By The Numbers

As I began to think about my final post to this blog while on Sabbatical, I realized that summary and closure would really be impossible.  So I thought I would just leave with some numbers.

My sabbatical lasted 92 days.  Of that, I spent 63 nights out of the safe comfort of my bed.

The generous grant from the Lilly Endowment Grant was for $50,000.  $35,000 paid for the expenses of myself and my family (which when added to the money I had already budgeted proved just $40 less than I actually spent).  The church's portion of $15,000 provided an all-star level interim in Charles Bugg (thank you so much Chuck!).  Three tremendous opportunities were provided for the members of Faith to explore storytelling through a variety of media.  And to the best of my knowledge, we won't have any money to return the kind folks at Lilly (Thank you so much and sorry!).

According to the Bing Distance calculator, I travelled more than 18,200 miles this summer.  That works out to about 200 miles a day and $2 a mile if your counting.

During that time, I've posted 101 entries on my blog here--counting this one.  I found one handy application that tracked visits to bobfoxstories@blogspot.com.  Over the course of my absence there were nearly 2500 hits and 4800 page views (Thanks Mom!).  It constantly humbled and reminded me that there really were a lot of people following along.

While this story of my life has reached its end, other stories are just beginning.  The experiences of this summer will provide a background and enriching for everything that follows.

So if we are going by the numbers, let me leave with one--one big thank you to everyone who made this possible and everyone reading this.

Half Full Or Half Empty

When I met with Mark Lucas, to discuss Absalom, Absalom, he made a remark that got me thinking.  He said that the Old South and England share a similar reverence of the past since both had fought and lost wars on their home ground.  The extensive re-thinking that is required to make sense of why one's noble forebears were unable to prevail leads to an obsession with the past.  It is a sort of second guessing.  Was their cause mistaken, their courage suspect or were they in the wrong?

This questioning leads to a more circumspect view of the world.  The real possibility of failure looms over every endeavor. It leads to a sort of realistic view of existence that can appear to be pessimism.  When you examine the work of Tolkien and Faulkner, you certainly see this sort of  harsh picture of living.  Death and sorrow are real possibilities intricately woven into the tapestry of their tales.

This contrasts with the rest of the United States where during Disney's life, the claim could be made that the U.S. had never lost in a war.  In fact, the U.S.'s primary role in Walt's experience had been to enter in on the right side of foreign conflict and tip the scales of victory to bring justice.  Losing was not a part of the experience.

So Disney's narratives lack the reverence for the past and the complicated texture of death and sorrow.  It is possible for him to have an essentially optimistic view of the world because defeat was unknown.

An interesting thought, loss leads to depth.  At least in this case, it appears to ring true.

Discovering The Story

William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom is a narrative masterpiece.  The facts of the story are rather spare.  Thomas Sutpen is shaped by a childhood rooted in his lower class roots and works the rest of his life to overcome it.  He goes to Haiti for riches where he marries the daughter of a sugar plantation owner.  When he finds out she is part black, he divorces her because she doesn't fit his plan.  He arrives in Yokanaptawpha County, buys a 10 square mile plot from the local Indian chief.  He develops it, marries a woman from the town and has two children, a boy and a girl.  When the boy goes off to college he meets a mysterious student from New Orleans who is named Charles Bon.  He brings him home for the holiday and arranges an engagement between Bon and his sister Judith.  Sutpen calls his son Henry in and tells him that Bon is actually his half brother from the mother in Haiti.  The two young men go off to war and when they return, as Charles comes back to marry Judith, Henry kills him at the door to the house.  He does this not because of the incest but because he has  learned that Bon is part black.  Henry disappears and Sutpen returns from the Civil War with no son to inherit his dream.  Finally he is killed by one of the poor white farmers who lives on the plantation because Sutpen fathers a baby by the man's granddaughter.

And that is basically it.  There are a few other details and the sad denouement, but that is the plot.  Admittedly it is a bit convoluted (a typical Faulknerian schema), but the book is 378 dense pages far more than seem necessary for the lean events of the narrative.  Faulkner's genius is in the way he tells the story.  These facts are not revealed in simple linear fashion.  Instead the structure of the book is like a spiral staircase with the same points in time returned to from the perspective of different characters who add new and important details.  It also is a bit like peeling an onion with layer upon layer of revelation.

The other technique which Faulkner employs is to have those telling the stories to invent the facts that fill in the blanks between the known.  The question is not whether these events are true, but rather if they make sense given what is known about the people involved.  The last part of the book focuses on Quentin Compson (who is tangentially brought into the story because of family relationships even though Sutpen lived well before he was born) at Harvard telling his friend Shreve the story at night in their dorm room.  They riff off of each others tellings and create a persuasive narrative of grand scope.

That Faulkner can pull this off without slipping into the boredom of repetition or the absurdity of fantasy is a real coup.  It is a reminder that the best stories sometimes lie in between the facts we know as our imagination builds a bridge.

Lurking Evil

In William Faulkner's novels Go Down, Moses and Absalom, Absalom, the characters who seem to be most evil lurk in the background of the stories.  The patriarch of the McCasslin clan who starts their downward spiral is never an active character in the narrative.  He merely exists in memories and the record of the plantation ledger.  Thomas Sutpen whose sins include his great desire for money and lineage and his racism also exists only in the flashbacks of memory.

In a way this is quite similar to J.R.R. Tolkien's personification of evil, Sauron, who exists only in a disembodied form at the the time of the final battle of Middle Earth.  His evil overshadows the story even though he is actually a minor character in terms of actions and focus.

What Faulkner and Tolkien seem to have realized is that the power of evil is in the power of shadow.  In the harsh light of day, it is not nearly as fearsome or as craven as it appears when shrouded in mystery.  Had they spent time focusing on the characters rather than their effects in the narrative world, their evil might well have so becharmed the reader so as not to seem that evil after all.

The characters found ways to justify their horrid acts to themselves and doubtless a closer look at them would have meant weighing those justifications.  By keeping them at arms length and in the shadows, Tolkien and Faulkner make the evil more clearly powerful and more sinister.

The problem with evil is its tempting allure.  No one is tempted to steal their neighbor's garbage--but things of value.  The key it seems is not to get too close to evil, because the seduction it provides is powerful and can result in a sense that maybe what it suggests isn't that bad after all.

Evil is best identified by its results not its arguments.  Giving a voice to evil is to let the snake speak in a hypnotic and sensible way, but to lose the key to the garden gate in the process.  So when Faulkner and Tolkien want to create evil characters, they limit their ability to speak and concentrate on the consequences of their actions.

A Super Sunday

In October of 2009, the Federal Trade Commission released their revised guidelines on endorsements.  These new policies included one that required all bloggers who received a material benefit from the product or service they endorse to disclose that information to their readers.

So to stay out of trouble, let me disclose my connections with Lexington Avenue Baptist Church in Danville where I attended worship this morning.

My first memories of LABC are from the 1970's.  My Grandfather and his brothers were members of the church and when we would have overnight visits, I would go with him to hear their pastor of the time, Austin Roberts, preach.  What I most remember about him was his unusual accent.

Then when I went to Centre, I attended the church while Bob Baker was its pastor.  After a year or two, I got a call from Bob asking me to consider leading the R.A. program there.  At the time I felt it was quite an honor (although now, knowing how desperate one can get to find volunteers I'm not so sure) and gladly accepted.

Then, sometime later, H.K. Kingkade (now the Director of College/Church Relations at Georgetown College) resigned as youth minister.  Bob and the music minister Bruce Richardson encouraged me to apply for the position and to my surprise I was hired.  A ministry that consisted of some good times, one blown up van engine and a variety of growing up experiences that make me cringe to think about later, I left for seminary.  The church's extraordinary kindness and love helped me in the formation of my ministry identity.

Through the years, I have kept up with LABC.  This morning I saw my Great-aunt Rose and my Second Cousin Sallie there.  I was glad to see my friends Tommy Valentine (their pastor) and Keith Stillwell (their associate pastor) in leadership.  Even though it was twenty years ago that I was there, I still saw some friendly familiar faces.

All that to say, it was great.  And if you're ever looking for a church in Danville, I reccomend it.

