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April 6, 2005
Hello everyone,
“Sweet April showers / Do spring May flowers,” or so says sixteenth-century English farmer and writer Thomas Tusser in Hundredth Good Pointes of Husbandrie. Likewise, I remember learning in kindergarten that if the month of March “comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb; conversely, if it comes in like a lamb, it will go out like a lion.” We even drew pictures of lions and lambs on paper plates and my imagination was stoked by it all. Funny how well I remember it all these years later. But you know, that memory has done me very little good this year, for March ended a mere seven days ago and I honestly could not tell you how it came in or went out, one day blurring into the next (though as I pause to ponder, April showers seem likely enough, thunder booming outside just now, and in these parts May apples pop up somewhere around this time of year). These sayings, of course, clearly were products of the Northern hemisphere; presumably the Southern hemisphere has its own “weatherly” wisdom. Perhaps a deeper question is how one can derive the “four corners” of the globe with its Southern and Northern spheres; the line of the equator might be more easily explained than the prime meridian, but even then, what is North, South, East, and West except relative directions? We make the best of such things, however: I am even told that in Australia, one can buy atlases at gag gift shops in which the Land Down Under sits astride the world, Antarctica resigned to twirl at the bottom. Perhaps those crazy Australians have never considered what kind of implications such might have on their weather patterns, though I tend to imagine their humor is more symbolic than literally geographic.
Now then, of what real value is it to know that if March comes roaring in like a lion, making a dreadful racket, that it will billow and bluster itself into docile and lamblike innocence, going out with scarcely a sigh; or that if it meekly enters like a lamb led to slaughter it will, in the course of few weeks, billow and puff itself into a full-blown lion of Judah, perhaps with many diadems perched atop its windswept mane? We will each have to answer that question for ourselves, I suppose, but one thing we can say with certainty is that it illustrates the power of the imagination. Lecture a child and he might remember; tell him a story and he’ll rarely forget.
Moments ago (2/5/05) I returned from a Japanese folktale session in which professional storyteller Fran Stallings recounted a number of Asian stories, many of which she learned from master storyteller Hiroko Fujita or from her time spent in Japan. She says of her craft:
People tell me that listening to a storyteller is different from any other entertainment medium. It is an aural and visual experience involving interaction with the performer. But the most unique aspect is the active involvement of the listeners in creating the story in their own imaginations.
Well she understands the power of the imagination, seeing it played out in front of her eyes on a regular basis. She has been at her art form for over twenty-five years and was invited to do a follow-up session with teenagers who had sat under her tutelage as kindergartners. What I found perhaps most interesting was that in all of her work with schoolchildren, the story that stuck most in their minds was one designed to teach children how to count to five.
Now of course a storyteller has an advantage in that it is a visual experience as well as an aural one, but we can all picture in our minds a small tote bag shaped like the head of a cat, pointed ears slanted away from the opening atop. From this “mother” cat, Stallings pulls out first one, then two, then three, then four, and then five smaller feline faces, fluffing each one out with exaggerated fussiness, making a grand to-do over each one.
These five “kittens,” we learn, are taking lessons from their mother and she tells them that today she is going to teach them how to count to five. And so, beginning with the first kitten, Mother Cat begins, perhaps pointing to each kitten with dainty paw: “ichi, ni, san, shi, go. Now repeat after me.” And so together Mother Cat and her kittens recite: “ichi, ni, san, shi, go—one, two, three, four, five—ichi, ni, san, shi, go.” Soon enough, the kittens become adept at counting and are rattling off “ichi, ni, san, shi, go” like old pros. In fact, so convinced are they of their skill that they beg their mother to let them stay by themselves without a babysitter. “After all,” they say, “we can count ourselves and if one of us is missing, we’ll know.”
