, because they are uncomfortable. Likewise we tend to practice intentionally what we are already good at, which is what we need least.

Rather than camping out where you feel the strongest, just for a day try watching for what feels most frustrating or uncomfortable, and intentionally frame and embrace those things as "practice".

When challenge is framed in this way, repetition, too, becomes instructive rather than exasperating. In other words, if it keeps coming back and still feels hard, you haven't beaten it yet.

Maybe your Achilles' heel is an annoying coworker. Realize that that person may be a custom-tailored growth plan guaranteed to make a significant positive difference in your life. All you have to do is accept the challenge as such.

Not all challenges are small. But like all practice, the difficulty grows as you progress. The harder and more sticky the challenge, the more encouragement you can feel in recognizing you have been found worthy of advanced training.

When you frame a challenge as practice, it's no longer categorically lumped in with the many frustrations of life. Rather, it's a 30-second surprise exercise, which is where real personal and spiritual growth lies.

Practicing the things you are good at may make you feel good, but it will not change you. We perform impressive feats for ourselves because we like being good at something. But we try to dodge petty adversity, because we consider it merely a time suck. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, petty adversity cannot be dodged. It comes to us unbidden. It must either be endured or embraced.

Today we fetishize image-based growth and personal development, and wonder why they always feel eerily hollow. Our Western, post-industrialist culture that tells us "productivity" is the meaning of life, and that seen personality trumps hidden character. But we've been sold a bill of goods.

History shows the path to true greatness is through lowliness, which is usually invisible to others. This principle of understated greatness undergirds the monotheistic faiths and much of Eastern thought. "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." "The tree laden with fruits always bends low." "Rivers and seas reign over mountains by keeping below them."

Rather than sticking to your lofty strengths, stoop to the easy things in which you fail. We always learn more in the realm of our failures than in our successes.

Likewise, excellence in the little, lowly things builds a strong foundation for great ones because it builds the true character of the person. Seemingly great men often topple because they lack this foundation of character.

If you can in humility bend to the level of your weaknesses, and see them as practice for true greatness, you will begin to find a strange satisfaction in life's little, frustrating challenges, because they will become meaningful and, not only worthwhile, greatly important.

Life, even mundane life, can be full of real growth and fulfillment when you notice and accept those small challenges that come along. A few daily victories in what is least can accumulate quickly into deep growth of character and spirit, because those challenges are more finely tuned to your real needs than any self-improvement program you could ever set up for yourself. 

All the practice you need has been selected for you, and is already waiting at your door. Frame it as such; don't miss practice.

Watch for the Butler

Last night I dreamed I and a small group of others were planning to sneak into a palatial house to steal something from an evil organization headquartered there. The emotional tenor of the dream was sad, almost hopeless. The task seemed unlikely to succeed, perhaps impossible, because of the power and control of those we were opposing.

Sure enough, before we were even inside, the butler opened the door and identified us. He knew exactly what we were trying to do. We were found out before we even began.

But then he smiled. He didn't turn us in, or take us captive. He led us into the household, up circuitous carpeted stairs and down a long hallway, to a very different place from where we'd hoped to go to carry out the theft.

It turned out that he too opposed the household, and was subverting it from the inside, under the guise of one of its most trusted servants. He had been waiting for us. Rather than helping us steal anything, though, he set us to work doing other tasks he determined--things that led to other things, endless secret projects to subvert the power and control of the household. Some of the tasks were hard to understand, but they linked strategically over time into an elaborate, brilliant plan.

That plan of his design would prove far more significant and damaging to the household than our initial simplistic theft, doomed to fail. Only with the butler's help were we able to infiltrate the place, be kept safe and undetected, and be given the information necessary to overthrow the household completely and finally.

After waking up, memory of the past few days returned, and I realized without question the origin of the dream. The day before, the Holy Spirit had been much on my mind. I had been asking Him for help and for courage to face the daunting, seemingly impossible tasks I perceived needed doing in the world around me. And in the preceding days, I'd also been encountering unexpected people and circumstances that revealed amazing opportunities I never could have planned, opportunities to build the coming benevolent kingdom and subvert the present kingdom of darkness.

My sleeping imagination had synthesized a deep truth for me. Most of the things I initially feel need doing, often darkened by hampered hopes, are what He uses just to get me to that ominous door. That is where He meets me--and the rest of us who share the mission.

He brings us into the presence of "enemies" (rarely human ones), and teaches us the when and where and how of the intricacies of bringing His kingdom. It is detail work--exactly the right word spoken, the right wire cut, a certain beam removed, to topple the prisons that hold His loved ones, and set an entire world free.

The dream itself felt like a secret message, an encoded communique of encouragement to keep moving forward watching for those covert rendezvous, where the mission as I understand it may change drastically. Thank God it's usually deeper and infinitely more complex and coordinated than the simplistic things I formulate in my own understanding.

Easter: “You've been mostly dead all day.”

Note: By this title, I in no way intend to imply that Jesus in the tomb was only "mostly dead." The resurrection was the real deal. My point is that Easter demonstrates preeminently God's power of life-giving that takes many other forms as well.
 

The other day I was reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. She says God "deals so extravagantly and unfathomably in death—death morning, noon, and night, all manner of death...Our bodies are shot with mortality."

Annie Dillard finds an inspiring courage through the memento mori of nature. But when I read this passage, it troubled me. Easter was coming up, and the words of the angel at the tomb echoed in my mind: "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" Jesus Himself said of the Father, "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him."

Like Inigo Montoya, I find defining terms helpful. Otherwise we keep using words that do not mean what we think they mean. What is death? Is it merely a terminal physical malady? If so, God’s statement would have been a bit deceptive when He told Adam and Eve that in the day they ate of the forbidden fruit they would surely die; and Satan's retort would make better sense. I find that inconceivable. Death must mean something deeper and wider than just dying.