Some Commonalities

When I chose J.R.R. Tolkien, Walt Disney and William Faulkner as the focal points for my sabbatical I did so because they all hold a particular place in my passions.  When I tried to justify this odd triumvirate, I found that they all lived contemporaneously.  So, I based my Clergy Renewal Grant proposal on the variety of their works even though they lived in the same time period.

Over the course of the past three months, I have found many similarities some surprising between them.  Some of them I have noted.  Some may be important.  Some are clearly trivial.  I wanted to share a partial list with you of what they share and you can decide which belong in each of the previous categories.

1.  Each had a major work published in 1937 (The Hobbit, Snow White, Absalom, Absalom)
2.  Each served or tried to in World War I
3.  Each drank and smoked
4.  Each had dealings with Hollywood
5.  Each drew on the settings of their childhood for their work
6.  Each had a reverence for wilderness
7.  Each experimented with ground breaking approaches (Tolkien invented the modern category of fantasy literature, Disney brought stereo sound, color and feature length to cartoons, Faulkner's use of stream of consciousness, variety of narrators and non-linear storytelling were trail blazing)
8.  Each, in their childhood, were active in the church and knew its stories
9.  Each had a brother who was significant in their lives
10.  Each were recognized during their lifetime, but also had significant critics who questioned the importance and value of their work

There are others of course, but this list illustrates that the men's lives and thought have more in common than one might think at first glance.

It's a small world after all.

What To Do About Evil

Mark Lucas and I met today to discuss Go Down, Moses at a popular Danville coffee shop.  We spent over an hour discussing the plot and characters of this Faulkner novel.

He shared with me a very interesting account of words delivered by William Faulkner at the University of Virginia.  A questioner asked him about human responses to evil in the world.  He replied that he believed there were three.  The first response is to throw one's hands in the air and in despair determine that there is nothing that can be done.  The second stance is to recognize the evil and try to remove yourself from it.  The third attitude is to recognize the evil and work head on to change it.

In Go Down, Moses, the character Eunice embodies the first response.  When she discovers that the slave holder who has bought her and fathered her daughter has now raped his own child leaving her pregnant,  she walks into the stream and drowns herself.  She is overcome with grief but sees nothing to do but surrender.

On the other hand, the ostensible hero of the book Isaac McCasslin chooses the second course of action. He recognizes the evil and racism of the plantation system which he has inherited.  But, rather than addressing the issues, he chooses to repudiate his inheritance and instead to live in town while letting his cousin take over the family farm and its dehumanizing commerce.

Most interesting in the novel is that there is no character who recognizes the evil and tries to change it.  There is no Moses who demands that the people be released.  There are only flawed and broken folk trapped by the evil of a history of ownership and slavery.  But no character stands up and identifies the warped character of their culture and demands its change.

It is almost as if Faulkner leaves that task to his readers.  None of the characters in his book possess the moral vision and courage that is necessary to bring change.  They are ensnared and wait for some next generation, some Joshua to come and lead them into the land of promise.

It is as if Faulkner understood that the problems of racism were so deep that they would not be resolved in his generation.  He hoped as we still do for someone to come with the moral courage to bring change.

Seeing What You Look For

William Faulkner needed money.  He was land rich but cash poor.  At the time Go Down, Moses was published he was the largest landholder in Oxford, Mississippi.  And yet, he was constantly arranging loans and advances from his publisher.

Faulkner had found out that his short stories could be written quicker and were more profitable in the short run.  So he produced a number of these to alleviate his cash flow problems, but when completed there was not an immediate market for them.  At the same time Random House continued to hound him to produce another full-length novel.

Faulkner's solution was simple and efficient.  Put together some of his already written short stories, change them in ways to augment their connections and add a few new pieces.

The publisher, who was aware of this, first published his new work under the title Go Down, Moses and Other Stories.  The book was then read and reviewed as a collection.  But Faulkner didn't intend for it to be read that way.  The new material and changes he made brought a subtle but present narrative unity to the work that made the free standing stories richer and deeper when read together.

When readers thought it was a short story collection, they tended to read it without considering the context of each story.  It was only later when the title was changed that critics began to see not some ingenious little stories but a great novel.

The whole incident is proof that you often find what you think you will.  It makes me wonder how many treasures we pass by each day unappreciated because we have decided to see them as something less than they are.

Deer To My Heart

One of the interesting things about looking at J.R.R. Tolkien, Walt Disney, and William Faulkner concurrently is discovering unexpected commonalities.  Often there are things in common between two of the three (for example both Disney and Faulkner suffered from the lingering effects of horse riding accidents and neither of them graduated from college).  But to find a common thread among the three is more rare and more exciting to discover.

Take for example deer.  All three use the symbol of a mature buck in a similar way.

Tolkien introduces a jet-black buck in The Hobbit when Bilbo and the dwarves are losing hope in the dark forest.  As they are crossing the river, the animal crashes into their sight and then bounds across the river.  The party is very hungry, so Thorin quickly draws his bow and shoots.  It is unclear whether he hits the deer before it disappears, but they are unable to follow it.  Tolkien knew well that the presence of a black deer was an ancient symbol for entry into the fairy world.  The dwarves are just about to encounter the wood-elves.  The presence of the stag marks the border between the ordinary world and the magical wild.

Disney's stag is of course Bambi's father.  Known as the Great Prince of the Forest, he stands majestically as a symbol of the unbridled power of the wilderness.  Ultimately, it is only man's entry into the forest that causes him to run in fear.  The presence of Bambi's father is a reminder that the story exists in a world that is not controlled by men even thought they occasionally enter it bringing destruction.

In Go Down Moses, the majestic buck conjured by Faulkner is a mystic representation of life in the ancient forest.  Young Isaac McCasslin is introduced to the animal by Sam Fathers, the half-indian, half-black man who teaches him to respect the wilderness.  Sam takes Ike to a spot in the woods where they see the regal animal that he refers to as Grandfather as if he is an embodiment of the ancient Native American spirit of the land.

It is an unexpected congruence.  Within the works of all three men, the mature stag stands as the spirit of the wild:  their life and by extension the uncivilized world they represent  is in precarious balance because of the intrusion of humanity.  Ultimately each man saw the buck as a symbol of the fragility of the natural world and their concern for its survival.

Faulkner or Falkner

William Falkner.  That is the name he was bequeathed by his father.  It is not the name, or at least the spelling, with which we are accustomed.

William Cuthbert Falkner was born on September 25, 1897 to Murry Cuthbert Falkner and his wife Maud Butler.  He was the first of four sons.

But he became William Faulkner in 1918 when he enlisted in the RAF in Canada.  Why he added the "u" is a mystery.  There is an unconfirmed story that when Faulkner's first book was printed, the title page included the "u".  Faulkner was asked whether he wanted it corrected and his reply was, "Either way suits me."

This is interesting, because Faulkner's use of names with his characters is definitely not an "either way suits me" sort of exercise.  The names characters are given and respond to illustrate the complicated web of their culture.

Lucas Beauchamp, the black grandson of the white slave holder from Go Down Moses is a case in point.  He refuses to call any white man by a hierarchical title, going to great lengths of circumlocution to avoid titles.  In the end, he only refers to the head of the plantation as "mister" to keep his wife from divorcing him.

His name was actually recorded as Lucius, but through his own will changed it.  He seems to have recognized that one of the first ways that slaves were re-oriented was to strip them of their cultural identity by giving them a new name.  It is a long held practice dating back at least as far as the bible story Daniel.  By forcing the person to give up their name, they are reminded of their subservience and their relative position in the dominant culture.  Lucas would not bow to the accepted conventions.

Also in Go Down Moses, there is a bear that achieves nearly mystical significance.  As a part of this, he receives the name "Old Ben."  The dog that ultimately is able to run him down also is given a name (Lion) even though every other dog in the pack and in the story is merely a hound or a fyce.

The point seems to be that names are important and sacred things that define who we are.  I think it probably meant a great deal to Faulkner to add the "u" because it made him a person with no progenitor.  He was an individual and changing his surname meant that he had freed himself from the bounds of the cultural web of the South.  In the end it allowed him to write more honestly about the world he knew so well, because he could both be of it and not a part of it at the same time.  Who would have thought "u" could mean so much.

