Playing Small Ball

As I write this, the Kansas City Royals are up 7-0 in Game 6 of the World Series. Barring a catastrophic collapse, it's looking very much like they will play in a final and deciding Game 7 tomorrow night to what has become a fantastic World Series end to a thrilling baseball post-season.

The Royals without a doubt have captured the heart of their city. Conversations with those living there, coupled with an onslaught of journalistic meanderings and vibrant video footage have made it clear this is no ordinary team. This is a team of the people, a team who the city has embraced as their own, a team of players who celebrate their fans almost as much as their fans celebrate their players.

In many ways this team has the caught the hearts of many around the nation as well. After all, they are the underdog. They haven't been to the World Series in almost 30 years. They spend less money and have significantly fewer advantages than the mammoth Yankees and Red Sox and even my beloved perennially underachieving Phillies.

To put it simply, they play small ball. They do not win with flashy home runs and big innings and high-priced players; instead, they win with fundamentals. They hit singles and doubles. They bunt runners over and hit to the opposite side and fill their roles when called upon. They pitch. In other words, they do the small things often and consistently enough to add up to an amount of runs that will allow them to win games. Underdogs who exhibit precise skill through discipline and hard work and remain humble yet enthusiastic provide an ever-widening bandwagon for baseball fans across the country just waking up to their winning ways.

Teams like the Royals who win like this are easy to root for because we want to believe that the regular guy who works hard can win, despite the obstacles. More so than that, though, they capture our heart because we want to believe in that image of reality, but few of us have the discipline to find out for ourselves over the long haul whether or not it will work in our own lives.

We want to believe it does. It sounds pure - work hard, do the little things every day, and you will be rewarded with great success. But few of us have the patience to play small ball for long. We'd prefer to hit occasional home run; we place our trust in some major event to save us rather than the every day, consistent grind towards our goals. We want a quick fix. We believe in small ball, and we're happy it's working for somebody like the Royals; we just aren't sure we can tough it out that long to see if it will work for us.

Last week I was struggling with one of my daughters. I though she had become much more mouthy, more self-centered, more confrontational with me. We had a string of not fun days together. And I thought all day Friday about what I could do on Saturday that would fix it. Just like that. Where could I take here? What big outing could we have that would straighten this whole thing out? I failed to remember what has taken me years to understand: there are very few home runs in parenting.

There are few home runs in education as well. My students want them badly. How much can I raise my grade with this paper? Where will this exam put me? Can I do some extra credit? Had they been playing small ball all semester, they wouldn't need home runs. And that makes sense to most adults. But why, then, don't we play more small ball in our own lives?

Believe in small ball. Believe in it in your own personal improvement. Believe in it professionally. Play small ball in losing weight, in working out, and in reading books. Trust that hitting enough singles and doubles daily in your marriage will help you both win a lot more than swinging for the fences once a month. And in coming out of huge disappointment or tragedy or loss, acknowledge that it will be many days of small ball before you even look like you're going to be ready to win again.

Believe in small ball in your faith journey. Do something small today. Don't put a conference on your calendar. Don't wait for a church service on Sunday to pick you up. Pray a little. Read a little. Talk to someone a little better than you.

Home runs are great. But they usually come after 10-15 strikeouts. At least that's how the Phillies do it. By the time the home runs come, it's too little, too late.

I scrapped my home run hopes with my daughter this weekend. Instead we talked together on a hike in the woods. We read together. We started a project. Nothing major. But this week I feel like I'm on the track towards winning again. And I want to stick with small ball for an entire season to find out just how many games I can win.

A Letter to My AP Students

This school year I've started a writing initiative for English teachers in the state by proving a writing platform and a regular "Invitation to Write" topic to encourage more writing and sharing among us. The most recent writing prompt is "Letters to Students." My friend Jennifer Paulsen submitted a moving piece last week, and I highly recommend you take a look at it.

Her piece connected with me in a way that pushed me to do two things: ask my AP students to read it, and then write a letter addressed to them myself. My letter has now been posted to our teacher writing page as well, but I wanted to share it here too. If you're interested. . .

To My AP Students:

Today I asked you to read a letter that my friend, Mrs. Paulsen, wrote to her students. I want to write to you now, and explain why we’ve gone away from the syllabus and the canon of classical literature here in AP class to read this letter.

Her letter is not to you, nor is to me. It is not about our classroom or about any poetry that we’ve read (until now). I believe it to be essential reading anyway. For in her words I see what is true, and I want to share that truth with you.

