Elwyn Brooks White, better known as E. B. White, may be best known as the author of Charlotte’sWeb and Stuart Little, or, by people of a certain age, the co-author of a little volume often called Strunk & White or, more accurately The Elements of Style. (Some people shudder at the memory of it; others delight in its clarity and decisiveness. Most are surprised to know that it was written by the same author who wrote Charlotte’s Web.)
For 50 years White was a contributor to The New Yorker, most often writing what the magazine calls “Newsbreaks” which are short, witty comments on oddly worded writing, under various categories such as “Block That Metaphor.” (I got some of my love of words from these pieces, which my mother delightedly shared with me.) White won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for (in the words of the award), “his letters, essays and the full body of his work.” He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963.
In my research I came across this description of White that I just have to share with you all. James Thurber, who also delighted my mother and me, once described White as a quiet man who disliked publicity and who, during his time at The New Yorker, would slip out of his office via the fire escape to a nearby branch of Schrafft’s to avoid visitors whom he didn’t know. Thurber wrote:
Most of us, out of a politeness made up of faint curiosity and profound resignation, go out to meet the smiling stranger with a gesture of surrender and a fixed grin, but White has always taken to the fire escape. He has avoided the Man in the Reception Room as he has avoided the interviewer, the photographer, the microphone, the rostrum, the literary tea, and the Stork Club [a trendy nightclub in Manhattan]. His life is his own. He is the only writer of prominence I know of who could walk through the Algonquin lobby or between the tables at Jack and Charlie’s and be recognized only by his friends.
White and his family came to live full-time at their farmhouse on the coast of Maine. By all accounts he loved his life on the farm, relishing the delights – and there’s that word again – of the natural world that surrounded him. In fact, he once stopped in his barn, captivated, watching a spider spinning her egg sac. That spider eventually became “Charlotte.” The Newbury Award winning author Kate DiCamillo, in her foreword to Charlotte’s Web, quoted White as saying, “All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.” All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.”
I tell you all of this to give you something of the background of the man who said the quote that’s at the heart of this morning’s service:
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
It’s also sometimes remembered as (and I prefer this version):
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
There’s a condition known as “compassion fatigue,” or, “secondary traumatic stress.” I’d wager that many of us, maybe most of us here, know at least a little something about it. I cannot tell you how many people have told me that they’ve had to stop watching the news because they just can’t take it (especially since the Presidential election this past year, but honestly, for years and years before that as well). We see:
The seemingly constant shootings of unarmed black men by police officers who too often face no charges;
The obscene income gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” – a gap that is growing, leaving far too many people struggling just to eke out the most basic level of living;
The rape culture in which we live and which is taken as the norm, apparently accepting (or ignoring) that a sexual assault occurs on average once every 2 minutes, and that one-in-five women will be raped at some point in their lives (a percentage that is significantly higher for women in LGBTQ communities);
The so-called school-to-prison pipeline, pandemic in communities of color, which can be argued to begin as young as preschool, where black children are roughly 3 ½ times more likely than white children to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions;
Environmental degradation so profound that many scientists think are nearing the point of no return, if we haven’t passed that already;
Utter disregard for any kind of civil discourse, or even belief in things like “facts;”
The intentional and explicit targeting of people in historically marginalized communities, rolling back any progress seen toward societal recognition of their full humanity;
The disintegration, here and abroad, of the building blocs of democratic societies;
Of course, I could go on (and on, and on), yet just hearing such a list threatens to burn out even more people. I recently re-watched the movie Where the Wild Things Are, in which the wild thing Carol at one point angrily shouts a litany of things that are wrong on their island, among which he includes the fact that the sun is dying and will have essentially burned out in something like 5 to 6 billion years. The point? Live is hard.
And I haven’t even brought up all of the local, personal tragedies and traumas we face – people we know who have just received serious health news, or our own receipt of a serious prognosis; the death of loved ones; accidents with catastrophic consequences (and even not so catastrophic ones); job loss or insecurity; addictions; divorces …
I could go on with this list, too, yet the point is the same: life is hard. And there is so much that is wrong with the world that many of us wake in the morning desiring to save the world. Or we go to bed nearly broken by the secondary traumatic stress we find ourselves having to endure. It’s as if the world itself, as if life itself, is one of J. K. Rowling’s Dementors – creatures who drain “peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them.” The world we live in threatens to such the joy from our lives, and has already done so in some cases.
