just looking for the sparkly bits
First impressions, humility, and Holy Saturday
***Apologies for the formatting error last week. You can find the correctly formatted post/poem here. Thanks for your patience!***
They say you never have a second chance to make a first impression, but rarely do we consider the impression we make when we are not trying to make an impression at all.
Several years ago when our family first moved to England for a short stint of study and work, we started attending a small Anglican church a few blocks north of our student housing. As we acclimated to new rhythms of school and work we naturally began to recognize names and faces that were relevant to our daily context and started to attune to the people and places that could help us set down some healthy, if temporary, roots.
One name that cropped up repeatedly in those first few months of life in Oxford was Donald Hay. I’m not exactly sure where I first heard about Donald who was variously described to me as a “world-class economist”, a “university administrator”, a “writer and teacher”, a “generous and thoughtful person”, a “prominent academic”, but it must have been through mutual friends, or a church coffee hour, or somesuch because when I heard his name mentioned at work I remember it already sounded familiar.
At the time, thanks to the generosity and help of my friend Mandy, I was working part-time for the University of Oxford in its Estates Division: a damp, tea-stained corner of that prestigious institution tasked with maintaining, acquiring, designing, and building all of the physical infrastructure that supports clever minds at work - proper ventilation for chemistry labs, new Maths buildings, improvements to residence hall lavatories, etc. Really glamorous stuff.
As the second-ranking administrator under the Chancellor, Donald’s name frequently came up because he oversaw the University's several hundred-million-pound facilities budget, and his sign-off was required for any large-scale Estates project. If our Brazilian architect’s invoice came in 6 million pounds over budget, to Donald we must go. If the Ruskin School of Art wanted to acquire 2.3 acres for a new studio on Cowley Road, Donald had to say okay. In short, as far as my office was concerned, Donald Hay was not just a big deal, Donald Hay was God. Yet, our division was just one small piece of his much larger purview.
So fast forward to early November. Like other lively parishes in town, one cool leafy Saturday our church cleared its sanctuary of pews and chairs and brought in a bounce house and dunk tank, a clown crafting ballon animals, and a variety of cornhole-style games and crafts to host a Fall Festival for the neighborhood. Unlike the mega-churches borne of a distinctively American imagination, historic English stone churches exercise hospitality the old-fashioned way - they simply make room (and tea).
Having sent our two fun-weary toddlers home with dad, I stayed behind to help clean up and re-set chairs for the next morning’s service. There were about two dozen of us skittering about with brooms and rubbish sacks and I nearly tripped over an older man in his early sixties crawling around on his hands and knees on the stone-tiled floor picking up small pieces of confetti. “Oh, pardon me,” I apologized as he looked up kindly from his knees. “Oh no trouble,” he said. “I’m just looking for the sparkly bits that are hard to sweep up.” As he stood up he extended his hand, “I’m Donald Hay,” he said, “How long have you been here at St. Andrews?”
As I left our Good Friday service last night I was reminded of Donald yet again because standing at the door, humbly, quietly ushering guests out to their cars was a man I’ve frequently seen at that post - welcoming, handing out programs, helping people find seats - but only recently did I learn he is also a former Navy Admiral and CEO of the nation’s largest credit union, overseeing more than $160 billion in assets each year. Like Donald, however, you’d never guess it from his understated choice of service: holding doors open for strangers.
Having just come off a series of conversations at universities all breathlessly absorbed in making a good and very conscious first impression - eagerly touting their elite rank or superior status, their standout ability to get you into law school or med school, their commitment to secure the funding needed to pay for their obscenely priced services - my general takeaway was that it all felt a bit… empty? Not that I dispute the incomparable value of a good education. Nor do I think any of their claims were overtly false. I think I simply missed some of the heart behind the song-and-dance. Will $300,000 +/- truly make us cleverer? More importantly: Can it make us good?
So, somehow, the image of this well-educated, thoroughly-trained, big-deal-of-a-man holding a door open and the remembrance of that other similarly bright and successful man crawling on the ground in service of a tidy worship space felt immeasurably refreshing and world-centering for me as I took my first steps back into regular life. Because in their example I see the story that most compels me. It is about triumph and glory, yes. There is no shame in claiming goodness, gifts, prestige, accomplishment, victory. But for Christians our fleeting moments of triumph are always firmly anchored in foot-washing, in sacrifice, and in death-to-self again, and again, and again. It is always a both/and proposition. It is never just win after win after win.
So as we live into this day that tethers and bridges the two sides of Christianity’s distinctive claim, Holy Saturday feels like a good time to reflect on the witness of people like Donald and his door-holding friend who seem to have taken the fullness of this vision to heart. Their example gives me hope and vision for what I desire most for my own children as their worlds grow larger through new forms of knowledge and power: That they will never lose the urge to look for sparkly bits among the dust, or lock eyes with someone who wants to feel welcomed. If they can learn that, I think they’ll be okay anywhere.
NOTE: Shortly after I met Donald he chose to retire early to start a wonderful ministry called Developing a Christian Mind at Oxford (DCM) as a way to cultivate and support rigorously thoughtful and good-hearted Christians working in higher education. Our dear friends, Mary and Ard Louis, have long provided critical leadership to its development over the years (outside their professorial day jobs!) and it is now rightfully providing a good post-graduate model for places like The Veritas Forum (in the US) and elsewhere. Joel and I regularly support their work and encourage you to do the same if nurturing critical Christian thought is close to your heart too. We love DCM!
This made me tear. Appreciate you and these words immensely.
Love this!