We're Third

Yesterday, I was able to visit at Third Baptist Church in Owensboro.  It is a church that I have been familiar with for years.  When I pastored in Ohio County, I even had the opportunity to lead a Bible study there.  But, due to its distance and my own responsibilities I had never been there to worship.

It is a church that has a long and illustrious history.  The historic sanctuary is ornate and intricate in design.  They even have the best mission statement of any congregation I know (Jesus first, others second, we're Third).

The worship was very traditional.  We sang together the old hymns.  The Lord's prayer concluded the pastoral prayer.  There was even a children's sermon that ostensibly was about the Trinity, but seemed to be more of a lesson on making Kool-Aid.

My friend James Byrd, the pastor preached a sermon from the gospel of Luke.  He used the powerful illustration of the words Blaise Pascal (the famous mathematician) always carried with him and were discovered in his coat at his death to structure the sermon.  It is the description of Pascal's conversion:

The year of grace 1654
Monday, 23 November, feast of Saint Clement, Pope and Martyr, and of others in the Martyrology.
Eve of Saint Chrysogonus, Martyr and others.
From about half past ten in the evening until half past midnight.

Fire

'God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,' not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
God of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
'Thy God shall be my God.'
The world forgotten, and everything except God.
He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels.
Greatness of the human soul.
'O righteous Father, the world had not known thee, but I have known thee.'
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have cut myself off from him.
They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.
'My God wilt thou forsake me?'
Let me not be cut off from him for ever!
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.'
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I have cut myself off from him, shunned him, denied him, crucified him.
Let me never be cut off from him!
He can only be kept by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Sweet and total renunciation.
Total submission to Jesus Christ and my director.
Everlasting joy in return for one day's effort on earth.
I will not forget thy word. Amen.


What a story.  Perhaps we should carry our story with us wherever we go as well.

Relationships

I am re-reading Go Down Moses for my meeting with Mark Lucas this Friday.  Even though I read it for Bob's bookbag a few months ago, it is a work that has plenty of fresh ground the second time through.  The first read is like driving your car around a new town.  You establish the lay of the land and the major landmarks.  But when you come to the book a second time, it is more like a leisurely stroll.  Details that slipped by in a blur the first time around gain new context and importance.

Faulkner's novels are dense and complex.  One thing that returning to the novel has done for me is that it has helped me straighten out the family relationships in it.  Faulkner certainly understood that in a small town everybody is related to each other.  It really is no more than one degree of separation in both Georgetown and Yoknapatawpha County.

As I have witched out the relationships between Edmonds and McCasslins in Faulkner's world, I have discovered the same truth in Scott County.  I found out a few years ago that Mark Lucas was from Georgetown.  I think it was at Sis Curry's house and she told me that her daughter had dated him in high school.

Then when I announced my plans for sabbatical study, Horace Hambrick, Rick and Betty Covington and others told me that they remembered the man I first knew as Dr. Lucas as just a high school classmate.  They had lots of things to tell me about my professor who had existed to me less as a human being with history than as a role (fortunately they were all positive!).

So when I met with Mark (I'm making a conscious effort to use his first name--old habits die hard), I mentioned the greetings from his Georgetown compatriots.  Mark began to share with me some of his Georgetown stories.  They included his grandfather Armstrong, whose name graces the Old Armstrong subdivision.  This same grandfather had once lived in and owned Ward Hall.

It didn't stop there though, I went out to dinner that evening and was glad to see Brian Bergman.  Without prompting, he told me that Mark had given him some tennis instruction when he was young.

Sometimes its hard to tell which is easier to unravel, the relationship of Faulkner's characters or the web of Georgetown past and present.

The Never Ending Story

I came upon an interesting fact in researching Faulkner the other day.  It provided another unexpected link between Faulkner, Tolkien and Disney.

J.R.R. Tolkien in his design of Middle Earth created a series of creation and ancient narratives that lie in the background of his narrative world.  He collected these into a book he titled The Silmarillion.  While he flirted several times with its publication, it wasn't until after his passing that his son was able to collect all of it into a final form.  In the process, his son found that these stories were far from fixed during Tolkien's lifetime.  Over the years, changes had been made of minor and major importance.  Character's names were changed.  Events were re-ordered, added and dropped.  Middle Earth never reached a final form in Tolkien's life because he was always inventing it.

When Walt Disney completed Disneyland and opened it to the public, he did not view it as a finished product.  He said, "Disneyland will never be completed.  It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world."  On another occasion, he shared, "The way I see it, Disneyland will never be finished. It’s something we can keep developing and adding to. A motion picture is different. Once it’s wrapped up and sent out for processing, we’re through with it. If there are things that could be improved, we can’t do anything about them anymore. I’ve always wanted to work on something alive, something that keeps growing. We’ve got that in Disneyland."


This brings us around to William Faulkner.  When late in his life, he decided to continue his stories in Yoknapatawpha County, he realized that some of the later details in his stories did not reconcile with those of his earlier works.  He addressed this by writing, "The author has already found more discrepancies and contradictions than he hopes the reader will--contradictions and discrepancies due to the fact that the author has learned, he believes, more about the human heart and its dilemma than he knew thirty-four years ago; and is sure that, having lived with them that long time, he knows the characters in this chronicle better than he did then." 


The power of the mythic worlds that these three created was due in some part to their living nature.  Rather than being static creations, the stories developed and changed over time.  Their works were not objects but as Disney suggested living things.


It seems to me that the story of the Church is like that a living story with new chapters still being added.  As Christians we not only celebrate the stories of the past but are making the stories of the present that will be told in the future.  It is a living world and our participation in it makes each one of us a part of the cosmic story that is bending towards redemption.

The Nobel Prize

William Faulkner was not a man to make public pronouncements.  When asked to speak publicly, he once told those who asked that he was just a farmer who told stories.

In 1950, though, this stance was forced to change.  Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize and as custom dictated, he went to Stockholm to accept it.  This required a public speech.  The words he delivered are a mere five paragraphs, but as with his dense narratives, the oration is full of rich resonance.

In it he bemoans that the great human questions and universal longings had been replaced in the modern consciousness with the single question, "When will I be blown up?"  The atomic bomb had become the major question and it assumed that humanity would destroy itself.  Fear had become the defining feature of human existence in much fiction, he believed.

Interestingly, though his fiction can seem fatalistic, Faulkner argued that fear should not define the human experience.  The questions that matter are those of truth, love and justice.  Humanity will overcome no matter the problem.  He affirmed that there is a future.  There is hope.

The conclusion to his speech is pure poetry and promise.  It speaks to the true power of story.

"The poet’s, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

Earned My Ears

This morning I completed the Leadership class offered by the Disney Institute in Orlando.

Overall the course was a very positive experience.  And no, it was not a pretense meeting for having fun.  The classes lasted the better part of each day, leaving only the evenings for exploring Disney World.

What a whirlwind it was!  We covered an awful lot of ground in 3 and a half days.  In the reflection time, I was able to give serious thought to an exciting new direction I  am going to propose to move our church forward when I return.  The content was delivered by some of the best facilitators I have ever seen in a small group.

We sat in chairs and with restrictive rules completed a task in Duckburg (and, you guessed it, I was Goofy).  We put together a giant Mosaic poster of Mickey Mouse.  We built a monorail and lashed characters to the top of it (you've never lived until you tie a princess to the top of the train with a pipe cleaner and Tinker Bell is held on with a paper clip wrapped around her little fairy neck!)  We even got diplomas and mouse ears with tassels and a picture with Mickey in graduate garb.

I had a great opportunity to spend time and make new friends with some exceptional people who were also in the class.  The curriculum designer for the program was kind enough to sit with me at lunch one day and tell me about the hows and whys of the program.

I got to hear some unguarded comments from people that ministers often don't hear.  One of my classmates told me that he and his family hadn't joined the large church where they attended because they hadn't been able to figure out how to plug-in.  Someone else told me about the church decision she had made eschewing the one with the large beautiful sanctuary that seemed to always be asking for money for another where she felt that she was needed.  I also listened uncomfortably to another classmate who told about the last time in her life when she had visited a Baptist Church and left in tears after what she had heard.