I find much delight in being able to worship not only the God of everything, but the God of each thing. He is the God of fire. He created it. When I gaze into the searing-red, dancing flames of my campfire, I get to worship the God of fire Himself. I also get to worship the God of love, the God of thunder, the God of the sea. He made all things, but each particular thing speaks something particular about His character. He's not just a general kind of God. Patterns of His character emerge through what He makes and does.

What does Jesus mean, then, that God "is not the God of the dead"? Did we Christians get short-changed? Are we missing a category? Who is the god of the dead? I want a God still when I'm dead. God seems to spend a lot of time trying to get us to change how we think about death and dying. Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies, and the one who lives and believes in me will never die." Then Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. How many times did Lazarus die? If we believe Jesus, we have to say zero—otherwise two times. Zero makes a point worth thinking about.

I don't think that point is merely that death can lead to something good, like "going to heaven." Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. It's odd that we make death such a simple, contained thing. Biblically speaking, both life and death extend way out into the subtleties of our day-to-day experience as moral ways. We are always experiencing forms of Life and of Death, like heat and cold. This is what I think Annie Dillard is on to, whether she knows it or not.

She describes shocking confrontations with death in nature, like a frog slowly being eaten alive by a giant water bug. Death is indeed all around us in nature, but it’s also as much within us as without. It is both visible and invisible. When I hate or envy, blood drips into the carpet. When faith and hope wane, the whiff of necrosis is in the air. Even sorrow and loneliness peer down into a dark valley of dry bones. Death comes in manifold forms, because it is in fact a kingdom spread throughout all of creation. Physical human death is only the most painfully offensive tip of the whole iceberg. We fight death all day long in our hidden fear, despair, lust, and selfishness.

Life, too, is a pattern, and a kingdom at war with—in rebellion against—the kingdom of death. Everywhere life overcomes death, the miraculous hand of God is at work.

C. S. Lewis wrote the book on miracles. I love the way he shows God as the God of life in nature. He suggests that God's miracles always reveal the consistent patterns of the kingdom of life.

"Once in the desert Satan had tempted Him [Jesus] to make bread of stones: He refused the suggestion. 'The Son does nothing except what He sees the Father do'; perhaps one may without boldness surmise that the direct change from stone to bread appeared to the Son to be not quite in the hereditary style. Little bread into much bread is quite a different matter. Every year God makes a little corn into much corn: the seed is sown and there is an increase," Lewis says.

Because death (in all its forms) is so out of character for God, Jesus, even in His victory over death did not claim to be the God of death, but the resurrection and the life—much more akin to the gods of fruitfulness and fertility. Lewis continues, "The vine is one of the blessings sent by Jahweh: He is the reality behind the false god Bacchus. Every year, as part of the Natural order, God makes wine...Once, and in one year only, God, now incarnate, short circuits the process: makes wine in a moment: uses earthenware jars instead of vegetable fibers to hold the water. But uses them to do what He is always doing. The miracle consists in the shortcut; but the event to which it leads is the usual one."

Lewis explains the horror of death we see in nature as a corruption of God's good design for life to be in and through one another: "In the universe, as we now see it, this [vicariousness] is the source of many of the greatest horrors: all the horrors of carnivorousness, and the worse horrors of the parasites, those horrible animals that live under the skin of other animals, and so on. And yet, suddenly seeing it in the light of the Christian story, one realizes that vicariousness is not in itself bad; that all these animals, and insects, and horrors are merely that principle of vicariousness twisted in one way." The greater a good, the more evil its distortion.

We tend to see Easter as a point on a line. And indeed it is the greatest turning point of history. But history is like a canvas, and God seems to like to work in layers. Jesus' words about life and death often slipped past His contemporaries' comprehension because His meaning went much deeper and wider than they could see: "Destroy this temple." "My flesh is true food." Life is best thought of as living and the purpose for living, bound together in one whole package. Likewise, death encompasses dying, but only as one of the many representations of the whole kingdom of evil, confusion, despair, and purposelessness. It’s a single pattern, easy to recognize when we look for its telltale signs.

Jesus said "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come so that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." It's good for me to be on the lookout for the subtle and invisible areas life and death that are at war with one another, especially in my own heart. When I don’t look for them, I ignore the signs of dangers creeping in, scratching for a foothold.

The life Jesus offers is not merely a binary issue of where we go after we die. It's apparently something that can "abound". With Him is the "fountain" of life, and He aims not only to save us from death, but to overwhelm us with every form of living. Life is the pattern of fruitfulness and multiplication that applies not only to loaves and fishes, but to love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness.

If life and death are things that can abound or dwindle, it's indeed possible to be "only mostly dead." We have a lot to learn from Miracle Max. Many have been worn down by despair, but Christ's way of life does not extinguish even a smoldering wick. The life of His kingdom is the kind of stuff that can get in to the smallest places, the way dough can "catch" invisible yeast from the air itself. Read the parables; the kingdom of life is about multiplication. We should never lose hope for the smallest bit of life to get in and grow and make something.

Keep your eyes open for the subtler signs of life, and of death. Creation teaches us that the pattern of life can feel slow, and takes patience, but just try stopping the spring from coming. As Lewis says, "A man really ought to say, 'The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago' in the same spirit in which he says, 'I saw a crocus yesterday.' Because we know what is coming behind the crocus. The spring comes slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned."

On Two Challenges to Art and Poetry

I've written an article on enjoying art and poetry for a friend's blog called Fragments. Hope you enjoy.

