How would you live if you only had 21 more days?

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (1925)

If you knew you had exactly 21 days left on this earth, how would you spend your time? Would you reconnect with family and friends? Would you ask forgiveness from someone? Would you tell someone what a despicable person they’ve been to you?

Now suppose it’s not only you who has 21 days to live, it’s the entire human race and planet Earth itself. Would the fact that no one would be left to tell your story---how you lived and how you died--- make any difference in how you spent your remaining time on earth?

That’s essentially the question film director Lorene Scafaria poses in the film released last week, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, starring Steve Carrell as Dodge and his downstairs neighbor, Penny (Keira Knightly).

I recall as a child, age five or six, watching as my Grandmother Moore, then somewhere in the 8^th decade of her life, struggling to put on her shoes. For some reason, she paused between gasps, looked straight at me with those deep-set eyes, and told me that the end was surely nigh. Not knowing if she meant her end or The End, I was afraid to say anything, but it was the first time I had ever thought of The End or its possibility.

 I quickly put the thought behind me as soon as she had her shoes on.

I later learned, in studying the history of Christianity, that there are those in every generation who think theirs is the last age; the end is nigh: repent.  

But if you knew it was exactly 21 days and it would be over, all over, what would you do?

If you believe life is meaningless, probably the best you can do is take someone’s hand---a friend to help you out of this place. Or your closest companion could be a drug to anesthetize you through the misery. As you look to an empty sky with no god to believe in and no light of hope, you will perhaps descend into the depths of darkness and end it before The End. Or maybe you would live each day as if there weren’t another, grabbing as much pleasure as is humanly possible in 21 days.

Fyodor Dostoevsky is attributed with the words, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted,” and some, as Scafaria depicts them in the film, having lived a practical atheism in upper class suburban American, suddenly throw off all restraints, plunging into drug enhanced orgies, even pushing liquor on their kids.

But if God does exist, then everything matters, including how we live our last 21 or 21,000 days.

When we have peace with this God, who promised that “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (I Corinthians 2:9), we can live whatever time we have with the quiet confidence that God is still in control, even though we don’t understand it all.

When a lady once asked John Wesley how he would spend his time if he knew he would die at exactly midnight the next day, Wesley is supposed to have said, “"Why, madam, just as I intend to spend it now. I would preach this evening at Gloucester, and again at five tomorrow morning; after that I would ride to Tewkesbury, preach in the afternoon, and meet the societies in the evening. I would then go to Martin's house...talk and pray with the family as usual, retire myself to my room at 10 o'clock, commend myself to my Heavenly Father, lie down to rest, and wake up in glory."

Maybe we are but hollow men, floating alone on a world that will end not with a bang but with a whimper in a cold, uncaring universe. But who is to say that may be the moment God intervenes for the Grand Finale he had prepared all along? In the meantime, like Grandmother Moore, I’ll keep my shoes on, believing we are headed toward an end God has planned, seizing the day, trying to make my life extraordinary, loving the ones I’m with until one day, I wake up alive in glory.

Pick it up and read it!

No, I don’t mean the Bible, although I read it every day.

But for now, I’m referring to the newspaper.

“Ahh, the newspaper,” you say. “You mean that old dinosaur of the printed era that’s somehow managed to stay alive, despite its shrinking advertising revenue and a dwindling subscriber base?”

Despite rumors of its demise, the newspaper is surviving and in some instances, thriving.

I know that’s the exception and not the norm. According to a 2010 Harris Poll, 1 in 10 American adults say they never read a daily newspaper, and only 2 of 5 read a daily newspaper, either online or in print.

That’s really not surprising, since Americans read less today. According to a 2007 study by the National Endowment of the Humanities, reading levels among young adults has plummeted over the last two decades. The average person between ages 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day watching TV and 7 minutes reading.

So, I was shocked but probably shouldn’t have been when I read that The Times- Picayune, the paper of New Orleans, La., established in 1837 and winner of several Pulitzer Prizes, will scale down its print edition to three days a week this fall, as will several other newspapers owned by its parent company.

Newspapers have long been a part of my life. Many times, after a day in elementary school, I would wait on my front porch for the afternoon delivery of the Altus Times-Democrat. We subscribed to several newspapers. Back then, the Daily Oklahoman had a morning edition as well as an evening edition, The Oklahoma City Times. I devoured both, as well as the morning edition of The Lawton Constitution. Occasionally, Dad would purchase the Times Record News of Wichita Falls, TX, but I looked with skepticism upon anything from the Longhorn State.

