![]() There will be joy in the going up and the coming down, the poet says: “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” It’s the sheer joy of discovering God’s goodness, whether it’s swinging down, whether it’s in lockdown, maybe up against some other much more serious challenge. Maybe that’s what a swinger of birches knows about life. Simpson was “radiant over the goodness of the Lord.” Simpson would say, about something seemingly trivial, something like “well, it was the glory of the Lord breaking through brightly that day.” Somehow, as the great prophet Jeremiah might say, Dr. Imagine, you could actually become a swinger of birches. ![]() ![]() You too can swing through, no matter your struggles. ![]() Just practice swinging through, he told us. I am confident he wanted us to think about our own petty self-pity. Simpson wanted us to think about our own little challenges that day, our focus on what we were sure were enormous limitations. Maybe he was filled with joy because he could always find just the right language. He obviously loved being in front of the class pouring over some rich text. I know he got pleasure out of the little things, watching birds with his wife Corrine, for example. He wanted us to know he found great joy just swinging through. But there was not, ever, a hint of self-pity in this great man. We could imagine his boyhood, though, never being able to play baseball, never actually climbing a tree. He learned to be very skillful, and fast, navigating with those crutches. Simpson slipping and falling on the icy sidewalks of the Whitworth campus in January. One leg was left to hang awkwardly useless. At an early age he was crippled by polio, a frightening epidemic then sweeping the country. Playing off the poem that day, he talked about just swinging through, a skill he had to learn to keep up with the other kids. We never referred to him by his first name. I hope you too have one of those teachers in your life. I can still remember maybe ten of those metaphors. So often my professor would frame his stunning speeches with a guiding metaphor, often drawn from his wide love of literature. I once had a professor who gave an amazing talk, where the anchoring metaphor was this very boy from Frost’s poem, swinging down from the tops of spindly, bending birch trees. Seemed like I could imagine anything up there, maybe even starting all over again, maybe repairing everything wrong in my little world. I loved being up there, perched at the top of these magnificent trees, away from it all, looking out over the fields of melons and cattle and sheep. Once to the top I could see for miles, I thought. I remember climbing the towering eucalyptus trees that surrounded our home. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Maybe we can make things better next time around.īut then, in the meantime, the poet remembers, as a boy, high in the birch trees, We’d like to come back later and start all over. I can relate, can’t you? We’d all like to get away for awhile. Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebsįrom a twig’s having lashed across it open. Consider Robert Frost’s marvelous poem “Birches”:Īnd life is too much like a pathless wood As the lockdown lingers, nerves fraying at the edges a bit, I am trying to imagine just swinging through.
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