We heard a lot of stories that were applications of the principles that we were learning.  My favorite was one that one of the leaders shared with me in a private conversation.  We were talking about the shadows of founders on an organization.

He told me that in the late 70's Disney began to struggle as a company after Walt's death.  He remembered a time when he was working the Jungle Cruise.  The ride was very busy and the line stretched out quite a distance.  The supervisor stopped the line and tried to correct a small mistake the operator had made.  In the course of his correction, he said, "We must ask ourselves what would Walt do?"  The captain in the boat behind heard the conversation, looked at the line of people waiting and said through the intercom, "Walt would put two more boats out here on the river!"

That supervisor may have been right about what Walt would have wanted from the pilot, but he had forgotten that there was a bigger picture and that Walt would have wanted something else from him.

It made me think about how many times we so concern ourselves with what really is small and unimportant and miss the big business of the Kingdom of God.

Disney and The Power of Story

I was immediately taken aback when I began to read the manual that was handed to participants in the Disney Institute Leadership class.  On the first page I found the following words.

"Beginning with Walt Disney himself, Disney leaders have used storytelling to perpetuate the Company's culture. . . Recognizing the "power of story" is the Disney difference in leadership."

If you don't understand my surprise, look up at the title of my blog (which was selected almost a year ago).  Apparently the Disney Company and I have a similar appreciation for the importance of narrative.

One of the tasks we were asked to accomplish as we gathered in our first session was to define what a leader is.  While the facilitator offered the definition--anyone who influences change, I preferred mine.  It takes seriously what the rhetoric in the manual suggested.  A bit wordy, but here it is--a good leader is a person who shapes a narrative reality in which other people want to participate.

A well told story has the ability to lead others to dream, believe, act and change.  Disney offers the rubric envision, organize, engage and commit as the ways stories can influence an organization to change.  The church has formed itself around the stories of the gospel, rather than some policy and procedure manual that Jesus left behind.

A question asked by the program was the long term measure of success for a leader.  Given that question, I suggested that the appropriate benchmark is the success of their followers.

Leaders are storytellers.  The best lead through compelling narrative.  And the best stories echo on through the ages inspiring the generations that follow to affirm the same values, practice the same behaviors and self-perpetuate.  There really is power in story.

Disney Institute

Today's Disney Institute class focused on leadership and Walt Disney.  Although much of the information given about Walt was fairly basic, the leadership training component was quite interesting.  The presentation was excellent, and the understanding and use of group dynamics by the two facilitators was masterful.

It is a really interesting group of people who comprise my 20 or so classmates.  Their careers include law enforcement, government workers, and IT professionals among others.  One gentleman traveled from Australia to take every one of the Disney Institute courses back to back.  He runs a successful restaurant chain, but had been working without a break for years and has decided to take a few months away from the business to recharge.

I was, as I guessed, the only minister in the room.  But I was very surprised to find that there are two minister's wives in the class.  One is married to a Methodist minister in Raleigh, North Carolina.  She even knew who Norman Wirzba is (and after my sabbatical, I'm beginning to ask who doesn't!).

The evening was focused on forming a definition of leadership.  Motivators were used to get the conversations started.  It was a very interactive format, including some blind computer polling.  The process modeled a way to ensure engagement and participation.

We were taken to Disney Hollywood Studios and got to see some of the backstage areas (including some that I had seen before on foot as I ran the Disney Marathon.).  In the park, we went through the attraction called "Walt Disney: One Man's Dream."  It is a sort of museum of the company's interpretation of Walt's life and work (it is much smaller than the family museum and even smaller than the one in Marceline--what it omits due to the lack of space seems rather telling in its own way).

We received homework for the evening and were sent off on our way.

I was a bit surprised that the company so heavily relies on Walt's image and ideas as it trains its cast members.  He is almost still a presence even though he has been gone 40 years.  I am quite sure he would not recognize the company now, and I am not sure he would approve of what it is doing, but his legacy is continually being refined and at times redefined by those who follow.  Anyone who says to heck with Walt would not last long here.  If you want to go in a new direction, the key is to find some justification no matter how slim from Walt's life or words and then do what you want to do.

In some ways, Walt's legacy is living as it is moved and shaped by people who never even knew him but bear his name.  I suppose a bit like the church which shapes Jesus' legacy.

Out of Step

I went early this morning to Cincinnati to catch my Delta flight to Orlando.  This my more serious trip to Disney  World.  Tomorrow, my class on Disney leadership through storytelling will begin.

As I sat at the gate and looked over the passengers, I noticed it was a very young crowd.  How young?  When they announced pre-boarding for those with infants or young children, almost two-thirds of those waiting got in line.

For me this is the last trip of a long summer.  I am glad to be here, but flying has slipped into a mind-numbing routine at this point.  Most of my travel has been on weekdays so far and those who have surrounded me have the zombie-like expression that can only be cultivated by those whose travel is frequent and required.

My Saturday morning traveling companions were cut from a different cloth.  I was really out of place traveling alone and with a purpose other than fun on my mind.

I knew it was different when a throaty cheer went up when the plane left the ground.  Not something you hear as the red eye from San Francisco goes wheels up!

There were a lot more cries during the flight (not only from the children, but also from the exasperated parents).  The plane was abuzz with the sounds of video games and movies.  It was like a kid's birthday party at 30,000 feet.

Then finally we approached Orlando.  An excited murmur swept the cabin as parents told their children what was outside of the window.  As we were on our approach to the airport, but still quite a way away and high in the air, a child's voice called out loud enough for everyone to hear, "Daddy, I see our hotel!"

I was reminded of the time when my kids were small and the magic that Disney promised was a reality in the wonder in their eyes.  They are bigger now, more world-wise and the teen age years are not so slowly draining the whimsy from their lives.  I even remembered  back just a little to my own childhood.

For a moment or two on that plane, I was transported back to that unfiltered expectant joy that only the young and innocent can attain.  I savored that lost time and mourned its necessary passing.  Because just for a moment I remembered when I could see the hotel from the plane even though I'd never been there and had only my imagination to paint its existence for me.  "Daddy, I see our hotel!"  I smiled a conspiratorial smile.

The Bright Light's of Hollywood

When William Faulkner was down on his luck, he decided to go to Hollywood and write for the motion picture industry.  From time to time between the 1930's and 1950's, he wrote movies to make some quick money.  The motion pictures he penned starred the biggest names of his day, but are largely forgettable. 


Joseph Blotner in his biography of Faulkner relates the following story.


"Faulkner's first days in Hollywood were portentous. He arrived on a Saturday, not long before quitting time. His boss, Sam Marx, noticed that he had been drinking, and that he had a bleeding cut on his head. Faulkner said he had been hit by a cab while changing trains -- in New Orleans -- but that he was fine and wanted to get right to work:

"We're going to put you on a Wallace Beery picture," Marx told him.

"Who's he?" asked Faulkner. "I've got an idea for Mickey Mouse."

After explaining that Mickey Mouse films were made at Disney Studios, Marx had his office boy take Faulkner to the screening room to see Beery as a prizefighter in The Champ, as the new film, Flesh, was to feature Beery as a wrestler. Faulkner did not want to watch, preferring to talk to the office boy:  "Do you own a dog?" he asked the boy, who said no. Faulkner said, "Every boy should have a dog." He should be ashamed not to own a dog, and so should everybody else who didn't own a dog.

Faulkner soon walked out, saying that he knew how the story was going to end. When alerted, Marx initiated a search, but Faulkner had disappeared. When he showed up again, nine days later, he explained that he had been wandering in Death Valley, but that now he really was ready to work."


Oh what a Mickey Mouse picture it would have been!

Race Relations

It is accepted, even expected, that a "Southern" writer will deal with the difficult questions of race relations.  The complex questions of how those who were once slaves and masters relate to each other both then and now is fertile ground for exploration.

William Faulkner certainly deals with this part of Southern culture.  He displays all the ambiguities of two races of people living in close enough proximity to form relationships that transcend and subvert their culturally assigned roles.

He treats the African-American characters in his novel with honest depth.  They can be saints and sinners.  Sometimes they are oppressed and other times they are actually in charge of their situation in spite of what their oppressors think.

