Thou art more powerful than me.

If I climb your staff will you wrap me up,
will you swallow me whole,
and send me down your black pole?

To the rich brown earth
To live with the roots
To slumber there
And eat fat worms
While you envelop my life
And pierce my heart.

In the hair of your roots.

Your roots.
Your roots.

Good enough is my new mantra and I’m even asking people to tell it to my face. Hey you! Tell me that what I have done here is “good enough.” Hey you! Tell me that *I* am good enough. Might sound silly to those of you who don’t have this issue, but for my fellow Type 4s out there – you know who you are (you edit the cereal box) – let’s celebrate this week by declaring:

We’re not perfect. But we are more than good enough.

There are times, however, when I wish I could answer these subtexts with some of my own.  But subtexts can be misleading, so I’m going to go with the real thing here on my blog.

First off, I don’t have any really good answers as to the why and when of romantic relationships. Timing. Timing in life is something I have little control over. When I have least expected it, beautiful people, including many strapping young men, have come into my life and then we have parted, for one reason or another. You just take what comes gratefully, learn what you can, and try to make the things you *do* have some control over a little better every day.

I’m remembering something my Dad said recently. I’m not exactly sure the source of this distinction, but basically he said, “there’s the love thing and the trust thing and they’re two separate things.” We’ve all got the love thing going for us. We’re all love-worthy, no matter what we do, say, think, or become. There isn’t a soul in our midst who doesn’t deserve our deepest love and appreciation and kindness, including our own imperfect selves. But not everyone is trust-worthy. We are not always trust-worthy. Trust is a different thing, which develops over time. There are no short-cuts to trust and it isn’t a given, even (or especially?) in familial relationships.

I like that distinction, because I can say that I have fallen in love before, but I don’t think I have fallen in trust before, or better said, developed the kind of trust sufficient for our relationship to continue blossoming. Again, timing and life seasons have a lot to do with this relationship thing, but it brings me back to these questions:

What makes us trust another person? What makes us trust ourselves? What can we do to build trust in ourselves and in others?

A few thoughts.

1. CONSISTENCY. Trust thrives when two people know that there are at least some parts of the other’s belief system and behaviors that are somewhat predictable and have a small chance of changing any time soon. The chance is always there—there’s always risk involved—but the probability of change in key areas is low enough that you are willing to move forward and take the chance.

2. FORGIVENESS. It is so easy to trust people who are quick to forgive and work problems out. You get the sense that you could do no permanent harm and so you are freed up to try out being your best self. This can really boost the trust and confidence you have in yourself. And being this way with others will boost their self-confidence as well.

3. HONESTY. This goes along with consistency. There’s nothing like knowing that the person you are dealing with is the real thing and not a temporary fabrication. Being honest with ourselves is a lifelong challenge, but it is the key to being honest with others.

4. SERVICE, COURTESY, & KINDNESS. It’s amazing how far little things can go toward building trust between two people. The real challenge and adventure is figuring out what those little things are! Here’s a news flash, in case you hadn’t heard: the small acts that build trust are different for everyone. So the journey never ends when it comes to developing trust with your actions.

5. WORDS. How we say and express things, what we say—again, such a delicate and individual thing—can do a lot to build or diminish trust with another person. This is perhaps the most difficult of them all, because one misstep and you may have inadvertently violated someone’s trust. Difficult, yes, but it is possible to build trust with our words. Good, honest, forgiving communication can smooth over a lot of bumps in the road.

So there you have it: my big five for developing trust. The thing about being single is that even though you don’t have a significant other, you still have opportunities to practice this everywhere you go and with a great variety of people. Until that right time and person comes along, I’ve still got plenty of opportunities on a daily basis to practice developing trust.

Here’s an affirmation to ponder: With every interaction, I experience trust in myself, trust in others, and others trusting me.

Why do we serve one another? Why do we wash each other’s feet, instead of our own? What does God want us to learn from these experiences? And what do we become as we serve and are served, bless and are blessed by others?

I have a few ideas, although just like life’s difficulties, trials, sadnesses, I think that the true meaning of our service to one another will not be fully comprehended until the next life.

