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.