Ultimately, he sees the blacks and the whites of the South bound together in a complex web of relations that is slowly destroying them all just as the Old South is slowly limping to its own destruction.

Unlike many other Southern writers, Faulkner was concerned with another race that inhabited the region.  He named his fictional Mississippi county "Yoknapatawpha" which he made from two Chickisaw words.  "Yocona" and "Petopha" which mean "split" and "land."  Faulkner claimed the combinations meant "water flowing slow through the flat land."

The whites did not arrive in the land until early 1800, before their arrival, it was the territory of Native Americans.  Faulkner haunts his stories with this first presence.  Their being pushed from the land is the first sin of the white people who would found their business on the backs of others.

William Faulkner understood that many of the South's problems were based on the long history of racial misunderstanding and domination.  Faulkner doesn't provide easy answers to the questions he asks, but he reminds his readers that their fates are intertwined.  Any progress will only come when all the races move ahead.

Time Flows Downhill

Stories exist in time.

When Walt Disney told a story, his concept of time within the worlds he created was a simple past, present and future.  Once upon a time (past) the story takes place.  The events happen one after another, with no real sense of minutes, hours or days.  One moment follows the next.  The scenes advance time without any specifics though, other than maybe day or night.  It all ends when the characters live happily ever after (future).

J.R.R. Tolkien was much more concerned about careful chronology.  Prior to writing his stories of Middle Earth, he calculated the moon phases for his specially created calendar.  He charted the movement of storms through his world on a calendar.  He researched the amount of time it took to ride a horse across different terrain.

Tolkien not only was meticulous about time, he took risks as a storyteller by looping his stories.  He would follow one group of characters for an extended period.  His telling would then go back in time to pick up another plot and bring it up to the present.  His editors told him that no one would want to read a story where the main characters are absent for more than a hundred pages at a time.  They were wrong.

William Faulkner seems to have been obsessed with questions of time.  His novels rarely follow linear time.  They are instead often filled with chapters that appear contrary to chronological sequence.  This can make his stories difficult to follow.  But at the same time, his narratives are richer as the juxtaposition of events which would generally be separated because of time often reveal deeper meanings.

We tend to expect our narratives to proceed in linear time, but Faulkner shows his mastery of storytelling by refusing to follow convention and expectation.  In The Sound and the Fury, which tells the stories of a families generations in the course of four days.  Benjy, one of the Compson brothers, is mentally challenged and experiences everything as if it is in the present.  Another of the narrating brothers, Quentin is obsessed with time.  The family slave Dilsey narrates the final chapter which is punctuated by the church bell marking the hour for worship on Easter Sunday.

Storytellers have many tools at their disposal.  Faulkner realized that one of them was a time machine.  

Faulkner and Religion

An examination of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, Walt Disney and William Faulkner might lead a person to the conclusion that Faulkner was the most religious of the three.  After all, Tolkien never makes mention of the Christian tradition in his fiction.  Disney goes to great effort to remove any hint of religion from his work.

Faulkner's work, however is pregnant with Christian themes.  The characters make reference to Christian figures and often are part of church communities.  He uses the name of David's son Absalom as one of his titles.  The narrative structure of his novel The Sound And The Fury takes place in Holy Week.

Tolkien was a devout Catholic whose faith was an important part of his daily life.  He took great pride in the fact that one of his sons became a priest.  But he avoided religion in Middle Earth because he saw it as a pre-Christian world.

Disney was raised in a very religious home, but never made religion a central part of his life.  He enrolled one of his daughters in a catholic school for a few years as a child, but moved her to public school when he felt she was becoming too deeply involved in the religious aspect of the education.  He did once write a devotion for Guidepost Magazine, but he never attended church.  He seems to have had some minimal form of faith.

William Faulkner became very familiar with the Bible as a child.  But he doesn't seem to have committed himself in any way to Christian practice.  He was married in a Presbyterian church, but that appears to be the extent of his religious observance.  He seems likely to have considered himself an agnostic.

For a non-religious person, the references and allusions to Christian themes are surprising in both their accuracy and their deft application.  When asked about this Faulkner said that to write about the South, one had to write about religion.  He believed, what he called the "Christian legend" to be an important way to understand the people who populated his world.

The Christianity practiced in Faulkner's narrative world is very much like that in real life.  For some of his characters, religion is a crutch and a sham.  For others, it is their consolation and hope in the midst of desperation.  The church bells ring with hypocrisy, racism, community and compassion.  And it is always ambiguous for God never clearly intervenes in the stories.

Without being a Christian, you can understand the worlds created by Tolkien and Disney.  But without a Christian background, much of Faulkner is lost.  It seems ironic that the author who arguably had the least religious faith of the three was least afraid to address it in his books.

Faulkner may have doubted the existence of God, but he certainly understood the universal hunger of people for God.

William Faulkner?

When I interviewed Mark Pinsky about Disney and the Disney corporation, he confided in me that what particularly piqued his interest in my summer project was the name William Faulkner.  In summary, this was his mindset.  Walt Disney's work is accessible to anyone.  J.R..R. Tolkien wrote books that have a wide popular following and little critical acclaim.  But William Faulkner is not very accessible at all.  He is critically acclaimed and popularly unknown.  His prose is dense and nuanced.  He writes on a dark stage with few heroes, while Disney and Tolkien are all about the lead characters who bear light and hope.

To be honest, I still am figuring out where Faulkner fits in all this.  I chose him because I love his writing style and complexity.  His pictures of the South are pregnant with layered meanings and ambiguities.  You can feel the stifling heat and social mores in every sentence he writes.

I thought first about Faulkner because he was a contemporary of Disney and Tolkien.  He was shaped by the same global culture that produced the others.  While his world is clearly "Southern" in its sensibilities, he was certainly shaped by coming of age during The Great War.

Tolkien fought in France, although an illness limited his exposure to the trench warfare there.  Disney was too young to join the armed services, but he lied about his age and became a red cross ambulance driver also serving in France.

Like Disney, Faulkner was too young to fight for his country in World War I.  Also like Walt, his desire to be a part of the action led him to prevaricate to serve.  William Faulkner fled to Canada, effected a new persona who was old enough to join and enlisted in the RAF.

The only problem was the armistice came before he had completed his training.  So Faulkner took his earnings and bought a full RAF uniform.  He wore this upon his return to Oxford, but also now had an accent, a cane and a limp that he hadn't had when he left for the North.  In fact, he seems not to have had them when he began his journey back home.

He told those that asked that he had been injured in the service.  The people of Oxford seemed to have not thought much of Faulkner's new war hero stance.  They took to calling him "Count No Count."  This was their shorthand for the prominent view that the dandy Faulkner was a no account count.

William Faulkner was as colorful as the characters in his fiction.  It is going to be a fun month!

Scheherazade

At the storytelling concert, one of the tellers shared an old story that I heard before, but I heard it in a new way and would like to share it.

There once was a Persian king who was happily married and ruled over a happy kingdom.  But then one day, he found that his wife, whom he truly loved, had been unfaithful to him.  He sought out her lover and had him killed.  And then as the law was in his country, he had his wife beheaded in the public square.

His anger burned hot within him.  Soon as he looked about his kingdom he stopped seeing women and began to see only the possibility of betrayal.  He decided that he would eliminate the possibility of infidelity by marrying a new wife each day and then having her executed the next morning.  In this way, no woman would betray him again.

It was the unhappy task of the vizier to choose the bride of the day.  He did his job with sad obedience and selected a new woman each morning.  He sat her at the marriage feast.  And in the morning he marched her in chains to the square to be beheaded.

It didn't take long for the people of the kingdom who had the means to send their daughters off to far places or if they lacked the wealth to encourage them to flee.  The day came when the vizier could find no woman to offer the King.  As he worried what to tell his master, his daughter Scheherazade told him that she was ready to be the king's bride.

The vizier told his daughter that he had a special dispensation from the king and he did not have to offer his own daughters.  But Scheherazade insisted and the vizier reluctantly agreed to let her be the day's bride.  With tears in his eyes, he led her to the marriage banquet.  He watched with sadness as she went with the king to the wedding chamber.

As the evening progressed, the king noticed that Scheherazade had tears in her eyes.  "You volunteered to do this, but now you cry?" he asked.  She explained that her tears were not for herself, but because she could not say one last goodbye to her sister.