Dear Addie

Dear Addie, young child, don’t be fooled or benighted—
I’ll tell you the truth so you know,
And have in your heart all that schoolishness righted,
And grasp wonder well as you grow.
The breeze doesn’t blow from here to there,
Like a rivulet wand’ring at will;
The earth rolls around underneath all that air,
While the air remains fixed and still.
The trees and rocks, like your music box,
Are the tiny points jutting above;
And, pricking the tines as time unwinds,
They play out the song that we love.
Look up and see each tip-tilted tree
Whooshing as we fly along!
Press your delicate ear to a pine and hear
Its lilting and lovely song:

“Oh we know the way to the break of day,
Where the songbirds will beckon us bide,
But how can we heed, for we dare not delay
The sonata of eventide.
And oh! What delight—for then plays the night
With its blue tinkling grace notes of stars;
And they all invite the moon to ignite
Risoluto the rest of the bars.
The sunsong is long, but it sweetens the wheat,
Which quivers like golden strings.”

And you too my child, when you walk on your feet,
Make the music play wonderful things.

Some video highlights from kayaking the Rogue River in Oregon

Memory

With winter wind come the dusty white fragments,
Borne out of the vacuous alpine chill as falling stars--
Scepters, scintillating shafts and diamonds interlaced,
Entangling, entwined along the pinnacle crags.

I reach my hand slowly into the ethereal blanket
And pour out its weightless sand from an open palm.
Drifting flakes instantly flurry to fill the trough
And round the little mound with renewed softness.

The pines around the ridge grow gray with hoar,
Pointing into the wind with whispering fingers
Too quiet to reveal the secret they all descry
In the distance. Soon they are white, all white.

Through the receding clouds night calls up flightless
Feathers to stretch and catch the morning’s sun
And fling its sparks to set the ice aflame with
Light before they bow finally to its warmth.

Storm and clear, night and day this place receives
Afresh each fine dance of crystal wind upon it;
But here and there in secret places I can discover
The one laid upon the other in gentle anamnesis,

And even when crystal streams have sipped the last drops
From this peak to slake the waking summer swelter,
You and I will spread a blanket upon the ground, and
Lay upon it cheese, and music, and an enduring hour or two.

And beneath that hour I will still find the summers
Of sixth and seventh grade with their campfires and
Milky stars and chilling dips in the lake with the
Other boys whose company swirled around me with contentment.

And beneath those I still stand as a child next to my father,
Saluting for a photograph my mother took, while my brother,
In yellow shirt with Popsicle stains, grins through missing
Teeth, and my tiny sister grins obliviously from a backpack.

Endangered Species

A lot of thought and effort is rightly put into preserving endangered species. We value uncommon animals in large part for their rarity, like gems and most other things in nature. For good reason, we fear losing them altogether.

Not so with words. Did you know that endangered words can be removed from the dictionary? It's like saying to the cute but odd-looking vaquita, "Sorry, you had your day, but hardly anybody knows you exist anymore"--and then wiping the last one off the face of the globe.

Many people are not even aware the vast majority of dictionaries today operate descriptively of word usage, not prescriptively. In other words, the main thing they care about is what words are being used today, plain and simple; and that's ultimately what determines whether you'll find a word in a dictionary.

That's right, dictionaries are not going to prevent words from going extinct. Only you can prevent words from going extinct--by using them. Fortunately, it's easier than ever, since dictionaries can now monitor usage electronically. You don't need to be publishing books. You might just be a humble blogger.

Here's a poem I wrote in honor of endangered words, and sharing a love for them.

Endangered Species

In olden times a courting gent would go

A hunting for a dazzling bird to capture,

Which, gifted to his lady love, would show

His heart’s enthraldom to her cage of rapture.

The rarer bird, the greater gift it made—

Bright, speckled shafts and plumage colors gay.

So why the rarer word that’s seized and said

In lovesick missive falls so flat today?

In blackest depths of lexiconic tomes,

Some species flit and flaunt their feathered grace

That not in centuries have made their homes

In any work considered commonplace.

Their native habitat destroyed, they hide

In dusty warrens carpet beetles chew.

Each dwindling species light and life denied

Will perish without other words to woo.

So let me lowe[i] in limerence[ii] to thee

With logophilian[iii] philter[iv] overflowing,

And if lingual feathers fan philocaly,[v]

Then flock with me, and I will keep on crowing.

[i] To be ardent or passionate; to burn with love, passion, etc.
[ii] The state of being romantically infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one's feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship.
[iii] Logophilia n. Love of words.
[iv] A potion, drug, or (occas.) charm supposed to be capable of exciting sexual attraction or love, esp. towards a particular person; a love potion. Also, more generally: any potion or drug having supposedly magical properties.
[iii] Logophilia n. Love of words.
[v] Love of beauty.

The Normal Day to Day

In an effort to force myself to write creatively with regularity, I've engaged several friends in a weekly poetry challenge in which we write and share a poem each week. I've found the medium useful in expressing thoughts and images that wouldn't otherwise have an easy outlet.

One of these thoughts hit me the other day. I'm a fairly deep-feeling person, and I enjoy challenge, novelty, passion, and maybe even a kind of melancholy if I can find a positive use for it. But I also occasionally find myself in one of those intense or discouraging moments having had enough, and struggling to find the end of it. To use the metaphor of boats, it's like feeling seasick without a port anywhere nearby. Or, as I've often heard repeated in the flying community, "It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground." 

The thought that hit me was a thankfulness that the "ground" usually comes to me without my necessarily having worked through or resolved whatever issue was rocking my boat. Sometimes the only difference is a night's sleep, even if the circumstances are exactly the same in the morning. We begin another day brushing teeth, making coffee, scrambling eggs. It's all still there, and the world is somehow bigger and more stable than it felt.

Many times I've bemoaned the negative side of this normalizing tendency, how my human nature gradually (sometimes quickly) normalizes something that amazes me or gives me wonder. As David Wilcox observes in Travelling Companion, "I'm sure if we all could sort of...jump and fly through the air we'd be really happy for about, you know, a week. And then we'd be sitting around saying, 'Well, I don't know, everybody can fly, you know, I'm nothing special...'"