You don’t know what it’s like to lose a child you were expecting, but I do. You don’t know what it was like to be an adult and watch the Twin Towers fall, over and over again on TV, everywhere you went, hoping for a different ending every time; but I do. You don’t remember watching Bono at the Super Bowl, and you don’t still have some of the same chills every time you hear the song; I do. You don’t know what it’s like to be vulnerable in front of students, to walk that line between being a real person and being a bullet-proof god of academia, to share and to not share and to risk and to just pray that you won’t lose it, not today, even though a wound is bleeding more and more by the minute. Or what it’s like to be in Mrs. Paulsen’s classroom, to watch her with her students, to receive a glimpse of her heart in all that she does. You don’t know. But I do.

But there are other words in this piece that do resonate with you. I know there are, because it’s a great piece; it’s why I’m having you read it. For you know things that I don’t know. You’ve seen things that I haven’t seen. And you read her words, and you’re reminded of them all over again. They become real again. And that might crush you under the weight of emotion, make you jump for joy, warm your heart with the idea that you are not alone in this world, or simply make you turn up the corners of your mouth in a knowing smile. Or you will read it, widen your perspective, see me differently, and we’ll all be better.

The piece, when it was written, was not about you and me. But now it is. Now it’s in our hands. Now it enters through the eyes, worms its way around our brains, electrifying connections all over in times and places and emotions that we remember and even some that we don’t. If we let it, it keeps travelling all the way into our souls. It becomes ours. It speaks of something true that perhaps we knew but didn’t know we knew.

My class is better because of Mrs. Paulsen. And so I talk to my friends, my friends the English teachers, my friends the science teachers, my friends the accountants and the construction workers and the travelers and the parents and the jobless and the writers, because they are better than me. So much better than me. And if I can rub up against them, rub up against their life experiences and their lessons and take some of them back to you, then we all gain.

But that’s also why we do what we do in here. Yes, we are analyzing literature and finding meaning and breaking down authorial strategies in preparation for attempting to please the AP gods deciding your exam fate. But we are also helping you to live. For on some page, you will read about Elizabeth Bennett’s frustration or will or sass, and you will see your own. You will find your own goals and dreams and illusions of success in Gatsby and Death of a Salesman and hear about how they are a shiny, ghostly mess. You will read poems, new poems and old. They will speak to you about pain, about love, about how impossibly hopeless it feels to know that time and space cannot be manipulated, no matter how hard we try. You will find yourself somewhere in those poems. And while you don’t know it today, you will find the you that exists ten years from now, somewhere on that page. Some line, some phrase, some word will be yours. It will help you live. It will reinforce that you are alive right now.

And one day while we are writing in class, when I ask you to steal a sentence from another writer, make it your own, and see where your writing takes you, you will get it just right. Not the whole page. Not even the whole paragraph. But you will get one line or two just right, and you will share it with the person next to you. They won’t tell you this, but that line of writing will do for them on that day exactly what Mrs. Paulsen’s writing did for me.

We are in this class to live. Don’t ever forget that. In the middle of all the FRQ’s and the multiple choice practice and essays of analysis and the chapters of 18th Century literature that frustrate you, as you seek your “A” and the academic immortality of a high GPA, remember why we’re here. And I promise to work hard to remember that too.

Dykstra           

A Teacup in Kansas

This weekend I was gladly reduced.

This is a term that I came across this past week, and it runs counter to much of society and any semblance of common sense in my head. Much of what is inside of us begs that we be made much of, that we be put on a pedestal and valued and recognized as important. Something inside of us wants the spotlight. We want to be first in thoughts and minds.

Instead, sitting in church on Sunday morning, I recognized the feeling of being gladly reduced. In a building full of people, as one of hundreds of voices, I smiled as I embraced the reality of my place in the world.

In a speech in his series on Vertical Church, James McDonald makes the statement that if our galaxy were the size of North America, our solar system would essentially be the size of a teacup in Kansas. There are over one hundred billion galaxies in the universe. We are, indeed, a very small piece of the puzzle.

Most Sundays I drive to church with my own concerns firmly entrenched: the necessary tasks for the day, the schedule for the upcoming week, the frustrations of the past week, my own mistakes. In church on Sunday, though, my cares for self drifted. I still had cares and concerns, but they were for issues much larger than my own. They were part of a collective concern, a shared burden as part of a joint vision and worldview. And I was glad.

To be gladly reduced is to recognize that you are not at the center of the universe, that you are not God, that you cannot and will not make it all happen or be okay on your own. To be gladly reduced is to lose yourself and your needs, and replace that consciousness and concern with connection and the understanding that you are a part of something bigger, something gloriously bigger and better, something that is far better than anything you can do on your own.

We all want to matter in this world, but what we want even more is to matter to someone. To matter to their needs. To matter to their joy. Personal fulfillment will not come when someone says, "Look at you and all that you've done! You're spectacular!" Rather, fulfillment will come when they say, "Look at me because of you."