The king thought there would be no harm in that, so he invited the younger sister to come to the bedroom for a final goodbye.  After they kissed and embraced, Scheherazade's sister implored her to tell a story as she did each night.  So with the king's leave, she began a story that engrossed the king as well as her sister.  And then the sun began to rise, and she stopped right in the middle of the story.  "These stories are for the night not for the day."

The dejected vizier took a piece of regal cloth with him to the palace in the morning, expecting to cover his daughter's body with it after her execution.  The king took his place on the throne and issued decree after decree and order after order.  But never did he call for Scheherazade's death.

The marriage banquet was held for the second night for the first time with the same bride.  The food tasted a little better, the mood seemed a little lighter.  And Scheherazade called for her sister and finished one story, began another and stopped in the middle of it as the sun rose.

For 1,001 nights she told every story she could create and find.  During this time, she bore the king three sons and participated in each night's wedding banquet.  Finally she told the king, "I have no more stories, do what you will."

But the stories had changed the king.  He had grown to truly love Scheherazade and to trust her.  "You will not be killed," he told her, "your stories have saved you."

The king wanted to use a sword to change the world, but stories changed his heart.

Who Tells The Story

The lion cub came to his father and asked, "Father is it true that we are the kings of the Jungle."

"Oh yes, it is true, boy."  he said shaking his head and bristling his mane.  "We are the strongest, fiercest, proudest creatures on the earth."

"Why then," the curious cub asked, "do the men tell stories about hunting us.  And they always tell stories that end with us being shot and dying.  Are we still the kings of the jungle?"

The wise lion looked in his sons eyes,  "Yes, we are the kings of the jungle, but so it will be until lions tell the stories."

This powerful African fable was told by the keynote speaker at the Storytelling Conference.  She called it the danger of the single story.  When only one person is allowed to frame and reflect on events it inevitably lacks the depth, context and perspective of reality.

As we sat in one of our small group sessions, the leader asked the room of about 40 of us to introduce ourselves.  About fifteen introduced themselves as "tellers".  An equal number gave their occupation as educators.  The rest were a rather varied bunch.  A few who were there just out of interest, while others were in social services.  I suppose because we are near Hollywood, there were three people who introduced themselves as producers.  Strangely, there were an equal number of physicians and ministers (2 each).  Perhaps not so strangely there were no bankers, oil executives, or scientists.  Although I suspect that the world might be a better place if some of them attended an event like this.

At a later gathering, a woman at the back raised her hand in response to a question.  "I'm from Kentucky," she said.  I thought to myself, wow a kindred spirit.  But then she continued.  "I kept getting rejected for a grant, but finally got it.  You can't imagine with the economic and religious climate in Kentucky how difficult it is to get a grant to start a palm reading business."  She said it just as naturally as could be.  She didn't act like she expected anyone to have any reaction other than, "You poor thing, we understand, how unenlightened those people in Kentucky are."  The room was quiet and polite as she spoke, but I suspect I was not the only one to think "You are a crazy woman."

And yet, her story is a part of the story of this conference.  It may not be a dominant narrative or a persuasive one, but it is a thread in the great tapestry of stories that have gathered at this conference.

One speaker did an interesting exercise when all the members of the conference were gathered.  She had each person write down the first two responses that came to each of the following questions:  What was your most formative relationship?  What do you never want to go through?  What do you really want for the future?

She then asked the members of the audience to stand or remain standing if they had written any of the following.  Was the most formative relationship you recorded with a person in your family or a special teacher?  Did you never want to go through debilitating illness or loss?  Did you hope for the success of your children or travel?

When she was finished with these six responses, every person in the room was standing.  People from around the world.  Men and women.  Black, brown and white.  Young and old.  Preacher and palm reader.  Every single person.

So many stories in the room, but the same hopes and fears.

Around The Fire

Last night, the National Storytelling Conference kicked off here in LA.  I really  had no idea what to expect.  I'm used to the churchy meetings that I typically attend.  Those I know.  The people, the schedule, the topics all so familiar that I can go through them while sleep-walking.

I walked into the ballroom and didn't know a single one of the 450 or so who were gathered.  I had often wondered who might show up at a storytelling conference.  How does someone decide they are a storyteller?  Do they wake up one morning and say, "Gosh darn it, I think I can really tell a yarn."  There is no governing body to ordain someone, so all that is necessary is a self-declaration.  "I am a storyteller," and then you are.  It is not like the Kentucky Derby where you have to earn enough money before you're in the field, you just have to show up.

So to be honest, I guess I suspected a rather motley bunch.  Some who really were professionals.  Others who were wannabes.  Many square pegs who didn't fit into the round holes of usual society.  Generally, I thought there might be a hippie/artist vibe.

So as I sat there, the reality that emerged was far different.  Yes, there were a few folks who looked just like I thought they would, but they were the minority.  Most of the crowd was just as plain as any other group that I attend.  It was surprisingly 75% female (Are women more attune to the narrative of life?).  The group was also older.  I was among the younger members of the group (which may be true or it may be my vast underestimation of my actual age).  I'm not sure whether this speaks to the freedom of travel and resources of older people or is instead a warning about the devaluing of oral tradition in a digital age.

The program was excellent (I got more stories I could poach for preaching in two hours than I ever get at a preaching conference).  The room was full of energy and we heard a variety of voices.  The highlight may have been Locked Up In Malibu.  These were incarcerated juveniles who as a part of their rehabilitation take part in an improv group.

It is a great conference, but I still feel a little odd though.  Yes, I tell stories--but I am uncomfortable calling myself a storyteller.  Then again, I read this week that the word "gospel" is from the Old English meaning "God's story."  So preaching is really story-telling.  And I guess that makes me a story-teller whether I choose that title for myself or not.

Vestigal Organs

Doctors call the appendix a vestigal organ.  It seems to have no discernible function.  It may have done something once, but whatever it did was unnecessary or redundant.  So now, it's only function is to get infected and make someone progressively sicker until it is removed.  In the body a vestigal organ is a neutral or negative thing.

I thought about this as I visited Disneyland this week.  55 years of history have left all sorts of vestigal organs in the body of the park.

Sometimes they are intentional.  Many of the windows on Main Street are painted with created occupations and real names of people who made a difference at Disney.  These not only provide atmosphere, but also memorialize important people in the history of the company.

Or, there are the homages to previous attractions that remain unnoticed by most park goers.  After the recent Rivers of America rehab (the river that runs around Tom Sawyer Island) a boat was placed for atmosphere pulled up on the shore by a cabin.  Most people don't realize that it is a repainted keelboat from the long defunct Mike Fink Keelboat ride.

Others are still there because they are too difficult to remove.  There is a hole in the middle of the Matterhorn where the skyway cars used to make their leisurely, floating trip above the park.  A similar hole at ground level in another spot is what is left of the old mine ride.

In Tomorrowland, there is another example of a vestigal organ.  Winding on pillars above the sidewalks is a desserted track.  On it, the attraction Rocket Rod's used to speed about the area.  Now they are a rare example of urban decay in the happiest place on earth.

For most people these things are only background, but to those who know the park, they are significant pieces of history.  It reminds me of our most prominent vestigal organs at Faith.  There in the R.A., on the wall opposite the window is the picture frame box with no hole inside it.  Those who know our church know it was the baptistry years ago.  Now it exists there unnoticed by most, and many may not even know why it is there.

I think it is good practice for your history to show.  It reminds you that a place has depths and memories.  Disney might be able to scrub its parks of all of the now retired attractions, but they haven't.  It may be for economic reasons, but I think it has the practical effect of reminding everyone that the park existed before they came and will exist long after they have gone.

These organs may be vestigal, but without it a way we have to remember who we are would be lost.

We'll Leave The Light On For You

Yesterday, I went on a guided tour of Disneyland.  My guide was a young lady named Karen who gives these tours on a regular basis.  She was a delight and full of interesting tidbits.

The focus of the tour was how Walt Disney shaped the park from its beginning until his death.  She shared a number of significant details about the plan, construction and maintenance of Disneyland.  At several points, she shared tapes of Walt speaking on a variety of themes.  It was a great opportunity.