But perhaps the automatic relief normalcy offers outweighs the fact that we must fight as if against gravity to maintain the soaring wonder that makes our lives so exciting. I'd never wish my life to be mundane, but for the first time I've come to consciously appreciate that I don't have to beat every storm with my own resources. Sometimes all I have to do is wait a bit.

This is a poem about that:

The Normal Day to Day

Thank God for the normal day to day,
The firm ground beneath the heights we soar,
The plain daylight above our deepest pits,
The pull of gravity that meets our feet in the morning
And makes every next step sure and familiar. 

Thank God that when tragedy blackens the mind,
And loneliness promises to gnaw us every future hour,
They somehow dissipate on the sandy shore of normalcy,
And we need only wring our socks from the tempest
That tore at our tattered souls the night before.

Thank God the wind abates and between every storm
Miles of mild weather stretch out and seem to say,
“Not yet. No more for a while. Now is rest again.”

And though we will grow restless and hunger for adventure,
We shall surely meet it with bravery and strength drawn
From the normal day to day.

Postcards

Several years ago I went for a drive through the rural cornfields of Maryland's eastern shore, looking for nothing but whatever might come along. I came across an antique store that sold, among many other odds and ends, old postcards, many of which had been used.

I don't know how the thousands of postcards ended up there and for sale--perhaps auctioning off the estate of a deceased relative, hoping to liquidate anything of value. Today most would consider reading another's personal correspondence a brazen violation of privacy. We hide it all in deeply encrypted, password-protected, electronic vaults, and heaven knows what will become of it should we pass away.

I feel differently about personal correspondence, at least I like to think I do. Almost four months ago I sailed down the Pacific coast of Baja, California with several friends. Reaching the end of our journey in Cabo San Lucas, a friend and I went up to surf in Todos Santos, and camped out for the night. In the morning my backpack, along with everything in it, had disappeared from my side. The first thing I thought of was my journal and the nine months of daily musings in it, as well as two letters I'd written to friends during the journey but not yet had time to mail.

Oddly, I felt sick at the idea of the loss, not chiefly because my journal was gone, but because nobody was ever likely to read it, in a place where English speakers were relatively few. I imagined it in a trash can somewhere rotting, and just found myself praying it wouldn't be a total waste, that something good would come of it.

I used to think I journal daily for my own benefit, but I began to realize I write for posterity--for the unknown later generations, hopefully mine but perhaps completely unrelated to me. Yes, I write about many intensely personal things, but who am I to clutch them so tightly as my own? An intricate web of circumstance and relationship connects me inextricably to the beautiful, tragic, mysterious world around me.

Several weeks ago an artist from Canada who had a house in Baja contacted me through my photography website and asked if I had lost a journal. Someone left it on a rock in her driveway. I had given up all hope of ever finding the journal again, because I hadn't even put my own name in it, let alone any contact info. But apparently on one of the pages I had affixed a name tag from some special event I had attended, and my name not being a very common one, this woman eventually succeeded in tracking me down.

When I received the package in the mail, she had slipped between the pages an original watercolor of the glorious desert mountains in Mexico she passed by on her long drive back north. I found myself thumbing through the old familiar pages, kind of hoping this stranger had perused some of them, and maybe even resonated with something I wrote. I doubt I will ever meet her, but perhaps that anonymity lends ease to our longing to be known. Perhaps that's why blogs exist at all.

In any case, I felt little compunction looking through the postcards at the antique store in Maryland, and choosing some to take home and muse upon. A Lake Como landscape from a college student to his professor, probably at Dartmouth. Someone's first trip on a ship to Copenhagen. A daughter writing to her mother from a cabin in the mountains, discussing flowers, and worrying about something ailing her father.

I came across this wonderful article about the endangered species of handwriting. Maybe we feel safer and happier with our correspondence locked away in virtual fortresses, though even there rumors buzz over who's being allowed into them and for what reasons. I'm obviously not one to worry too terribly much about my correspondence being read either way. But I like to think about how much we have benefited from yellowed, inky letters and manuscripts, both published and unpublished, famous and obscure.

When I am long gone, I hope a little treasure trove of letters, postcards, journals, ideas, and paintings seeps out through that tangled web of relationships and inspires more of the same among loved ones and strangers.

To Have and To Hold

This is a poem for the shopping season. It was inspired by an experience I had once, of throwing away a receipt intentionally.



Behind a veil of pixels lies
A hundred million fancies for my eyes.

A googolplex of shiny things in every shade and shape—
New or used, i will find every option, every possibility
Of satisfaction (guaranteed), and at speed, at no added cost
Or inconvenience. It makes sense for the conscientious consumer
To shop around. Competition and comparison are my companions.
i need walk no aisle to find something special.
Red and green, Black, Brown, and Cyber,
i-deserve the very best. As for the rest—reviews
Reveal how shoppers feel about flukes and false advertising.
These are the days of honesty, and i know where my loyalty lies—
The generous cards and companies; my friends with benefits
Have my back. And should it finally crack or lose its luster,
i’ve one more saving grace to set me free,
The blessed bond of warranty.

I wait in line. It’s time I traded
Something whose excitement finally faded.

Receipt in hand, I turn it over, recalling how enthralling...
How I waited, and after the click, the ticking
Clock counted two days of expedited shipping.
I was a little careful, I confess, to do no damage lest
I void the contract and someday contact the seller in vain
When a better thing surpassed the last.
Holding that receipt in line, I felt and suddenly knew
The thing had never been mine—only loaned, or borrowed,
And for a short time. A little bit of anger warmed within me.
My thrifty cunning kept every option open,
But I owned nothing, not unlimited things, and that sudden knowledge stings.
Is my receipt another’s lasting claim on what I wish to have and hold?
For just one moment, caught between, I remained, and for the first time
Counted cost—all things lost, or one thing gained?

Another choice, another veil,
We make exchange, but on a human scale.