Mother Cat consents and all is going well for a time. But the first little yellow kitten begins to grow worried. And so she decides to do a head count: “ichi, ni, san, shi.” She pauses, confused, and counts again, “ichi, ni, san, shi. Shi? But what happened to ‘go’? One of us is missing!” she exclaims to her brother. “Nonsense!” he scolds, but he nevertheless begins to count his fellows to show off his newly discovered skill: “ichi, ni, san, shi!” A little blue ball of fur, he too is beside himself, “Where is kitten ‘go’!” And so all five kittens—the yellow one, the blue one, the white one, the red one, and the green one—go through the same routine, forgetting to count themselves when they count the other kittens, the children laughing louder and louder, finally almost tumbling off their chairs with mirth as the fifth kitten predictably falls for the same ploy that stumped his peers. In their imaginations, five silly kittens can’t see their own dramatic irony and when Mother Cat is called to the rescue, the delighted children are waiting with baited breath for her to set things straight. Almost without realizing it, by the end of the story they too have become seasoned professionals—“ichi, ni, san, shi, go!”—a lesson they will not soon forget.
If stories work so well in teaching a child to count or learn the letters of the alphabet, they can be used to even greater means to teach morality and virtue. Loyola professor of theology Vigen Guroian has much to say about the role of stories as an avenue to building character in his excellent essay, Awakening the Moral Imagination: Teaching Virtues Through Fairy Tales:
Moral living is about being responsive and responsible toward other people. And virtues are those traits of character that enable persons to use their freedom in morally responsible ways. The mere ability, however, to use moral principles to justify one’s actions does not make a virtuous person. The great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber tells the story of how he fell into “the fatal mistake of giving instruction in ethics” by presenting ethics as formal rules and principles. Buber discovered that very little of this kind of education gets “transformed into character-building substance.” In his little gem of moral and educational philosophy, an essay appropriately entitled “The Education of Character,” Buber recalls: “I try to explain to my pupils that envy is despicable, and at once I feel the secret resistance of those who are poorer than their comrades. I try to explain that it is wicked to bully the weak, and at once I see a suppressed smile on the lips of the strong. I try to explain that lying destroys life, and something frightful happens: the worst habitual liar of the class produces a brilliant essay on the destructive power of lying.”
Mere instruction in morality is not sufficient to nurture the virtues. It might even backfire, especially when the presentation is heavily exhortative and the pupil’s will is coerced. Instead, a compelling vision of the goodness of goodness itself needs to be presented in a way that is attractive and stirs the imagination. A good moral education addresses both the cognitive and affective dimensions of human nature. Stories are an irreplaceable medium of this kind of moral education. This is the education of character.
If you tell a child, “Be nice to others,” there is nothing immediately apparent in that admonition that suggests that the flatterer is not likewise following the same maxim. But if a child can be shown through plot, character, and story the machinations of the sycophantic man, there begins to develop a level of independent thought that can parse good from evil with increasing clarity. Now granted, the best stories a parent can teach invovle a life well lived, and no story will ever make up for hypocrisy in the home. But teaching children from a very early age a love of reading coupled with tales that foster the moral imagination is one of the greatest gifts one could ever give a child. I feel very fortunate in this department, for I grew up on a diet of Bible stories and fairy tales from as early as I can remember. I can still see many of the scenes in my mind: Dummling with his golden goose, leading the innkeeper’s daughters, the parson, and half the town around, winning the princess’ hand because she has not laughed all these years until now. Why did he have this stroke of good fortune? Because he alone of his three brothers shared not his good wine, for he had none, and not his sweet cake, for he had none of that either, but his widow’s mite of sour beer and cinder-cake with “the little old grey man.” And I can remember in a tale of a different sort how Joseph remained chaste even when his master’s wife made sport of him and how God blessed him and enabled him to save his family and his land. Or, I well recall how Puss in Boots tricked the shape-changing ogre by flattering his ego (alas, the pitfalls of pride) by first having him change into a mighty lion to whom Puss admits his terror but then suggests that he has heard that it is possible that the gigantesque ogre could turn himself into an itsy-bitsy creature, such as, say, a mouse, for example, but that he does not really believe it to be true. Of course, the prideful ogre must salvage his wounded ego and cannot resist the challenge—upon which occasion the newly metamorphosed mouse is promptly swallowed by the sly feline in the stylish boots, never to be seen or heard from again.