I was shown the lobby of the exclusive hidden restaurant in the New Orleans Square section called Club 33.  Walt built it to entertain his important Hollywood friends.  It sits behind a plain door, but it has a closed membership list and only the invited are allowed to enter.  We were not allowed upstairs to the club area, but only into the opulent lobby that includes an exact replica of a lift from Europe that Walt fell in love with on a visit there.

I saw the wonders of the Enchanted Tiki Room up close.  It is not a great show, but an amazing technical achievement considering its completion in 1963.  Karen demonstrated how the singing orchids work.

One of the many things that caught my attention was on Main Street.  As you enter the park to the left, there is the town hall with the fire department next door.  I already knew that Walt had an apartment built over the fire department's engine bay.

While Disneyland was being constructed, he often spent the night on the property.  He enjoyed having the ability to watch it all come together.  His wife accused him of living at the park.

Karen pointed out something I didn't know.   The light in the middle window was burning.  It seems that whenever Walt was in the apartment he left the light on.  It was a way of letting the workers know that the boss was watching.  That light is now never extinguished to remind employees that Walt's spirit is ever vigilant in the park.

It reminded me that too often we get involved in doing our work and forget why we are doing it.  When that happens, it is easy to become bored and disinterested.  But that light shining in the window makes sure that Disney employees remember why they are there.

I suspect that churches would run a lot better if we had some perpetual reminder of God's presence.  Perhaps instead of just going through the motions, we would work with more vigor and fire because we would know that the boss is watching.  Let's disregard our Mom's and the power company and leave the light on.

Disneyland at 55

It was just by a week or so that I missed the big celebration. Disneyland in California is now 55 years old, but with continual maintenance (the park equivalent of plastic surgery) it doesn't look a day over ten.

I have had the rare opportunity to visit Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, and the Magic Kingdom at Disneyworld in a little more than a month's time. It is quite interesting to note the similarities and differences in the parks. Some ideas are in all three (e.g. the hub and spoke design of the parks). Other exist with the same name but different executions (Space Mountain in California has an outside line and cars that have side by side riders, in Florida the line is inside with single file riders, in Paris the ride actually goes out of the building for a moment or two). Each park also has its uniquenesses (here in California they include the big mast ship, canoes, the Casey Jr. Storyland Train, and Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln for example).

So even though the parks have similar designs they have unique feels.

What strikes me about Disneyland?

It is a lot smaller than the other parks. Disney was limited in funds when the Mother Park was built. The central castle is only 77 feet tall (in Florida it is over a hundred feet taller). But it is smaller in other ways as well. The paths are not nearly as wide, Main Street is shorter, the stores are more cramped, and many of the lines for rides meander out on the sidewalk. Altogether it makes the park seem fuller with people even though its capacity is smaller than the Magic Kingdom.

Disneyland also seems a little rougher and less polished in its content. The Haunted Mansion is more tilted to fright than fun (at one point you look up to see a hanging body). The Jungle Cruise has menacing animals and threatening natives. It appears that the rides reflect Walt's sensibilities more than corporate lawyers and those who wish to protect the delicate minds of children.

Disneyland also appears to have a stronger local appeal. Disney World attracts the world (there seemed to be more Argentines and Brazilians than U.S. citizens when we were there recently). I look atound here and see mainly Southern Californians.

The more I look the more convinced I am that like the Christian world the level of focus makes all the diference. Taken wide enough, at a gloss, the Disney Parks and Christian groups all look alike. But take some time and tighten the focus and it becones clear that each has its own distinctives.

Driving Day

With Janet safely back in Kentucky and my visits in San Francisco completed, I got in the car early this morning (o.k. not so early to those in the Eastern Time Zone, but early here).  I left behind the hotel next to the San Francisco airport where we had spent the weekend.

It was a lovely spot.  surrounded on two of four sides with the bay that at times filled its banks with powerful chop and at others left only a tenuous looking stream in the midst of mud flats.  In the distance, the hills between the airport and the ocean were covered with an almost continual bank of clouds that rolled down like waves on occasion to coat the lower ground with fog.

I pulled out and headed south on the six lane wide ribbons of asphalt.  When I finally left the urban sprawl behind, the road began to climb.  The plants became heartier and more numerous.  I drove up into the cloud bank and a gentle mist began to settle on my windshield.  The temperature remained cool as it had for our entire stay in San Francisco with highs each day in the low 60's.

The fog began to lift as I descended from the mountain and the world had changed.  The temperature began to rise reaching the mid 80's in just a few hours.  I found myself in a huge and fertile valley.  Every hundred yards or so were farmer's curbside produce stands.  The offerings varied from cherries to asparagus to oranges to grapes.

The road took me through Gilroy, which if you didn't know, is the garlic capital of the United States.  And if I hadn't known ahead of time, I would certainly have known after the olfactory assault through the car vents.  For the next three hours, I drove through flat, fertile farmlands surrounded by double hitched produce trucks both empty and full.  They appeared to be big corporate farms, but their orderly rows and abundant life brought a sense of hope.

Finally, I began my climb out of the beautiful and vast farmland and began to again see the scrub on mountain sides.  According to the signs, the climb was through a pass that reached 4000 feet.  Looking to the side of the road, there was at one point a crystal clear body of water with a boat pushing out a white plume and wake.

I spent the first hours of my journey in rapturous wonder at the beauty and variety of California.

But then, I started to descend out of the mountains in the LA basin and it was no longer the gentle fog on cat feet that rolled from the mountain, but a blanket of  oppressive smog that obscured my view.  The traffic clogged like arteries after White Castle.

I think it was exactly what Tolkien had in mind when he created Mordor.

A Trip To The Museum

The primary purpose of my trip to San Francisco was completed yesterday.

It struck me as a bit strange when I saw the announcement just over a year ago, now.

Marceline, of course, made perfect sense.  There in the plains of Missouri, is the town created by the railroad years ago.  Those days of smoke-belching train engines needing a stop between Kansas City and Chicago are now gone, consigned to the memory of those in their seventies and eighties.  It now is a sleepy little place slipping back into its agricultural roots.  It is the sort of place where the children grow up, go to college and move away.

The rail station, no longer needed for its original purpose, has been retrofitted into a museum in honor of the town's favorite one-time resident--Walt Disney.  This is a charming, cobbled-together collection of random artifacts lovingly displayed in aged glass cases.  The museum has no connection to the Walt Disney company and their holdings come primarily from one member of Walt's family who thought the town should have them.  The people who work there have the sort of municipal pride that only those who have lived in a place all their lives can nurture.

It seemed much odder when I saw that the Walt Disney Family Museum was going to open in The Presidio in San Francisco.  Walt never lived in San Francisco.  The Presidio is a former military base by the bay which has been turned into a cross between a park and an exclusive up-scale community.  There are no other museums in the area.

When I asked one of the docents, who was dressed like a theater usher, why the museum was here and not in Los Angeles, he told me, "Diane Disney Miller (Walt's Daughter) has lived here in San Francisco for most of her life and had put all her father's things in storage in a warehouse in The Presidio."

And what a collection it is.  Quite simply it is like walking through the biography of Walt Disney come to life.  Multimedia experiences, lighting, architectural distinctions all lie within the outer shell of the building which remains identical to all the others in the area.

I'm not sure if everyone would enjoy this museum as much as I did, but I was like a kid in a candy store.  The building has only ten rooms, but it took me almost two hours to get through the first four.  By this time, I had lived with Walt all the way through the making of Snow White.  Because of time constraints, I moved much faster through the reset of the museum, I could have spent several days and not exhausted my curiosity or the resources there.

This museum in The Presidio is not a shoe-string job by a community holding on to a different age (which is not to criticize Marceline, but to praise it), but a spare no expense effort by the family to tell their own story.  The resources are comprehensive and engaging.  Like any family effort, despite some notable efforts to include varying views, the over-all effort enforces an all-together positive and uncritical appraisal of Walt and his life.  The primary resources for research are outstanding.

I am glad that I went to both Marceline and San Francisco.  They are very different places, but both speak to the needs of people to preserve and solidify the fleeting wisps of memory.  Doing so gives us hope that someday, we too will be remembered.

My Memory That's Not Mine

When I woke up this morning in San Francisco, a memory quickly came to my mind.