There’s a story from the Buddhist tradition which tells of a mother who’d just gone through the death of her child. Distraught, overcome, she seeks out the Buddha, whose teachings are said to be “medicine,” and begs him to bring her son back to life. The Buddha tells her that she must bring him a mustard seed from a house that has known no suffering. The woman goes door to door, asking for a mustard seed, but when she asks if there had ever been any suffering there, at each home she is told of some difficult thing the family had had to endure at some point. After going to all of the houses in her village, the woman, undaunted, begins to visit neighboring villages, yet her experience is always the same. Over time, though, the woman’s frantic desperation begins to be somewhat tempered by the kindness of the people she meets, the empathy and care she experiences, the evidence that even despite their sufferings the people she visits have gone on with their lives. Finally, the woman returns to the Buddha. “Have you found the seed from the house that has known no suffering?” he asks. “I have found no such home,” she replied, “yet I now know that I am not alone.” “That is good,” the Buddha said. “I can not return your dead child to life, but I can return your life to you. Go in peace.”
The Protestant theologian Frederick Buechner once wrote:
“You are alive. It needn’t have been so. It wasn’t so once, and it will not be so forever. But it is so now. And what is it like: to be alive in this maybe one place of all places anywhere where life is? Live a day of it and see. Take any day and be alive in it. Nobody claims that it will be entirely painless, but no matter. It is your birthday, and there are many presents to open. The world is to open.”
“[T]here are many presents to open. The world is to open.”
- B. White was born in 1899, and died in 1985.During those years he certainly saw how painful, how cruel, how hard life can be. He saw wars, the civil rights struggle, the Great Depression. He knew how much the world needed saving.
And yet … (Those who know me could have guessed that there’d be an “and yet” before we were through here, right?)
White knew how hard life in this world can be, and yet he also knew life’s wonders. And so, he arose each morning “torn by the desire to save the world and to savor the world.” For years I’d thought that it was this phrase, this seeming conundrum, that was the important point of thiS quotation. I’ve lately come to realize that it’s actually what I’d thought was the throw-away that is the point. “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” This makes it hard to plan my day. He is talking about making an active, conscious choice. A choice he makes each day. He knows the world needs saving – oh how we know that too, we know so, so, so many ways that our world needs us to work for its salvation. He also knows how worthy the world is of being savored. And he is torn, as so many of us are. Yet he also knows that it is within his power to choose where he will put his focus. He gets to plan his day; it isn’t planned for him by either the savoring nor the saving. And so it is for us, too.
It’s not easy, but as Buechner said, nobody claimed that it would be “entirely painless.” That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, though. And I’m going to tell you this morning — and remind myself — that it’s absolutely possible. We … can … choose … day-by-day … whether we have the strength today to save, or whether we need to restore ourselves with a little savoring.
One last thought:
While it’s true that we often need to make a choice, we don’t always. Sometimes that savoring can be part of the saving. In fact, you might say that sometimes the ability to savor the world saves the act of striving to save it from completely burning us out.
A few weeks back I told the story of the activist Emma Goldman, who is remembered as saying “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” It’s more likely that what she actually said was something more like, “what’s the point of a revolution if you can’t dance?” Either way, the point is the same. When we’re involved in the work of striving to save the world, when we’re knee deep in the effort to address the ubiquitous injustices we can’t help but see all around us, it is essential that we take – that we make – the time to dance, sing, laugh, savor. Rev. Alex put it really well last week: “Pick your tool, if you have not already. And continue your work, side-by-side. And, sing some work songs while you are at it.”
Look around you. The people you are sitting with, and most likely you, yourself, are people who are involved in the work of making the world a better place, have been involved in that work … some of you for a very long time. Look around you. [Seriously, look at the people around you.] Drink in their beauty (remembering to remember your own, of course). Let their commitment(s) inspire you. There are so many good examples in this room of people committed to making this world a better, more just, more love-filled place. Savor one another. And then let’s back the work of saving this hurting, beautiful world.
Pax tecum,
RevWik