No safety nets or guarantees, I stand to lose more than is mine,
Risking more than I ever will, or ever have before.
In fact, this day, I give it all away. My worldly goods I thee endow.
Take them now.
                            —I take them, but they’re not enough.
Then take not only them, but me, I give without restraint, and free,
To have and hold, for richer or poorer.
                                                              —Give me not only you, and all,
But give me all your options left, and leave yourself devoid, bereft,
Forever without any other, and be set free, to fully have and cherish me;
And count yourself both rich and blessed today, for riches are what you can give away. 
You wish you had more to give away for me, but looking through the veil you finally see—
Every soul retains the world potentially. Now, Love, place my finger in the band,
And don’t forget the feeling of this hand, which years will wear and tarnish until death.
But though my beauty dim and fade away, you’ll know from now until my dying day,
In every second ticking till the end, the joy of what it really means to spend.

Prayers from the Sea

This morning as I crept out into the break of daylight, the sun shone in through a low hole in the drizzly overcast to ignite a steep rainbow in the trees and elicit a blue glow from the rainy western sky. In my morning reading I’ve been incorporating parts of the Book of Common Prayer. I use a copy I found in the basement of a used bookstore in Cambridge, where old books can be bought relatively cheaply. This one is from 1795. I wanted one that was old, but a little beat up and cheap enough I wouldn’t worry about using it casually and often. Although the strange long S (ſ) still takes ſome getting uſed to, I like the older language. So often, “updates” do damage to original intent. And it’s leather, with marbleized end-pages. Yum!

After blending a perfect cup of Mexican hot chocolate to complement the weather outside, I came across the section entitled, “Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea.” Now just to be clear, most of my life I’ve had a personal distaste for pre-written prayers, and most other things high-church as well. They always seemed to me insincere, artificial, and pompous, if not downright mechanistic, as if we needed a specific prefab “prayer to be used during one’s engine breaking down in a rural setting.” However, if one recognizes liturgical prayers merely for what they are—a well-intentioned devotional aid for true and sincere personal prayer, then they can be quite intriguing and inspiring.

In any case, I found myself taken back to the late 1700s on a large ship, with chilling salty spray and creaking, soggy wood, thousands of miles from home. A storm’s terrible wrath was mounting quickly, and a group of men huddled around someone with a small leather book who read in haste:

“Most powerful and glorious Lord God, at whose command the winds blow, and lift up the waves of the Sea, and who stillest the rage thereof; We thy creatures, but miserable sinners, do in this our great distress cry unto thee for help; Save, Lord, or else we perish. We confess, when we have been safe, and seen all things quiet about us, we have forgot thee our God, and refused to harken to the still voice of thy word, and to obey thy commandments: But now we see how terrible thou art in all thy works of wonder; the great God to be feared above all: And therefore we adore thy divine Majesty, acknowledging thy power, and imploring thy goodness. Help, Lord and save us, for thy mercies sake in Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord.”

Sitting warm and dry with only a drizzle outside did not dull the point of the passage, that we silly humans tend to suddenly cry out to God when things get really bad, and the rest of the time, we wrestle to truly comprehend his power. I’m not talking about power to punish or scare people back into submission, like an angry, insecure god. No, most of the time, most of our lives, we have things so comfortable and safe and convenient that we grapple with all sorts of other weird questions and beliefs. It’s a rare privilege when we get to experience something that shakes us to the core, and suddenly snaps life back into perspective.

I experienced this kind of thing one summer night on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake. A lightning storm blew in over the small peninsula where I lived. Reddish-purple flashes began to light up the sky all around, and thunder boomed and shook windows. I went outside to see the flashes and feel the wind. The fury grew and grew into a lightning storm like I had never experienced in my life. I lay down in the grass looking up at the sky to see as much of it at one time as I could see. The light was light a strobe—constant and overwhelming, and the thunder nearly shook the ground on which I lay. It was so big, so incomprehensibly vast and powerful compared to the scale of my own body. It was terrifying, but just terrifying enough to remind me what greatness lies beyond my own ego and tenuous life. It felt like a gift, because in that moment I could finally understand with perfect clarity all those stories I struggled to understand about people falling facedown before the presence of God as if they were dead. The feeling, the reaction, made perfect sense to me in that moment. It had nothing to do with anger. A little human has to seem angry to seem powerful. This was just sheer power, unassuming power. Even beauty, scaled to the proper magnitude, can put us back in our place and shift the reference point from which we view the world and ourselves.

In The Magician’s Nephew, C. S. Lewis imagines this kind of an encounter with beauty and the effect it would have on the common man, like Frank the Cabby:

‘Hush!’ said the Cabby. They all listened.

In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it…

‘Gawd!’ said the Cabby. ‘Ain’t it lovely?’

Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn’t come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out – single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves who were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.

‘Glory be!’ said the Cabby. ‘I’d ha’ been a better man all my life if I’d known there were things like this.’

I still struggle every day to find and remember those reference points of power and beauty. Fleeting experiences in my life have given me glimpses of where they lie, almost unimaginably far off in the distance, but the mere fact and assurance that they exist never ceases to comfort me. It relieves me of the burden of wrestling with my own fickle perspective that changes day to day like the weather.

Panhandle piloting: 3,000 miles in a Mooney Mite (Part 3)

After days of being grounded, I finally got back out on the runway, wound up the engine, and felt the ground fall from beneath me. The thought of a new family member waiting to meet me in San Diego made the next two days of flying more like a race than an exploration, though there was plenty more awaiting my discovery in the hundreds of miles that lay ahead.

Skirting the western edge of Denver's formidable class bravo airspace, I caught a beautiful glimpse of the rocks of the Garden of the Gods projecting out of the greenery like a giant stone wave. 