Let me share with you three moments of service from my last week here in Hyde Park.

1.
Last Thursday, I was walking up Woodlawn and about half a block ahead noticed two women and a young girl sitting at a lemonade stand. A whole congregation seemed to be spilling out from the First Unitarian church on the corner. And an off-duty ambulance sat parked on one side of the street. As I walked closer to the lemonade stand, I heard the gentleman driving the ambulance make a public announcement to all of the passers-by, something like “Attention. Attention ladies and gentlemen. Exceptional lemonade being sold by a nice young lady here this afternoon. Come and get it. Pick up a glass of fresh lemonade right here.” The little girl entrepreneur squealed with delight and the two women laughed. Another woman coming toward me smiled and asked, “was that an announcement for the lemonade?” and I smiled back, “yes.”

2.
Friday morning, I was trying to ride my bike in need of a tune-up to an eye appointment. I would have walked, but I was running late, so I decided to chance it on my bike and then drop it off at the bike shop to have it fixed on the way back. Not four blocks out, my chain got stuck between the smallest gear and the bike frame. This had happened to me before, and I tried to yank it out with a plastic glow stick I found on the ground. That had worked the first time, but not now. It was really jammed in there good. One of the homeless men sitting on the cement wall in Nichols Park on 53rd stood up and said, “I know everything there is to know about bikes. Let me see that.” And he proceeded to flip the bike over, pull out his Swiss Army pocket knife, and pick up a stick from the ground. I watched as he and his buddy got that chain unstuck, one link at a time. Charles was his name. If you ever see Charles out there in Nichols Park, you should tell him that he’s famous for helping a young maiden in despair with her black Huffy bike.

3.
One final experience. Friday afternoon, I had to go to the Social Security office on 63rd and Cottage Grove to request a replacement Social Security card. I sat in the waiting room and watched as the Security Guard kept the peace. He talked like a father to one of the young men going in and out of the front doors, giving him advice, for what reason, I do not know. He helped an elderly lady get her number, who couldn’t see the computer screen. And he kindly called out to a group of boys standing in the back corner, “Please take a seat and wait your turn. Work with me people. Tomorrow I won’t be here, but today, you’ll just have to work with me.” His kind disposition kept the otherwise sterile environment warm and humane. Hanging above his head was a curious sign that read “Thank you for choosing us to serve you.”

I thought about that sign. What an odd statement, really. I didn’t really choose that Social Security office out of all the offices to serve me. It was just the office closest to me. I sort of doubt that anybody else in that office had set their sights on that particular office and gone the distance just so they could say, “Oh yeah, the Social Security office on 63rd and Cottage Grove? Yeah, I’ve been there done that.”

Do we really choose who serves us? Sometimes, I wonder about our pre-mortal experience, now forgotten, and I ask myself. Did I choose this person to serve me so that I could make this leg of my life’s journey, so that I could learn this lesson? Did I choose this person to make poor decisions that affected me negatively in one way or the other so that I could learn to forgive in this particular way? Did I really choose this experience? Whether or not this is literally true, I have discovered that if I do accept all of life’s experiences as if I had chosen them, I find a lot of lessons to be learned.

Elder Carlos H. Amado said, “Kindness, love, patience, understanding, and unity will increase as we serve, while intolerance, jealousy, envy, greed, and selfishness decrease or disappear. The more we give of ourselves, the more our capacity to serve, understand, and love will grow. Those who serve will always seek to please God and live in harmony with Him. They will be full of peace; they will have a cheerful countenance and a spirit of kindness. Those who serve will strive to ennoble, build, and lift their fellowmen; therefore, they will find the good in others, and they will not find reason or have time to become offended. They develop the virtue of praying for those who criticize. They don’t expect recognition or reward. They possess the love of Christ. Those who serve will always be willing to share what they possess and what they know at all times, in all places, and with all people. Those who serve even in adversity will maintain a living hope of a better future. They will continue to be firm in the midst of a crisis because their hope is in Christ.”

I love the blessings that come from service. Just as Elder Amado says, our reward for selfless service and a generous, forgiving heart is peace, hope, and the love of Christ in our hearts. These powerful qualities transform us into Sons and Daughters of God and prepare us to live and love as He does.

