A Rock with a Stick On It

Growing up in a small town is very different than growing up in a city. For one thing, cattle drives would occasionally go through the middle of town, making several students late for school. But few things between country and city life are as different as how the residents give directions.

In the city, people use street names, measurable distances (like a block), and actual compass directions to get a person from Point A to Point B: “Go north on Broadway a few blocks until you come to Seventh Street. Then take a right.” And so on.

In the country, where a lot of streets don’t have names (and the residents ignore the ones that do), everyone uses landmarks and vague distances. “Go down dis here road a ways ’til you come to da place where ol’ Heap’s barn used to be. Den you take a right onto a little two-tracker and go until you come to da old oak tree. If you come to da rock dat looks like a chipmunk, you gone too far.”

I didn’t fully appreciate this difference until the summer before my senior year when a new family moved to town. One night, some friends and I were trying direct one of the girls to a house where we were going to have a party. We started out by saying: “Okay, you know where main street is?” Her response startled us.

“You mean, Cleveland?”

“Cleveland?”

“Isn’t the street that goes through the middle of town named Cleveland?”

My friends and I stared at each other blankly. Was it really called Cleveland? We had no idea.

It turns out that the main street in St. Johns, the street we’d always referred to as just plain “Main Street,” is, indeed, actually named “Cleveland” after President Grover Cleveland. But until that moment I had never noticed.

My wife quickly discovered this difference during our courtship and has made it her life’s goal to make fun of how us country bumpkins give directions. Her goal especially applies to my dad who is notorious for using obscure landmarks to get us where we need to go.

Her teasing skills were put to use last weekend when we went to visit my parents in St. Johns. While we were there, we went up to the mountains to cut some wood. My dad, who left before of us, drew a nice map that included such landmarks as: “Big Gravel Pit” and “Potato Patch” (it turns out that Potato Patch is actually a big meadow. I don’t know if they ever grew potatoes there). As if those weren’t bad enough, just before we left the house, my dad called and told us that he was off the road a little ways  and that we’d know where he was by finding the rock with a stick on it.

That last one had my wife laughing hysterically all the way to the mountains. She kept asking: “What kind of rock? A big rock? A red rock? A small rock? What kind of stick? Will it be pointing up? To the left? Diagonally?” And then Miranda, our preteen, jumped in and started pointing out every rock and stick we passed.

After a long drive of being heckled by my wife and daughter, we finally got to the rock with a stick on it. This, unfortunately, did not help (see the picture below). Jenna and Miranda found this to be the funniest thing they had ever seen and the heckling increased.

But we got where we were going, so even though city dwellers and country bumpkins use different methods to give direction, they both work. And that’s really the point, right?

Now if only I can convince my wife of that.

Which America?

I am worried about this country.

I’ve read several other blogs lately that started with the exact same line but meant it in a completely different way. I guess that just goes to show how we all love this country but in different ways.

And that, quite frankly, is what is worrying me.

I don’t have any problem with everyone loving this country in their own way. In fact, just the opposite. What concerns me is the tendency to believe that one version of America is the “true” one.

This came up in the presidential campaign, when Sarah Palin called small town America the “real America,” thereby insulting the majority of the population that lives in cities. But I ask, in all seriousness, what makes one version of America more “real” or “true” than another?

Back in the ’70s, during the Watergate scandal, Captain America had a crisis of faith. In a story that intentionally paralleled the Watergate scandal, he discovered that a high-ranking government official (assumed to be the president but never stated outright) had conspired with the Secret Empire (an organization bent on world domination, in case you couldn’t guess), to put the US completely under his control. When the Cap finally caught up with him and tried to stop him, the government official (code named “Number One”), committed suicide in order to escape prosecution.

Steve Rogers – the Cap – was so distraught over the plot that he lost his faith in the country and gave up being Captain America and eventually became “Nomad: Man Without a Country” (he later returned to being Cap after realizing that the nation needed a unifying symbol).

In one issue, his friends attempt, one-by-one, to convince him to change his mine. They argued that the country needs Captain America (much in the same way that Grant Morrison argued that the world needs Batman in Comic Con last year). At the end, he finally explained his rationale.

He explained that, when he became Captain America during World War II, the country was united against a common foe. Since he was reawakened in the ’60s (he had been frozen in a block of ice at the end of WWII and was rediscovered by the Avengers years later), he had always felt like a man out of time. So much had changed. People had grown different and apart. The unity that had existed when he was first created no longer existed. Now everyone was doing their own thing.

In one of the most powerful scenes of the issue he stands with a bewildered look on his face as images of several “Americas” float over him: black, white, construction worker, business man, hippie, men, women, young, old, etc. Today you could probably add Christian, Muslim, Atheist, liberal, conservative, Hispanic, gay, straight, and too many others to name. In the panel, the Cap asks, “When people look at me, which America do they see?”

Here’s what concerns me: everyone today thinks that their version of America is the “true” or the “real” one without stopping to consider that other points of view are just as valid. What makes small town America “real” and big city America – where something like 70% of the population lives – less real?