I can also remember Queen Esther of Old Testament renown and her courage to save her people from near-certain extinction. In fact, back in September of this past year (2004) I recounted a story of my own to a friend—a parable of sorts—for it said far better than I could otherwise say how I was feeling at the time, people making a fuss over my talents as though my sole worth was found in my abilities and nothing more. The Bible story of the Persian queen of humble Hebrew origins found its way quite naturally into the mix, for it had long since become woven into the fabric of my imagination:
The Woman Born Beautiful
Sometimes I feel as the woman born beautiful. Every woman’s dream incarnate, and yet few are the men who are real around her, few are the women who are not catty and jealous. She knows that beauty can be a lonely gift and while she doesn’t wish to stop being beautiful, sometimes she wishes that her beauty didn’t make her feel so alienated. Most of the time she is fine and accepts her gift with grace, not really thinking of herself as being that beautiful, for this face is the only one she has ever known and up close she sees its blemishes. And though she has chosen to accept her gift and has learned how to accentuate it further, still she sometimes feels a bit overwhelmed and in those moments she recognizes all too clearly that not only do the lines of her face fail to do a thing to fill her heart but the further refinements sometimes make her feel phony when she sees how other people respond not to her but to the golden image they have cast. During those times, she longs to fling the earrings from her ears, wipe the make-up from her face, and put on an old pair of jeans and a casual sweatshirt. But she knows that is no answer, for it is not her beauty that is the problem, it is not the way she has learned to further enhance it, it is not even what others say or think of her. Rather her problem is that she is destitute of soul and she longs for something of substance to fill her; she knows that all these earthly things fail to satisfy. And yet these earthly things are an integral part of her world and life goes on; she knows that there are benefits to beauty: that it can be used for truly noble ends even though temptation is always one step away. She has been appointed by God—Queen Esther—and she has her own small role to play in the cosmic drama: she may save a nation or she may lose her life: she doesn’t know. She just knows sometimes she becomes very weary; she knows that there are many things in this life that are overrated, particularly when they are taken all out of proportion.
Why does this parable say the things I felt I could not say? Is it because it relies on metaphor, all part of the “stuff” from which the imagination is stitched? Apparently this gift of metaphor instilled in me from my youth is far less ubiquitous than it ought to be. Perhaps this fault is partly due to a culture that places supreme emphasis on progress, handsomely rewarding technical or professional career seekers while simultaneously devaluing those who wish to pursue a classical education. Whatever is at fault—this factor or other or both—Guroian is hardly alone when he reports:
Unfortunately, more often than not, this society is failing to provide children with the kinds of experience that nurture and build the moral imagination. One measure of the impoverishment of the moral imagination in the rising generation is their inability to recognize, make, or to use metaphors. My college students do not lack an awareness of morality, although they might be confused or perplexed about its basis or personal ownership. But when they read a novel they are perplexed because they are unable to find the inner connections of character, action, and narrative provided by the author’s own figurative imagination. Sadly, the only kind of story many of my undergraduate students seem to be able to follow are news reports and sitcom scripts.
Several years ago, I administered a surprise quiz in a course on theology and literature in which I asked the students to list and explain five metaphors that they had found in John Updike’s early novel Rabbit, Run. The majority of the class was unable to name five metaphors. Some students did not even identify the metaphor in the book’s title, which I had purposely discussed in the preceding class meeting. It was not that these young people lacked a practical definition of a metaphor. They had been provided with such a definition over and over again in English courses. They lacked, however, a personal knowledge of metaphor that only an active imagination engenders. I suspect that in the past these students had gotten the idea that all they needed to do was look for the so-called “facts” in a book. Facts are things whose meaning belongs to their use and whose use requires relatively little interpretation. We are living in a culture in which metaphor is discarded for the so called “facts.” We train minds to catch these “facts” much as one breaks in a baseball glove. Meanwhile, the imagination is neglected and is left unguarded and untrained. (Awakening the Moral Imagination: Teaching Virtues Through Fairy Tales)
Like any good thing gone awry, an unguarded and untrained imagination can be a dangerous thing. In The “Sense Organ” of the Soul—another term for the imagination—we noted that “our imagination can [also] be an agent to sin even when nothing in the physical environment around us affords us the opportunity. I do not have to be surrounded by pornography, for instance, to entertain lustful thoughts or to remember lurid pictures I have gazed at with pleasure in times past.” Hence, we see another side to Guroian’s argument: another reason he employs the phrase “awakening the moral imagination.” Not only is the imagination a very useful tool for teaching virtue, but a moral education must take place on this deep-mind level in order that the temperament of the child might be changed. If morality does not grow deep roots into the thought life and imagination of the child, it can rather easily be uprooted. But if good seed is planted it will take root in the fertile soil of a child’s imagination and yield a bumper crop: some an hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.