The Sangre de Cristo mountain range cut through my course from Meadow Lake to Monte Vista like a 14,000' wall in the sky. I squeaked around its point at 12,500', about as high as I could push the little Mite at that density altitude. Nudging the stick back to climb did nothing but slow me down. 

Across the valley on the other side, I could see huge, dark thunderstorms brewing to the south near the New Mexico border, combing the desert with sheets of rain. Standing in gusty wind on Monte Vista's desolate runway staring up at them put a sick and lonely feeling in my stomach. I'd hate to be weathered out again with nobody around. Thankfully they stayed off my course, and I was able to shoot straight for Animas airport near Durango, where I would spend the night. 

I happened upon another Mite in Durango, Gregg Delvin's N100JM, built in 1953--one year younger than my N4071. It had a wooden prop and a cheery checkered tail. It would have been nice to leave the two Mites together in the hangar for a few hours and let them talk. Heaven knows what stories they'd have to tell. 

Some friends of mine showed me around Durango. Had my dad not discovered Quincy in N4152 decades earlier, I very well might have grown up in Durango. And the two Mites would certainly have been friends. 

I was dropped off back at the airport at about 7:30 PM and wandered around for a while musing at an evening rainbow, then the sunset, then hundreds of rabbits skipping through the brush. 

I went to sleep on top of a big flatbed truck trailer watching a distant lightning show. The lightning soon turned to rain, and I scrambled down underneath the trailer. The wind still blew the rain in on me, so I wrapped up as well as I could in an old military poncho and covered the rest of me with my jacket. They were pretty wet and muddy in the morning, but at least I was dry. I hung them up on the Mite's prop to dry out while I stole through the darkness into the FBO to make some oatmeal.

It was my marathon day. I ate and watched the sunrise, then hopped in the cockpit and took off. There was not a cloud in the sky, at daybreak and the air was smooth as glass. It's fun to watch your gauges in smooth air and really dial in your climb rate, cruise speed, fuel mixture--even in a plane as crude as a Mite.

There was no more highway beneath me as I flew. The white desert stretched out silent and vast for hundreds of miles. Sandy river beds snaked through its rolling contours, and I flew low and marveled at the solitude.

The morning was still young when my wheels squeaked on the pavement in Gallup, New Mexico 200 miles to the southwest. In the FBO I found a large plate of doughnuts, two hot pots of coffee, and three or four old-timers telling flying stories. Boy, did that coffee hit the spot. And the apple fritter too.

That scene, to me, was the quintessence of small-town airports. The guys told me stories, and we talked planes. I loved that I could just breeze in there, enjoy a few moments with them like they were old friends, and then walk out and disappear to another part of the country, most likely never to see them again in my life. There is a kind of grace in serendipity. It doesn't merely create adventure; it makes moments completely unique and irreplicable.

Past Gallup, the desert turned from white to wild pinks and reds. That was Navajo country, but it looked like the surface of Mars. Then it climbed higher and higher into pine trees, and suddenly dropped off from 7,500 feet down to Payson in the valley floor. 

The day was heating up quickly, especially the farther south I flew. The airports were getting lower too. By the time I reached Wickenburg, AZ it felt like walking around in an oven. A tiny shack with two palm trees stood on the field like an oasis. Inside was an ice cream bin, and inside that was a mint chocolate chip fudge brownie sandwich with my name on it. Never had ice cream tasted so good. 

The nice lady who ran the place had a Great Dane named Paycheck who looked like she was much older than most Great Danes get to live. 

Blythe airport was blisteringly hot, and I had trouble starting the Mite, which usually fires right up on the first pull of the prop. My hand was sore after yanking it again and again, even gloved with the old glove my dad always kept in the pouch behind the seat for that purpose. Mites don't have starters, so you stand in front of the starboard wing, yank on the prop with your right hand, hold the airplane from taxiing away with your left thigh. Then you quickly jump up into the tiny cockpit and stomp on the brakes.

Finally, after nearly eight hours of flying time, I bounced down onto the runway at Gillespie airport near my brother JK's house in La Mesa. He came and picked me up, then the two of us went to San Diego to get my mom and sister who had flown down commercially from northern California. I was proud to have beaten them there. Seeing a baby car seat in the car made my heart leap with excitement. 

I showered before meeting the baby, and wanted to shave too, but didn't have a razor. He was so tiny, and his features so refined--almost un-babylike. I held him for a long time. Twenty-five years earlier my parents had brought my older brother back to that very room. Finally there was new life in our family. Dad never got to meet little Kennon, but he'd heard the news before he died, and he and my mom cried tears of joy in his hospital room. I was Kennon's only uncle. Dreams of adventures together soared in my mind, and I stroked his cheek, too soft to even feel with bare finger.

After several days together, it was time for me to make my way back up north to Quincy. My goal the first day was just to make it to Santa Monica. I'd been in touch with an old flame from college who lived in Malibu at the time, and I was hoping we'd get a chance to talk about the past, which had never quite made sense to me. 

The stress started when I took out the flight charts. I looked at the airspace between San Diego and LA, and my heart sank about as low as my jaw dropped. My normal sectionals weren't even detailed enough to see all the complicated clutter I was going to have to fight my way through. I had to buy a couple higher-resolution terminal charts just to do my flight planning. But I knew the experience would be good for me, a mountain pilot raised in class G.

My previous experiences that trip had taught me enough to talk to some local pilots familiar with the route. I found a banner flier in a nearby hangar who familiarized me with the VFR corridor right through the middle LAX class B. Even after I knew what I had to do, I had to sit for a long time running through it in my head again and again until I could recall it easily under pressure. Things go by so fast when you can't just pull over and look at a map, and lots of unanticipated things can go wrong, as I would soon find out.

I was taxiing before finally realizing there were no fuel pumps on the field, only trucks, so I had to shut the plane down and call for fuel service. After that I listened to ATIS and told ground service I was ready to go. They said my radio was bleeding over into all the other frequencies. That would be a major problem flying through LA, so I shut down the plane a second time and had a radio mechanic try to take a look at it. He couldn't help, but I remembered I had a spare handheld just in case of such a problem. 