There is a predominant myth in American history, called the Edenic (as in “The Garden of Eden”) Myth. It is the tendency to view the frontier – the wild – as real and natural while the city is false and manufactured. In this myth (please remember that in Academia, “myth” means “metaphoric story,” not “lie”), nature is closer to God, which gives it the “realnesss.” It is seen as a place of peace and tranquility. The Edenic Myth fueled the naturalist movement (Thoreau on Walden’s Pond, for example) as well as to the race for the west, where people hoped to find their own Eden, at first on the plains and then even further.

The Edenic Myth has also been credited for the invention of the superhero (see The Myth of the American Superhero by Lawrence and Jewett). When the American “Eden” was threatened by either internal or external forces, it required a hero outside the law to come in and save them before fading into obscurity (incidentally, the American superhero myth is based upon the Messianic tradition from the Bible – Moses and Jesus being the two biggest examples).

Whether we are conscious of it or not, the Edenic Myth comes through in our speech. For example, we refer to farmers and laborers (again, those in rural America), as “the salt of the earth,” hearkening back to the biblical passage: “Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?” (Matt 5:13). In other words, calling someone “the salt of the earth” is really saying that they are true believers/followers of God – they are the “good” people. The implication is that anyone who does not meet that qualification (i.e. those that live in cities) are not worthy or that they are “evil” people. The comparison seems to be “salt of the earth” vs. “scum of the earth” with little in between.

Have you ever heard a lawyer or car salesman called “the salt of the earth?” Why can’t they give as much savor as a field hand? And why can’t a farm be the “scum of the earth?”

I am not trying to make this just about rural versus urban, though that is one of the biggest and most obvious examples. I have lived in both the city and the small town out in the middle of nowhere and found there to be equal measures of positive and negative in both (I think that both have more positive than negative). But beyond the urban vs. rural debate, there are tons of versions of this country and none of them seem to be able to find any merit to other versions: conservative vs. liberals, for example. Which one is the “true” America? Which one is “real?” What makes the difference? Having studied both sides of the political divide, I can easily see both positive and negative in both liberal and conservative ideologies.

Note that I said “positive and negative,” not “good and bad” or “good and evil.” Too often we cast things in starkly moral terms. I have heard commentators from both sides of the political divide use the word “evil” to describe the other side. But is the other political side really evil? Really? Evil is a big word. It conjures to mind comic book and movie villains like Lex Luthor and Darth Vader. So we’re saying that [insert opposing political party] are just as bad as Lex Luthor and Darth Vader who mercilessly kill millions? Really?

In the now-cancelled (and, for me, sorely missed) TV show, Joan of Arcadia, which was about a girl that routinely talks with God, Joan is instructed by God to ask a particular boy to a dance. The boy is a bully with a lot of hate and anger built up inside him. He is not a nice guy – definitely not “the salt of the earth” – and frequently lashes out at others, both verbally and physically. Joan protests to God that the boy is “evil,” which leads to the following conversation:

GOD: Evil is not a word to use lightly. It’s only the darkest end of a broad spectrum.

JOAN: You mean like light?

GOD: Exactly like light. Nobody is born in total darkness. Most of you live on the gray end of the spectrum, a lie here and there, jealousy, wrath. But you only get to absolute evil by doing one thing after another ’till, eventually, you’re transformed.

JOAN: Like . . . into a monster?

GOD: A monster is a creature with no conscience. They’re extremely rare, but they do exist.

JOAN: Have you watched the news? I’m not sure they’re so rare.

GOD: Almost everyone has light somewhere. And that light is always worth fighting for.”

I think the same is true about the versions of America. They all have merit but you have to look for it. Most of the time, you don’t have to look very hard. But that merit – that light – is always worth fighting for. Even if it comes from the opposing side.

I am not saying there isn’t bad or evil out there. And I’m not saying that some points of view don’t have more merit than others. What worries me is the absolutism. “I’m right, you’re wrong. I’m good, you’re evil.”

We are dividing. We are turning into individual tribes with separate ideals, separate leaders, and separate destinies. We no longer seem to have the ability to look for the good in others. All we see is the bad. And it is that division that worries me. After all, to quote another scripture, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand” (Matt 12:25).

Last week, in church, I gave a lesson on living in harmony with others. I asked if anyone knew what harmony was. There was a long pause before someone finally said, “singing together.” And, yes, that is true, at least to a point. Harmony is singing together, but it doesn’t mean singing the same thing. In fact, “harmony” means singing many different things at once. Dictionary.com defines it as “the simultaneous combination of tones, esp. when blended into chords pleasing to the ear.” When a choir sings in harmony, they are all singing different notes but they blend together in a way that is far more beautiful than any single note could ever be on its own.

The same can apply to life. Just because we are singing different notes doesn’t mean that others are singing wrong. And just because they are singing something different it doesn’t make us wrong either. If we can come together, with all our distinctness and diversity still intact, it can be very right and very beautiful.

To me, it is in that harmony, that we find the “real” and “true” America.