Why is service so important? Because it cleanses and transforms us for the better, and that’s why we are here on earth (i.e. John 13:2-17).

I am so grateful to the many good examples in my life of people who have and continue to give of their time, possessions, talents, and hearts to me so that I can make this leg of my journey. Truly, each person who has done that for me is a living testimony that God lives. I am likewise grateful for the ways that I can contribute, opportunities to serve that are perfectly catered to my strengths. These are deep and rich blessings. The opportunity to serve and receive service at the hands of others is the essence of life.

I testify that God our Father lives and loves us. I testify that Jesus, his son, was the perfect example of service and that we will be profoundly happy as we strive to follow in his footsteps. May we all be blessed this coming week with opportunities to serve and to be served.

I’m looking at a fast and furious ending to a pretty intense first year at the Lab Schools. I love it, though. I’ve enjoyed so much watching the teachers learn and try new things and working with the student clubs. It’s been challenging and stimulating.

I just finished John Taylor Gatto’s Underground History last week and it’s given me a fresh perspective on our economy, our culture, our society, and the formal schooling that is such an integral part of our experience. If I could stop the world right now, I would have everybody join in a big book club and read Gatto’s book. It’s a piercing look at the real results of a public school system that is either failing miserably or working wonders, depending on whose perspective you take.

And all the myriad perspectives in between will continue to fire the debate about education and what children (and grown-ups, for that matter) ought to learn in preparation for an uncertain future.

My response has been to reaffirm the preeminence of the individual and the rights of the independent learner. I’m not exactly sure what shape my actions will take, but something is going to come out of this. I feel very strongly that humans have tremendous potential to do good as well as evil and that the test of our democratic republic will be to see to what degree we trust ourselves to let go and let develop in a natural way the people around us.

I’m not making a lot of sense, I know. But I will, I promise. More to come on this later.

I’m just so glad it’s spring. It is such a wonderful thing to be able to walk to work without a long winter jacket. I haven’t seen green tips on the trees yet, but I know it’ll be soon. More energy and vigor to work on my thesis. Ah.. the thesis.

But The System’s call is persuasive and its greatest leverage is the silent threat that if you don’t mainstream educationally, you run the risk of loosing big somewhere down life’s lane, whether that means college, jobs, careers, or potential earnings. There’s this idea that formal education = eventual success in the big world.

Bull shonkey. How I wish I had figured out sooner that the educational system, and maybe simply because it IS a system, will always tend to steer the majority of its constituents away from and not toward the skills they really need to succeed. This is because the primary object of the educational system is to justify its existence. And it does this by getting bigger, more complex, and less adaptive. By definition, systems are designed to produce homogeneity NOT heterogeneity. In fact, the system (not people) the system will attempt to squash anything that looks like true difference.

But my parents were well-meaning and I felt strong, like I could ignore all the protocol and routine of schooling, cut through the fat, and get some juicy content or good opportunities without hurting my inner-self too badly. I did well in my classes. Usually straight As. I was the perennially “engaged” learner, something of a teacher’s pet. And I never bought into the school as workplace mentality, where you got paid to look bored and disaffected by everything going on around you. I was on a hunt for the “good stuff” and the “good people” and trying to negotiate, ignore, or downplay all the time-wasters.

I did band. I did choir. All the concerts. I did what I would guess is a pretty typical Middle School experience. And it was okay, I guess. Let’s see..What do I remember?