This is the anti-I-am-too-busy-to-be-bothered way of life. To be gladly reduced is to live with the understanding that what you are doing today has no significance unless you are working for something larger than yourself. It asks you to take stock of your place in your family, in your community, in eternity. It asks you to serve.

The most unhappy people I know are talking about themselves. These are not selfish people; they are, however, self-focused people. And their self-focus is not serving them well. They speak of being wronged, or of their immediate wants/desires, or how the events of today have effected them personally. And they're right. They have been mistreated and inconvenienced, and they don't have that which they want. But acknowledging and sharing and focusing on these things has not brought them any joy. Rather than being gladly reduced, they are sadly enlarged. They have shined a spotlight on themselves and found that they have been let down. And I foolishly join them from time to time.

Being reminded that I am small, however, highlights my inability to be self-reliant.That is a freeing place to be. It is to rest in a truth rather than a desperate illusion fueling personal grandeur.

Be gladly reduced in your community, whatever that community might be. Realize that you are one citizen, but that you belong to a much larger citizenry. You are connected. You are in on some grand secret, and you are free to take a guilty pleasure in sharing it with the others who are with you.

In that congregation on Sundays I am a teacup in Kansas among a continent of other fine china. And it is there that I feel like I have found exactly where I belong.

On Bravery

At the Iowa Council of Teachers of English Conference last week, Co-President of the organization (and my friend) Jennifer Paulsen opened with an introductory speech on bravery, specifically the bravery it takes to teach and to teach well. One sentence from that speech that I wrote down as memorable was this: "Bravery is risky business."

That sentence rang true with me. First of all, it's hard to be brave - brave enough to do something hard, brave enough to be nervous, brave enough to fight the fights that need fighting. More than that, though, is that inherent in bravery is risk. It's risky because there is something to lose. Pride perhaps. Or self-confidence. Bravery is at a premium because the hero doesn't win every time. Jobs are lost. Lesson plans flop. Invitations are rejected. People die.

Yes, bravery is risky indeed. But that led me to ask myself, What does it take to be brave? What does bravery look like for a commoner like me, someone not in a war zone or surviving poverty or battling illness?

What I figured out is that sometimes bravery is simply starting.

Starting what? Starting anything. For I've found that the start is the most daunting. To start something is to state an intention, to clearly indicate that you want something and that you're going after it. To start means to finish or fail. It means that a pursuit has begun. And that means risk.

Start a book. Open its cover and read 5 pages. Now you're in. The book was safer on the shelf, or in the Barnes and Noble bag, harmlessly stiff in its unopened state, it boldly proclaimed you a book lover with noble intentions. But once you start, you can only keep reading, page by page, or face the prospect of admitting that you just didn't have it in you to finish something as simple as a book, especially a book that you yourself picked out.

Start a conversation. Perhaps with someone you don't know. You want risky business, then open the floodgates to that unpredictable scenario. You might have a friend for life, an annoying footnote to your day, or perhaps one more person in the world that you begin liking but who ultimately will end up letting you down in one way or another. One you start, though, you're in. You've sacrificed your silence for the unknown.

Start a reconciliation. Be the spouse to say "I'm sorry." Or just start by crossing that unspoken, invisible barrier, the barrier of touch, or the barrier of eye contact, those silly walls we put up in the middle of a fight to indicate that while we may be done arguing, I still will not submit or relent in my position. Risk losing the fight to win the war.

Start to quit. Whatever you do that you don't want to do, knock it off, shut it off, leave it alone, or say no. Just this once.

Start exercising regularly. Or losing weight. Or praying. It's easy to want those things. It's easy to dabble in those, saying that you're trying them out. But to actually start, to have a path and a destination drawn out and then to do the Day 1 requirements, whatever they may be, that's to say that wanting and doing are not the same and that you are a doer.

Starting to write this blog post required about as much bravery as I could muster tonight. To start it meant that I had to find something, go somewhere in my writing. It required that I not let the gaping hole in my thinking after the second paragraph derail me, that I not let my recent lack of writing productivity keep me from hammering away at the keys, required that I get words down and click "Publish" and risk that those words are no good at all, that they are, in fact, as bad and as stilted as they feel while I laboriously type one word, then another, then delete, then another. Starting was the hardest part. It was a commitment. And I'm glad I did.

Jenn also said in the speech that you've got to arm yourself with whatever it takes in order to be brave - a lucky shirt, your grandfather's watch, the encouragement of friends, a picture. Take whatever it is you're going to need to do that thing you want so badly to do and that also scares the hell out of you. Get armed, however big or small that act may be. But then start. Take one step. Because then you'll have no other choice but to keep walking.