It was afternoon by the time I got rolling the third time. I got a radio check, and after hanging the handheld up on the side of the cockpit behind my right shoulder I was able to transmit well enough to tell myself I could make it through LA--and sort of believe it. Because I was using a handheld with it's own power, I forgot to turn on my master electrical switch at first, so I thought I was having transponder issues too when flight following couldn't get a signal.

I sat in the run-up position with a sick feeling in my stomach, knowing that once I said "N4071 ready for takeoff" and rolled out into position there was no going back or changing my mind. It was Santa Monica through the dragon's throat or bust.

I wanted to do it, knew I should do it, and someone was waiting for me again on the other side. What wrenching feelings fighter pilots must go through sitting on the runway with their engines whining.

"Ready for takeoff."

A Southwest airliner blasted underneath me as I cruised past John Wayne. The flight controller kept telling me to get a visual on him, but he was right under my starboard wing until he was practically right underneath me. It felt like I could almost see the pilot and copilot's faces gazing up at me from their purple and red locomotive in the sky. A Cessna Citation rocketed by, and numerous other small planes buzzed around me.

Once I started to near LAX, I spotted someone headed straight at me from 12:00 at the same altitude. I banked to miss him, realizing as I did that "he" was actually a green balloon who would probably answer to the merciless FAA if he didn't end up plastered on the front of a purple and red locomotive first. Unlike the balloon, a Goodyear blimp kept to lower, safer air down below me. 

Several real airplanes did come speeding my way, especially as I got close to the class B. Flight following told me "frequency change approved" and said to squawk 1201 on the transponder for the special VFR corridor over LAX. Never having done it before, I asked if it was possible to get flight following through the corridor. "Negative," he said. "You've got to do it on your own, and you can contact So-Cal Approach when you come out the other side."

Something felt extremely unnerving about flying through the very heart of some of the world's busiest airspace on my own navigation. It felt like flying through the eye of a hurricane. An eerie calm settled, and time seemed to pass in slow motion as I communicated with other pilots suspended in the nucleus of madness. Huge airliners dove down and roared out LAX directly beneath me. I flew at 4,500 feet, and southbound traffic passed in the opposite direction a thousand feet below, like bugs amidst a swirling mass of tumbling houses and farm animals.

I contacted Approach as soon as I popped out the other side, but they just said to contact Santa Monica tower. Woe was me, because that tower controller seemed to be having the worst day of his life that day. He was telling planes to fly up to Pacific Pallisades and not come back for at least two minutes. "Cessna 1359B, you're number seven for landing!" he'd bark angrily, "I've got a ton of jets coming in here!"

I took my time dropping down to pattern altitude and timidly called my position at right downwind like he'd told me to. He said he wasn't getting a transponder signal from me, but I'd just been using it with flight following and knew for a fact that it was working. I re-cycled it anyway, but he just kept telling me to do it over and over, and then literally yelled at me over the radio. Pilots, especially young pilots, have to develop thick skin pretty quickly, but it sure would have been nice if my equipment would work like it was supposed to. As if traffic and airspace weren't enough to worry about.

He let me land, but only with a stiff reprimand to get my transponder looked at. To add insult to injury, my cell phone died after I landed, so I called my friend in Malibu from a land line. It turned out her phone had died too, but she eventually got the message.

We grabbed a bite to eat and then sat on a wall above the beach and watched the dark breakers. She asked me how I was doing regarding Dad's death, but I found myself unable to pull any words together that would make any sense. Losing a father isn't like losing a lover. Your world doesn't blaze with pain. It just changes, forever. It's an empty seat, old shirts in a closet, planes with dust on them. That silence and emptiness cools life down from the energy of youth. With no eyes of wisdom watching over your shoulder and cheering you on, every decision feels bigger, harder, less certain.

Life is full of mysteries. Nothing really happened during that visit with my friend, or afterward. We stayed friends, for which I'm thankful. But as I climbed out of Santa Monica, a poignant loneliness struck me. When was in college, dad used to plan the timing of business trips so we could fly home together to Quincy just for the weekend, especially when I was homesick. We always flew out of Santa Monica. He'd let me climb into the left seat and take the yoke, and we'd get up to cruise and listen to AM radio stations, or just talk about life and marvel at the stars above and lights below. I knew that route up California so well. This was the first time we could no longer do it together. I was by myself. 

It was a Saturday when I got back home. Three thousand miles had offered me desert sunrises, sublime thunderstorms, new friends, even a new family member. And I was a far better pilot than when I'd set out. If anything, the flying had made me miss Dad more, but that was a good thing, a healthy kind of appreciation and longing. A new generation had begun in our family, and little Kennon would know all the joys in the sky his namesake had given us. That empty place in my life would not go away, but I had been given the gift of appreciation, not taking anything for granted, and I suppose the trip taught me just how far that could take me.

WestJet viral "Miracle" video

First, I should say I'm a big fan of outside-the-box thinking and ideas that shake up people's expectations. Once in a while we all need something to renew our sense of wonder, or even just make us think.

This WestJet video has made me think quite a bit. It has exploded all over social media and news outlets, with headlines like "Must-Cry Video? Watch WestJet Airline's 'Christmas Miracle'" and "What WestJet airlines did for its passengers this Xmas - I teared up." 

Because of my journalism background, I've been gritting my teeth at the recent tsunami of teaser headlines that use curiosity to entice clicks. I'm even more miffed that it works. All that to say, I usually skip over the wishy-washy teasers, but given the sustained ubiquity of this particular post, I eventually thought I should take a look.

Initially, I was pleasantly intrigued by WestJet's imagination and resourcefulness. For a moment I suspected this was something they'd done to bless passengers who'd had to travel on a Christmas-day flight, but it was a 2013 pre-Christmas event. 