Sunday afternoon, having feasted on Mom’s delicious pot roast, was given to reading the newspaper. My brothers and father would divide out the sections of the paper, and soon they would be strewn about the den, one section on the couch, another across the recliner, each waiting to be read by one of us.

Today, I subscribe to several newspapers and whenever I’m visiting another town or city, I make sure to get a local paper, for each has its unique features reflective of its constituency.

Newspapers keep me aware of the world in which I happen to live.

As blogger Tracey Dickerson has noted, it was the great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, who in an interview with Time Magazine in 1966, advised young theologians “to take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”

Barth was reminding believers that although they are not to be of the world, they are yet in it, and as such, they should know the world in which they live. Moreover, Christians should be a discerning, reflective people.

But believers certainly haven’t cornered the market on thinking. Whether you think like a theologian or are simply a thinker, the newspaper can stimulate your mind to a broader awareness of what’s going on in the world around you, whether it’s news about the local community, municipal government, available jobs, the nation, or broader geo-political issues that affect us all, often unknowingly.

Of course, when Barth spoke those words, the internet didn’t exist, nor did CNN or Fox News. We have access to news 24/7, through dozens of portals, more news than we can digest.

It shouldn’t be a question of either/or but an affirmation of both the internet and the printed page.

The question we must ask ourselves is, what’s the quality of the news reports we are getting? Are we receiving information based on thorough investigative reporting?

It’s easy to watch any number of news talk shows. I do on occasion. While interesting, and often hosted by knowledgeable and talented people, they are usually, by the very nature of the ratings race, skewed toward drama, hype, and superficiality.

The challenge for newspapers is to provide the financial resources for quality reporting, whether it’s reporting by a local or regional paper or one of the major dailies.

How then can newspapers survive? Billionaire Warren Buffett, who is in the process of purchasing 26 daily newspapers and has had success with others, writes that newspapers fail when one more of the following factors are present: (1) the town or city has more than one competing dailies, (2), the newspaper is no longer the primary source of information for the readers, (3) or the town or city does not have a “pervasive identity.”

Surviving and even thriving is a challenge, but it’s worth the try, and that brings me back to Karl Barth. I’ve got my Bible in one hand: I’ve read where it will last forever. It’s the newspaper which concerns me, for without it, my application of the Bible to the world would be diminished.   

Contact David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com or visit his website, www.davidbwhitlock.com

One way to save a life

He was always getting up a game of some kind, usually sandlot football.

Mark had a knack for gathering my friends and me, most of us ten years his younger, for a game of football in the fall or baseball in the spring. And he was my own personal trainer, throwing me thousands of football passes or hitting me countless groundballs, trying to make me better.

But there was more to it than the game---something much larger than that. The sport was only an avenue enabling Mark to do something far more important than catching or throwing a ball.

Before Mark made our front yard a football field or a baseball diamond, I spent most of my time with Dougie, my brother, only 18 months older than me. We were so attached as constant companions that Momma usually spoke our names as one: “Dougie and Davey, Davey and Dougie.”

Until quite suddenly on a fateful day in May, after a car wreck involving the two of us and my oldest brother, Lowell, Dougie’s short life was taken.

And after that, it was only “Davey.”

Mark gradually emerged as our neighborhood coach and my personal instructor in all things athletic. Because of him, I dreamed big dreams and learned to work with others.

Mark even arranged for one of his high school football buddies to form a rival football team from another neighborhood so we could play them, which we did, giving Mark his first win as a football coach.  

So, I really wasn’t surprised when Mark announced his intention of getting his college degree in elementary education. After all, he was a natural, as was his wife, Joy, who graduated with him, both of them earning bachelors and then masters degrees in their fields. With their mutual love for kids and one another, it seemed likely that if they didn’t achieve great success, they would at least have a joyful journey.

They got both.

And some forty years later---seven as a coach and teacher and thirty-three as a principal, Mark, along with a banquet room full of teachers whose lives he had touched, gave his retirement speech.

He didn’t mention that along the way, he received the prestigious Academic Achievement Award from the State Department of Education, nor that he was named the District Administrator of the Year by the Oklahoma Association of Elementary School Principals in 1995 and 2009, nor that he was the recipient of the Oklahoma School Administrator Award in 1998-1999.

Neither did he mention that his wife, Joy, was  named Teacher of the Year from Rivers Elementary in 1993-94 and also in 2010-11, nor did he say that Joy was a grant recipient for Award Reading from the Rural Oklahoma Foundation in 2007.