I remember moments, like…

• Listening to the song “We didn’t start the fire” by Billy Joel [media!] and having a teacher try to explain the different between political Left and Right
• Giving a presentation on my interpretation of piano piece by George Winston called “Peace” [media]
• Designing a brochure on tourism in Lebanon [media]
• Composing a simple song and winning an award for it
• Singing solos and in small ensembles for the “Solo & Ensemble” contest
• Doing some hands-on map project for Washington State history and learning how much 1 Billion dollars could buy
• Taking a special school-wide “time out” to go to the library to watch the reports on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster [media]
• Listening to a lady from some non-profit group for Women in Business coming to give a series of presentations.
• Going to this New Horizons conference to encourage girls to get involved in Science. I don’t remember the content. I remember their engagement with us, the students.
• Writing a fictional journal based on the story of one of my ancestors
• Participating in The Music Man school musical as a “cheep-cheep-cheep-talk-a-lot-pick-a-little-more” lady
• Lots and lots of concerts. Too many, actually. Too many rehearsals. Too many shows. They lost their meaning at some point.
• Playing the piano for a lot of choirs and getting bored with the repetitive nature of rehearsal time
• Negotiating the chaos in the lunchroom. So loud. What an unpleasant eating experience.
• Knowing a kid in band who decided to end his life
• Small reading groups in the library where we read and discussed The Chronicles of Narnia
• Watching my teacher’s slide shows on her experiences with the Peace Corps in Africa and New York (I remember all the photos of graffiti)
• Observing a boy from my neighborhood with the guts to ask in Sex Ed why boys have nipples. My teacher struggling for an answer…
• Rummaging through the library during “library” time and just wanting to peruse endlessly, without being interrupted [media]
• Getting “asked out” by a 5th grade boy and not knowing how to handle that
• Listening to my 5th grade teacher read to us every day after lunch
• Getting constantly placed next to the “poor performers” in class so I could help them along, help them “stay on task”
• Forming a very loosely organized club with 3 other girlfriends. All we did was get together in the Computer Lab and drink 7-Up with our typing teacher. And once we went to her house for a slumber party. [How did she do that??]
• Being lent a ROLAND synthesizer over break, thanks to a choir teacher who was willing to bend the rules a little, so I could create musical tracks on my own. This was the same teacher who let me direct entire choir rehearsals in high school instead of substitutes and encouraged me to compose music. This was also the the same teacher who braved miles of district-imposed red tape so that his choirs could have “real-world” experiences at festivals, workshops, and public performances.

Those are the big memories. Everything else school-related from those years is mostly a blur now. If anything else important comes to me, I’ll add it to the list. So I look at this series of memories and I ask myself now, what counted? First of all, why do I remember these things?

• I remember what I built or designed
• I remember the atmosphere of the library, how it was a warm place that invited prolonged visits and reading
• I remember the examples of people and their approach to life more than I remember what they were saying to me
• I remember soaking up the personal attention I got in a small group setting with a caring adult (parent or community volunteers, by the way)
• I remember the breaking of routine (i.e. when things were important enough to the community that we could stop what we were doing and pay attention to the outside world – the Challenger explosion)
• I remember the look in my 8th grade teachers eyes when I actually tried to explain in words how I heard/interpreted music to fellow 8th graders

Let me drill down even further.

• examples/role models (me watching others and observing the “energy” they brought to life at school)
• the atmosphere and environment around me
• personal meaning and development of individual talents (me making sense of things that I cared about)
• personal attention (an adult caring enough to have a real discussion with me)
• breaking routine (the community caring enough to drop routine and just listen for awhile to the outside world)
• resources (the community investing in books, equipment, and other tools that were fun and interesting for me to use and the time set aside to use them)

Is this any different than what I look for now, as an adult? Not really. I think there are other things I look for in addition to those listed, but those are still pretty high on my list. It would be very interesting if a statistically-significant number of adults went through this same exercise and boiled their schooling experiences down to what they still remember and use.

So what’s my point about Middle School? Well, I don’t really have one, except to say that the government sure invested a lot of money in teachers, facilities, training, etc. so that I could have those memories. And there are probably a lot of other things “embedded” in me today, as a result of my education 4th to 9th grade, which I can’t even see. Culture is like that.

But what I was driving at with this post what happened to me after 9th grade. After 9th grade, I quit school. I looked at my life. I saw the social benefits of being “IN” the honors club and I weighed that against the time that school was costing me. And school lost. School, more than anything, was taking just way too much time. I could use my time much more efficiently than a school could use my time, no matter how creative their scheduling efforts. And since my parents were a little more confident about home schooling, they supported my decision to “cherry pick” high school offerings. So I went to school for choir, band, Spanish, sciences and studied math, history, writing, whatever else at home. And I did gymnastics my 10th grade year. The end result was a part-time affair that didn’t buy me as much time as I had hoped, but enough to play the piano every morning for at least an hour and create some music at home.