You may not know that I lived in San Jose, CA from ages 1-5.  My family would on occasion head from home to nearby San Francisco to see the sights.

Because of my age while here, I don't have that many memories of California.  I remember a bad dream, making snow angels somewhere in Northern California, waking up to see a snow flurry (it was a rarity in San Jose), riding my bike on a construction site (and the ensuing scolding for getting myself and bike so dirty), walking through a mud patch on a shortcut to school and my shoe being sucked off by the muck, jumping off of the jungle gym behind my house and knocking the wind out of my lungs, and a bug bite from what I thought was a friendly bug until I felt the burning in the center of my palm.

But sitting in San Francisco, it is another memory that comes to mind.  It is a memory of me but not mine, and yet in its own way, it is as vivid as if it were my own.  It is a part of me even though I don't remember it in the traditional way.

It is a family memory, repeated to me so often it has the concrete feel of personal recollection.  We were on our way for some sight-seeing in San Francisco.  I was getting on the bus and the driver asked me where I was headed.  In a cute fashion (that I haven't been able to pull off in 40 years), I looked at him with adult seriousness and told him "San Fran Sicko."  This seemed to be the highlight of the driver's day as he asked me several times to repeat my destination.

This makes me reflect on the importance of corporate memory.  We are made not only of our own memories, but of other's memories of us and the memories of our community.  When we tell our stories to each other, we invite them to join us as a possessor and even a participant in the recollection.

Essentially the church is a community defined by it memories of itself and the memories of those who went before and those canonized in the scriptures.  When we enter into the sharing of these corporate remembrances, they become our own, even if we don't/can't remember them ourselves.

Red Paint

When Disney launched the tethered balloon, it was clear they had a problem.

Disney World in Florida is located on a very flat piece of  drained swamp.  Whenever they consider adding a new attraction, they float a weather balloon to the height of the proposed attraction and then look to see how it will visually effect the area around it.

The year was 1993, and Disney had decided to build a new thrill ride at Disney Hollywood Studios (named at the time Disney/MGM Studios).  It was going to be the tallest structure in the Florida complex at 199 feet (no building at Disney World is taller than 200 feet because the law requires that any edifice that tall have a flashing beacon for airplanes).

The ride would be called The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.  It would tell the story of a hotel that was struck by lightning years previously and was now abandoned.  Riders would walk through the now abandoned lobby and go to the basement to board the service elevator which was still working.  The catch, when they get on the elevator, it goes up and then suddenly releases and lifts in a series of unexpected movements.

The ride building on its outside was going to recreate a luxury hotel from the 1920's in California.  Plans were made and everything was a go.

And then they raised the balloon.  And as you stood in Epcot looking over Morocco, there clear as day was the balloon.

Disney is obsessive about on-stage areas not having lines of sight into backstage areas.  They take care to make sure that there is no visual confusion or clutter.  A hotel building towering over the skyline of Morocco would surely look out of place.

What they decided to do was truly ingenious.  The front and sides of the building that could be seen in Hollywood Studios would be built to resemble a hotel.  But the back side of the attraction which could not be seen in the park but could be seen from Epcot would have in its upper stories Moroccan features.

So today if you stand in Epcot, you will see a large building off in the distance which blends in perfectly with the foreground.  This is accomplished not only through architecture, but also by the entire building being painted the same pinkish-red color as the rest of the structures in Epcot's Morocco.

So if you ever wondered why The Tower of Terror is that strange color of red, now you know why.

What Lasts

While at Disney World, we went to see the 3-D movie Captain EO.

It premiered at Disney in 1986 amidst great hoopla.  The park promoted it as the first 4-D experience because not only did the screen have depth, the theater itself has additional lighting and effects (when an elephant-like creature sneezes, the audience is sprayed with water--at least I hope it was water).

The movie was created by some of the biggest names in film at the time.  George Lucas and Francis Ford Copola both were involved in directing and producing the short.  It stars Michael Jackson (pre-scandals) and Anjelica Huston,

The 17 minutes film was quite expensive to make.  At 1.75 million dollars a minute, it was at the time the most expensive film by running time ever made.

The plot is relatively simple.  Jackson is the captain of a ship sent to a planet to give a gift to its supreme leader.  The planet is hostile and industrial, but Jackson and his crew of animated and muppet-like figures make their way into the heart of power.  There they face opposition, but Jackson uses the power of song and dance to free all the enslaved, including the spider like supreme leader.

The film was removed from Disney parks in 1996 when Jackson's legal problems tarnished his image.  It was replaced by the Honey, I Shrunk the Audience experience.  But this year, following Jackson's death, Disney returned the attraction in his memory  (a reminder that death can be the best PR move to reform the image of some people).

I have to say that I thought it was terrible.  The plot is inane.  The characters are overblown and the non-human characters ridiculous.  What was cutting edge 3-D film that dazzled and amazed in '86 is now so out-dated that it appears dark and almost indecipherable (quite a come down from Toy Story 3 which we had seen in 3-D a couple of days earlier).  The whole thing has the sensibilities of an '80's music video.

As I watched, it made me think that the only reason anyone was there was nostalgia or they had no idea what it was when they walked in the theater.  The film simply has not aged well.

Then I thought about the Dumbo ride.  It premiered in 1955 with the opening of Disneyland.  And it still has lines and it still delivers the same unadulterated joy to its target audience.  It is no marvel of technology.  It is not cutting edge.  It is classic and those elephants will spin in their irregular up and down arcs long after the most expensive movie ever made gathers dust in the corner replaced by newer and better technology.  In fact, Disney has announced that they are building a twin to the Dumbo ride in Florida and will place it next to the other allowing even more people to enjoy the classic experience.

The next thing is always replaced by the next thing, but there is always a place for the big-eared elephant.

Dying Alone

Walt Disney was famous.  And I don't mean famous in the sense it is used today.  Today our celebrities are famous for being famous, not for any real accomplishments.  They can do nothing without being in a crowd.

Walt was famous because he took his hopes and a shoe string operation to Hollywood and made a studio.

Walt was famous because he made the first full length animated feature and grossed $7 million dollars, an amount larger than any film up to that point (and this was 1937 dollars--adjusted by the consumer price index, it would be equivalent to $103.5 million today).   For further context, the average ticket price that year was just under a quarter.  That means that Snow White sold over 28 million tickets.  With the population hovering at 129 million or so, this means that slightly fewer than 1 in 4 people in the US bought a ticket.  It was dethroned from its earnings perch by Gone With The Wind, but that may have been because the Scarlet O'Hara movie sold far fewer half-price children's tickets.

Walt was famous because he felt that he had done all he could do with movies and took some of his most trusted employees and designed a movie come to life that people could enter and find themselves immersed in a new reality.  He didn't have the money to build it, so he launched a weekly television show to promote it.  And within a few years, Disneyland made enough money that he was able to buy back the share of the park he had sold to the network for airing the program.

Walt was famous because he was an everyman.  He was not a suit in the building, but would often go to Disneyland to walk around and talk with the people there.  In the early days, he would sometimes go to the ice cream shop on Main Street and scoop for customers.  He would ride the Jungle Cruise incognito and time the pilot's journey to make sure that it lasted long enough.

Walt was on television all of the time, his name ubiquitous.  Everyone thought they knew him.

But like many people who are friends to everyone he had a hard time developing real friendships.  He guarded his personal life and feelings.  Many people could say they worked closely with him.  Few people could say that he trusted himself with them.

When he was diagnosed with lung cancer after a life of serial smoking, he didn't tell anyone but a few of his closest friends.  When it began to become obvious to everyone that something was wrong, he underplayed the seriousness of his condition.  Some say that his greatest performance was when he struggled into the studio and recorded his pitch to the state of Florida about Epcot and Disney World.  He almost literally collapsed when the red light went off and the taping was over.

One of the most startling things I learned in researching Walt was that when arguably the best known person in the U.S. died of lung cancer in his hospital room he was the only person there.  No family was there, no hospital personnel, no co-workers--no one.  His final uncompleted project was a utopian community that would overcome all of the problems of modern society, and ironically his death was an illustration of the death of community in modern society.

The famous Walt Disney died alone.