My son, who turns eleven this year, went through a phase in which he felt like he was constantly being picked on and bullied at school, ordered about by his step-siblings at home, and in general turned upon by the very world. His mother confirmed what I had already suspected, that some of his troubles were his own doing. But I also understood exactly how he felt and my heart went out to him. I was once that boy who was always being picked on and from a very early age I too can remember the sense of worthlessness, emptiness, and depression that went along with it. Hearing my son recount his days hit me where it most hurt and when he came down to visit for a week or two in the summer, what do you suppose I did? Did I lecture him? No. I read him a story. I read him Hans Christian Anderson’s classic tale The Ugly Duckling. He was lying on the floor at my feet playing with his Lego set and listening as I read the story from the very link referenced here in this newsletter with all the gusto of the overgrown kid I secretly am, at least in my better moments. Whenever we would reach a picture, I would stop and make a terrible fuss and he would crane his neck up to see. When I was finished with the tale, I asked him what he thought. His answer? Strangely shy of a sudden, he replied: “That sounds like me.” The next day when we watched the video version at his Grandma and Grandpa’s house, he was as much an expert as his father, pointing out the liberties the filmmakers had (we both agreed) disgustingly taken, ruining the story in the process. Apparently, these contemporary storytellers were lacking in imagination themselves.
I won’t say it was The Ugly Duckling that helped him over the hump entirely, but I will claim that it meant a lot to him. This past Christmas, you may recall, we read Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince, and the following week Jeremy and I sat down side by side with a party tin of popcorn while I read him the story online from the newsletter. We checked out the animated version narrated by Christopher Plummer from the library and watched it at his Grandma and Grandpa’s house, both of us amazed at its faithfulness to the original text, practically down to the last jot and tittle. (I was later disappointed to see that Plummer’s version only comes in VHS—that’s why we watched it at Grandma and Grandpa’s in the first place, because I have no VCR.) On the same video was Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid and Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant. The latter story is particularly moving and has some very strong theological overtones, which his Grandfather explained to him at some length. We wound the evening down with Jeremy reading me the account of Jesus’ death—which he had first heard in full through what is now known as Father Renaissance and Jeremy Erickson. We took the video with us to his aunt’s house where we were to spend the night before he caught the Boeing 727 back home, and he wasn’t particularly pleased when his younger cousins started whispering loudly in the middle of the film. More than a little proud to share his knowledge of the theological implications of The Selfish Giant with his aunt, the next day I sent him home with a printed copy in hand to read to his mom if he liked. He will probably never forget these shared moments with his father and the wonderful stories we enjoyed together.
I share stories with my son because I love him and firmly believe in the power of the moral imagination. You may not realize just how much of a contribution my early education in fairy tales and Bible stories has made on my own writing and love of literature. But I believe that my Mom and Dad were perhaps even wiser than they knew—wiser than they were wise—when they taught me to love these wonderful stories. No, pointing the moralizing finger probably is not going to get very far: few of us like such a heavy-handed approach. But instilling virtue is itself a virtue: the skill to be a strong and principled moralist without moralizing. The bridge is found with good stories, where “there is no yesterday, and one must wait for the river to carry us over to tomorrow in the land where it remains forever today,” as we discovered in On the Nature of Fairytale: Seeing the Beauty in the Bittersweet. That is the beauty of such narratives: they bring out the very best in us—both the youthful innocence that thinks no obstacle too great tempered with the wisdom of the silver-haired. Ah yes, perennial youth and timeless truth interwoven in living narrative where the weave may in turn entwine the moral imagination for time immemorial.
God bless,
Eric
“And the king said to Esther on the second day also as they drank their wine at the banquet, ‘What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to half of the kingdom it shall be done.’ Then Queen Esther replied, ‘If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me as my petition, and my people as my request.’”
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