Looking back, I think that I spent way too much time at school. But I didn’t have the confidence that I could learn things on my own and I definitely didn’t believe that my “research questions” were more important than The System’s “curricular objectives”. (I still went into college my freshman year with this feeling of ineptitude for not having taken Calculus, for example.) But I wanted to go to college and so I sort of had to walk this fine line between doing my thing and playing the academic game (SAT scores, college entrance requirements, etc.). In the end, the principal let me graduate, based on a portfolio, my SAT scores, and the sheer number of credits. I got into college and… well, that’s another story.

Maybe it goes without saying that everybody walks this line (thank you Johnny Cash) between personal interests and social interests, some more adeptly than others. But in the end, everyone has to make choices that display how much confidence we have in what others intend to teach TO US and what we intend to learn FOR OURSELVES.

Sometimes, I wish students could just wake up and boycott school. Do they care enough about themselves and their own inner gifts and voices to stop the madness? Nobody else will. Not the teachers. Not the parents. Not the administrators. Not the government. There is too much invested, too much infrastructure, too many full time jobs, like mine in fact.

Back to the main point of this. What I learned about myself, I learned in 11th grade. Because it was in 11th grade that out of the blue one day, I wondered about Beauty and the Beast. I wondered where the story came from. How many different versions existed. If the beauty ever WAS the beast? So I went to the library and I looked up all I could about the question. And no, I don’t remember very much about what I learned. I remember all the gorgeous illustrated books I found, that the Western version of the tale had its origins in France, and well, that’s about it. But what I remember about that experience was that I asked the question and I got the answers to it on my own. It was my first cycle of truly self-driven learning in an entire year since going “part-time”.

I don’t know if I can say this strongly enough. It took me ONE WHOLE YEAR of detoxing from the Public School system to come up with one single question that I cared about enough to go to the library and look up everything I could about it. The rest of the time I spent playing the piano, listening to music, goofing around the house, and sleeping. Maybe I’m Special Needs.

So here’s my question. If it took me a full 12 months to decompress from 6 years of formal education, to be able to relax enough mentally, to free up enough brain space for my curiosity to trickle back. If it took me, Allison, “resister” of The System, an entire year to get to this point, how can I expect students who are stretched to the max, negotiating school like it was warfare, to be self-directed learners and ‘find their voice’?

Self-directed learning happens every where BUT the classroom, people. People. The classroom is the distraction, the decoy. If true self-directed learning were to occur in a school context, it would be more anarchy than system. Yes, there would be free-forming groups and some loosely-structured group learning, but you wouldn’t necessarily see clear learning objectives that meant anything to the state.

What I want are safe spaces (I wish this could be in our homes, but if not, then in our schools), a temporary shelter from the compromises we are forced to make everywhere else in life, so that we have the strength to NOT compromise our values and talents as much as we otherwise would. I want safe spaces where students can unwind long enough to get in touch with their core. I want something more like kindergarten back, for all of us, the teachers, the students, the administrators. I want exploration. I want time. I want adults who care. I want plenty of resources at the student’s disposal. And I want credit for all the informal learning and extracurricular activities that form the basis of who I become, not what test I pass, or what percentile I live in. I want the freedom to drop what I am doing and explore something else. I want hours and hours of uninterrupted reading and learning when I am in “the zone.” I want adults to talk with me, not at me. I want real human contact with the outside world, daily. I want contact with nature, daily.

This is what I want, for starters at least. And I want it for public education everywhere (primary, secondary, and higher). My guess is that if students had one year to detox from traditional schooling, they would want it too.

The movie is about water. Water we sometimes hold back from each other because we fear there is not enough to go around, or because we worry too much about whose water it is.. It’s about the scarcity mentality, human pride, and devastating selfishness.. the error of thinking that there isn’t enough to go around, when in reality, there always will be, and to spare.