A boy gets an Android tablet, a family gets a 50" flat screen, and a woman cries over a digital camera she wanted. An adaptation of "The Night Before Christmas" poem closes with the lines, "A WestJetter would say, it was more than mere fun. Miracles do happen when we all work as one. ... Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good flight."

On NPR's blog Mark Memmot wrote, "Some Scrooges will say, 'Bah humbug, it's just a public relations stunt.'" but contended that "experts tell Global News that WestJet isn't likely to get a big boost in business from any good will it generates" since people tend to choose travel based on price, not brand.

Although I have my doubts it had nothing to do with raising publicity for the airline (WestJet said it would donate free flights to one family if their YouTube video got more than 200,000 views; it's now at 19 million), I'll give WestJet the benefit of that doubt and assume this wasn't a marketing stunt. Whether they make a return on their miracle is not my beef.

What concerns me is the growing presence of marketing in our lives. I don't mean merely our exposure to advertisements, although that's certainly at an all-time high. Through YouTube, Facebook, and other social media, we are being recruited as advertisers. Clicks and views are worth money, so if you're getting clicks and not cashing in on them, you're missing out, or so the reasoning goes. Conversely, if you're not getting clicks and you want to, there are thousands of ways you can sell yourself--your blog, your pictures, your "likes" on Facebook, and of course your YouTube views. Who dosn't want to make money from home without much effort? I've been told you can even purchase followers on Twitter.

Marketing has always been marketing. I'm not saying this is anything new. But I believe there's a line that's starting to blur--the line between marketing and our own personal lives and relationships. Do you feel the compulsive urge to share things online as soon as they occur? Do you get a little shot of dopamine when you check your status and see a lot more "likes" than you expected? Do you fantasize about coming up with a great idea for a video and watching it go viral? Maybe even landing a talk-show interview as a result? 

I'm not as down on new technology as many are. Each era of history produces unique cultural artifacts and situations that may even be romanticized in years to come. It would be a shame to throw them out and miss out on what people in future generations will one day wish they could have experienced. The dawn of the Internet! Week-by-week discovery of the infinite possibilities as processing power skyrockets. 

The thing is that cultural artifacts have their victims as well as their heroes. Sometimes they're even one and the same. I believe a big danger lies in quantifying the value of experiences, information, etc. based on their online notoriety, for one because competition of goods drives their price down, which makes the "sellers" more desperate and competitive. And then we end up with a kind of inflation of information--increasingly sensationalistic news that's got to be shorter, with more hooks, more EYE CATCHING! We need bold, italics, all caps, and lots of teasers. 

If you've read this far, you're one of perhaps 5% who clicked on this blog. 

As I logged in this morning to finish the post, I was ironically greeted by the following message:

The latest from Blogger Buzz
Earn money from your blog this holiday season
2 days ago by A Googler

The holiday season is here and retailers are spending more on online advertising to promote their products. Your blog has valuable space and you can earn some extra money by placing Google AdSense ads next to your content.

If you don’t already have AdSense set up on your blog, visit the Earnings tab of your Blogger dashboard to give it a try. It’s free and only takes a moment to sign up.

And if you’ve tried AdSense out in the past, head to your blog and give it a second look. It now has updated controls, so you can match the ads that appear to the style of your blog.
Happy holidays!

Posted by Ian Cohan-Shapiro, Marketing Manager

Three nights ago I dreamed I was in some rural community, but in the future. There was a big, dilapidated barn people were living in, and they were very poor and hungry. They weren't growing vegetables or tending livestock. They were brainstorming how to orchestrate something to film that would make enough money to get them by for another month or so. Perhaps someone would die in the film, perhaps there would be a terrible crash or explosion. They didn't have CG.

Forgive the sensationalism of that last paragraph. I wouldn't share it as an apocalyptic doom-and-gloom condemnation of technology. I only share it because it was a real, honest-to-goodness dream that shocked me. I don't think that's where we're headed. But I do think we should watch that blurry line between our lives and our ads.

That WestJet wanted to publicize their "miracle" is, perhaps, neither here nor there. Many millions of people enjoyed--and were deeply touched by--what they did. I found the closing words about "working as one" rather arbitrary and disjunctive, a generic placeholder for what I was expecting to be a very meaningful message. It may not have been marketing, but I'm not sure what it was actually  intended to be. I'm encouraged that for every "miracle" that goes viral there are many secret ones. Sometimes that it is secret is the best part. It feels great to inspire others, but for me it usually feels even better when I've got a special secret, whether that be a scheme to bless someone or a gorgeous sunset through the snowy trees.

To NPR's credit, in November I heard one of their commentators remarking on the "Brown Thursday" phenomenon this year, in which retailers are trying to pre-empt the mainstream Black Friday sales to get a jump on the rampant consuming. "Sorry," the commentator said, "Thursday's already got a name, and it's called 'Thanksgiving.'"

~~~

Lately I've begun to enjoy the habit of leaving my smartphone at home in the evenings and instead donning an old pocketwatch I found at a Mexican flea market for a few pesos. It was broken, and it was quite a few years before I found a watchmaker capable and willing to make it work. Someone I respect once told me that we ought to intentionally cultivate a habit of fixing things that could just as easily be discarded, because it helps us remember that we're like that; we all need some fixing, and there is always hope. 

I'm not trading my smartphone for a pocketwatch. Every generation has its reactionaries as well as its "actionaries." They key is balance, and knowing our own limits and weaknesses. Every time I compulsively reach into my pocket to take a picture or check my email, and find only the smooth contours of my pocket watch, I feel an almost involuntary victory over my weaknesses and insecurities.

Someday I'll bet people will carry around vintage iPhones and dress "turn of the century" (again). And rightly they should. But hopefully they'll be winning the battles of their own day, and their own technology.