All those awards weren’t really that important to Mark and Joy. What mattered was that they considered themselves privileged to invest their lives in students and teachers.

But Mark did remember to thank the teachers for their role in his journey, and when he was done, they thanked him. There was the teacher who once worked in the school cafeteria and because of Mark’s encouragement, went for it, getting her degree in education and a job at Mark’s school;  and then there was the teacher who finally got a chance to prove herself, because Mark was willing to hire her; and another teacher had lacked confidence but gained it from Mark’s support; and some, like my wife, Lori, pursued careers in education simply because of Mark and Joy’s positive example of what it is to be a teacher---educators who make a difference in others and in so doing, save some students from potential disaster, pointing them to the right path in life.

I couldn’t help but think---as teachers and friends gathered around Mark to thank him for caring enough to lead and teach those many years---how Mark had helped save another life, that of the skinny, six- year old I once was, the child who was lost without his brother. It was then that Mark stepped in and took up the slack, and in so doing helped save not just one life, but potentially many more as well, because he had learned the importance of instilling in others the hope that comes from dreaming dreams and the thrill that comes in fulfilling them en route to becoming whole and well.

And forty years down the road, that’s still one way to save a life.

What I heard in the garden

By now you’ve heard the news: We’re growing, at least physically. The average American male is seventeen pounds heavier and the average female nineteen pounds heavier than in the late 1970s. And the percentage of overweight children and adolescents in the US has nearly tripled in that same period of time.

One of the most overlooked and effective ways to fight our growing weight problem is to grow a vegetable garden.

I’m not alone in that conviction. First Lady Michelle Obama has made gardening the centerpiece of her platform for promoting a healthier diet, especially among children. Released last week, her book, American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America, chronicles her journey as a gardener and describes her plans to encourage gardening.

It’s true: You eat what you grow in a garden, and it’s healthier, fresher, and more nutritional than what you get from that drive-through window. You’ll get some exercise as you grow a garden, too.

Besides that, if you leave your cell phone in the house, you could receive an added benefit: You might hear those plants talking.

Of course, the garden doesn’t audibly speak, like the corn field that whispered to Kevin Costner. But I’ve listened, novice gardener that I am, to what those plants have had to say.

I’ve heard them telling me to slow down and get in touch with the rhythm of life. It takes time to grow food; there is no fast-food garden. When we don’t recognize that, we unknowingly fall into the trap the dark side of agribusiness offers, with its endless attempts to accelerate nature into higher and higher gears for the faster and quicker production of food, a process which finally abuses farmland and farming people, severing us from the rhythm of life, outsourcing all we do.

Those plants also tell me that their ground is a sacred ground. I try to respect that. I even made up a song for them, which I sing before my neighbors are awake, to the tune, “Rise up O Men of God.”  I greet my garden with, “Rise up, O Plants of God, ye creations of the Lord, bring forth your royal fruit to Him, and praise his name above.” (I’m still working on stanza two.)  My plants don’t laugh when I sing, and they reward my efforts with a plentiful harvest.

I love it when my plants remind me that it’s not absolutely necessary for me to have them perfectly lined up and every weed pulled for them to be fruitful. My gardening coach, Glen Sandusky, looked at a crooked garden row in my first garden, before my other gardening coach, Phil Moss, taught me to drop a line and make neat, straight rows. “Well, you can get more in a crooked row than a straight one,” Glen mused. He’s been listening to the garden for years.

My plants have told me we are connected.  And in some strange and mysterious way, I believe they are right. After all, I was there when I put the seed in the ground, brushed the dirt as the seedling first poked its head to daylight, watched it grow into a mature plant, and then enjoyed its offering of delicious delights. And I am there when it turns brown, withers and fades into the same earth in which I will one day join it, resting with it in peace.

The garden also tells me that if it’s not enjoyable, then I should do something else. Gardening is work, but if done right, it shouldn’t be drudgery. As Wendell Berry wrote in his book, The Art of the Commonplace, “The 'drudgery' of growing one's own food…is not drudgery at all. (If we make the growing of food a drudgery, which is what 'agribusiness' does make of it, then we also make a drudgery of eating and living.) It is - in addition to being the appropriate fulfillment of a practical need - a sacrament, as eating is also, by which we enact and understand our oneness with the Creation, the conviviality of one body with all bodies.”

Maybe Mrs. Obama is broaching a broader subject than simply how to maintain a healthier diet.

Perhaps the garden can tell us something about experiencing the sacredness of life in all its fullness, even as we grow the garden instead of a supersized self.