I can’t spoil the plot for you. It’s too good and you’ve got to see it for yourself, but the take-away for me was: give, give, give. Just like the tune we sing with the children in primary: Give, said the little stream as it scurried down the hill. I’m small I know, but wherever I go, the grass grows greener still… [oddly, the little tune is in D Major and the film's principal theme, if I'm not mistaken, was in d minor]

It makes me remember of a story I once heard of an old woman in Siberia. The town she lived in was suffering from a terrible, cold winter and all the pipes in town were slowly freezing over. People were storing all the water they could and carefully rationing it so they could survive the winter. One by one, families around town ran out of water. But this old lady, she never ran out. Why? Because she was always filling up buckets and giving them to others. The running water kept the pipes from freezing over. She gave and there was. A great lesson there.

So go watch the movie. Maybe in a few months it will show up on iTunes Movie Rentals, since it’s an MGM release!

I saw varying responses in the room: Happy Humanities professors who smiled blissfully as if to say that “it’s all good, let’s play nice”; Senior ladies and gentlemen who came because of their connection to the opera and found it all “fascinating”; Artists from the current production who wanted to support their director; Disgruntled sophisticates that would have found something to be disgruntled about (they arrived disgruntled, they may even live disgruntled); and many Smarter-than-thou-hyper-critical-types whose first reflex was to pounce on his reading of Oedipus Rex, let’s say. The moderator for the Q&A session afterwards, tried to look serious and neutral, but it was obvious that she was representing the scholarly audience by approaching Sellars with somewhat of a distant, condescending air, asking him questions he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer ["Name some artists who you think are engaging in the public discourse" was one]. He definitely came off “looser” of the evening.

I found it slightly ironic that the University would bring in Sellars (taking advantage of his stint here in Chicago for Dr. Atomic), use his name for the promotion of a new top-down arts initiative here on campus (all of a sudden the University of Chicago and Hyde Park has a vibrant arts community, by the way), and that Sellars would then take the opportunity to low ball the academic community with criticisms that sounded maybe twenty years old. The whole evening felt a little disjointed and strange– a silent clashing of cultures or simply misplaced expectations?

But for the record, I did like some of what Sellars threw out there that evening. I just think that maybe we’re a bad market for his “way of being” or “mode of delivery”. It made me wonder how often he has had to make compromises about what he believes about art and community whenever he approaches or receives funding from people or sources that clearly do not hold his same beliefs. Is there any way to maintain your integrity, when you cut across classes or audiences to accomplish artistic aims?

A quick write up of some of his phrases that made it to paper. Please, take out of context. I already have.

art is a mirror • art goes bad when we mistake irony for meaning • the art of irony is the art of dis-empowerment • too much of the arts have been focused on itself • art should equip people to face what they will face • art should renew a sense of purpose and idealism • the hope of theater is to create a space for conversations that we can’t have anywhere else • the evil eye = the act of looking a someone and damaging them in the process • the act of seeing is an act of transformation • saddest thing about 20th century was that every field of study tried to become more like a science • Political Science, what? • 98% of life doesn’t fit in a scientific framework • Science became God in the 20th century • critical studies uses a specialized language that moves important conversations out of the public sphere • the challenge of the academy is to invent a language that can be shared with or survive in the public sphere • the media and entertainment is so much about symptoms and effects, special effects instead of focusing on the causes of things (what causes Oedipus Rex to pull his eyes out vs. thousands of dollars spent on making the eye-pulling scene realistic) • I try to deal with people minus their labels • we have made maximum profit by removing value • Greek theater as an institution of democracy, an architecture of deep listening (if you voted you had to attend the theater; an uninformed voting public is tyranny) • Theater addressed the most painful issues in society • so many things are beyond the scope of law enforcement • we need art to approach the unapproachable • an oratorio or public speech was an appeal to people’s better selves before elections • actual security lies in culture and communication • 3/4 of the task is to open blocked channels of communication • how do you not get poisoned by the poison you are fighting • art is an act of mercy, an act of grace • we are here to do what our ancestors couldn’t do • they sacrificed for us and we must sacrifice for the future • yes, I own an iPhone, but I rarely check my messages • I prefer to fly to cities when I meet with somebody, so I can really be there in person

You have borrowed a large amount of money from a friend, which you promise to pay back, but not anytime soon, since you are struggling to make ends meet. Your friend trusts you and is willing to wait. Time goes by and you are still not able to pay back the loan. After three years of scrimping, you approach a brother for help. “I don’t know how or when I will be able to pay my friend back and I feel terrible being in their debt. It’s really put a strain on our relationship.”

Your brother is wealthy and says, “I will pay the debt for you, but only on these terms. You must personally deliver to me a penny every day until the debt is paid in full.” “Only one penny a day?” you exclaim, “but even if I pay you a penny every day of the rest of my life, I will never be able to pay the debt in full.” “And that is okay,” says your wealthy brother, “As long as I get to see you each day when you pay your penny.” You are elated and agree to the terms. In short order, the wealthy brother pays your large debt you find yourself once again on good terms with your friend. You heave a huge sigh of relief as you fall asleep that night.

The next morning, before work, you get up early to walk a penny over to your brother’s house. You hand him your penny and your wealthy brother gives you a receipt in exchange with a red stamp of approval. “Thank you, he says, “you are in good standing with me. Your debt is paid in full.” You smile and leave to go about building your life, hopeful for a better future.

A few days later, you encounter a risky business situation and decide to go for it. Unfortunately, the deal goes south and you find yourself in debt again for another large sum of money. You return to your brother, distraught and embarrassed. He smiles and says, “I will pay that debt as well. Just keep walking your penny over to me every day.”

For the next several mornings, before work, you get up early to walk the penny over. You tell him all about small-, medium-, and large-size debts that you have incurred in the course of your business dealings, and which must be paid. And every morning, before you walk back, your wealthy brother puts a stamp of approval on your receipt, and says, “Thank you, you are still in good standing with me. Your debts are paid in full.”

After a a few months, you get tired of trudging over to your brother’s house to deliver the penny. It seems like such a waste of energy. You have stacks of receipts with those stamps of approval, ample proof that you have made a good effort. Missing one day wouldn’t hurt, would it? So you become just a little lazy and miss a day, here and there. Over time, one day becomes two becomes three becomes four. You justify yourself, “I’ll pay all of these pennies at the end of the week and it will be just fine.” So at the end of each week, you pay your seven pennies. Your brother stamps your receipt but tells you how much he missed your company during the week. You shrug your shoulders and plunge into another productive week.

Choose your own parable ending. Turn to page 20 if you will continue the weekly payments. Turn to page 48 if you decide to take up daily payments again.

Ending 1:
Business is going well for you and prospects for the future are looking up. For awhile, you make regular weekly payments and try to ignore the look in your brother’s eyes as you grab the stamped receipt and run off to your business. After awhile, with business going so well, you start to believe that you will be able to pay off your brother in full and will never need to make the daily visits again. You save up your pennies for a large payment at the end of the year.

The end of the year arrives and you make the short walk to your brother’s house on Christmas eve. He is delighted to see you and accepts your payment. He hands you a stamped receipt. He invites you to use the receipt as an entrance to the New Year banquet your father will be hosting and pleads with you to pay on a daily basis, as previously agreed.

You walk home, ashamed. You are in good standing with your brother, but you feel terrible for not having held up your end of the bargain. You throw the receipt away, return to your home empty-handed, and never visit your brother again.

Ending 2:
The next day, you remember the twinkle in your brother’s eyes and decide to make the daily payment. It doesn’t take long. You’re always surprised at how pleasant these visits are. You drop off the penny, smile at your brother, and return to your home to carefully file the receipt. Your day goes well and you feel good about yourself for keeping your end of the bargain. You go to sleep early and wake up the next morning to pay your penny.

That morning you have a good laugh with your brother and he sends you on your way with a light in your heart. You have a wonderful day and decide that you can’t afford not to have his good graces and company on a daily basis. Every day, until the end of your life, you faithfully pay your penny.

In your old age, you make one last visit. You immediately embrace. The debt is still not paid but you are on good terms with your brother. He lovingly stamps the receipt and says, “Thank you, you are in good standing with me. Your debt is paid in full. Today, I will accompany you to our father’s house.”