Kent Nerburn

As Christmas approaches, a standard subject of conversation among friends I meet on the street is what we are each doing for the holidays. Far too often I hear people I care for deeply saying something to the effect that they are not going to see their families because they don’t get along with a brother or sister or some other relative.

This saddens me, because it seems such a false righteousness.

For most of us, the commercial bludgeoning combined with a decrease in traditional religious belief has flattened the season into something less than the magic we long for and remember. Santa Claus displays promoting “glow in the dark” manger yard scenes don’t do much for our spirits, and we don’t have enough Christian fervor or commitment to fight against this venal consumerism. So, in our own fashions, we roll over and play dead. We line up to buy and try to find a way to keep some vestige of spiritual meaning in a season where Jesus plays second fiddle to an XBox.

There are, blessedly, families that have managed to transcend this spiritual diminution of the most cherished of American holiday seasons, and they deserve our unvarnished admiration. But, by and large, the marketplace has won, and in doing so, it has deadened our souls.

What we have left, and what we must cherish, is family. To hold grudges, keep distances, or nurse hurts at this time of year is to deny one of the truest gifts we are given in life — the gift of our love for those with whom we have been given the good fortune to share our time on this earth.

All you need to do is find someone who has no family and this will come into stark relief. Those who are displaced, have lost those they love through death or disaster, or who were cast aside by family sometime in their lives, and you will feel the sad absence of that which the rest of us too often take for granted.

This is a time to reach out and heal. We all feel righteous about something in regard to others around us. We all feel poorly served by someone or some event. But this is not the season to assert such petty angers. Small slights that have become big rifts; distances that have been long accepted; differences that have created indifference between and among family members, should be put aside for this season.

We are all human; we all struggle; we all make mistakes. We do not all share the same world view or the same values. But we all yearn for love, and we all have corners of ourselves where our own particular goodness shines through. This is the season to look for that goodness in others.

I hope you will each take the spirit of the season into your heart, even if the religious beliefs on which it is based are no longer part of your lives. God does work in strange ways, you know. And a season that calls out to us to love may be one of the most subtle and clever.

Let’s keep our ears open to that call. Let’s do what we can to warm the space between us and another. It is the best gift we can give, and the best way to find the power of spirit in a world and a season that sorely need it.

I recently received a note from a friend of mine who is embarking on the difficult journey of stepparenthood. I knew her when she was just a girl — she was the close friend of a girl to whom I was a stepparent at the time. I was younger in those days, and I don’t think I did the job very well. I couldn’t figure out the dynamic and, having come from a traditional family setting, couldn’t enter into the emotional struggles of a young girl trying to live with a stepfather. I got lost somewhere between trying to be a buddy and trying to be a dad, while keeping a confused distance that did not reflect my emotional attachment to the child.

I’ve done a better job this time around with my wife’s children by her first marriage. It still hasn’t been perfect, but, over the years, I’ve figured a few things out. So, when my young friend, now grown from girl to woman, wrote me to tell me that she was going to be the mother to a brood of four kids that came with her new husband, I thought I’d write her a few observations. I decided that I’d pass them along on the website, as well.

Maybe you’ll agree with them; maybe you won’t. But all of us who have tried to be stepparents know that it’s a tough task. Maybe my thoughts will prompt some responses of your own, or maybe, if you are a stepparent or a stepparent-to-be, they will give some shape to your own struggles with this most difficult version of parenting.

Here they are:

You are about to embark on one of the most difficult jobs in the world — stepparenting. It is especially hard if the biological parent is a presence in the childrens’ lives. You never want to speak poorly of that person, because the children want to love their parents, even if the parents don’t get along. You have to learn to be a parent without being a mother, and that’s almost impossible, because you are given all the responsibilities of being a mother.

I guess the most important advice I can give you is to devote all your emotional energies into allowing the children a “soft landing” in working out their familial dynamics. Ideally, over the years, you become at least distant friends with the biological mother, so the children can think of themselves as having two moms rather than having to choose between two different women who both are making a claim on being mom.

Assuming the biological mom is in the picture, at least one of the kids is going to have a primary attachment to her, and, at one time or another, each of the kids will say, “You’re so mean. I’m going to go back and live with my mom.” You need to give them emotional permission to go through these whipsaw experiences. They will value you more in the long run, and they will grow to be healthier human beings. After all, their emotional lives are in your hands right now, and that is a very great responsibility.

Here’s how I’d think of it: in the privacy of your own heart, look upon yourself as the mother of the whole family, in all its extensions, whose job it is to heal the wounds and make everyone feel safe in their feelings, whatever those might be. Make sure you are steady and supportive, but don’t let yourself get involved in even the most subtle putting down of the biological mother, even if the kids seem to be begging you to do so. What you want these kids to come away with is, “We’re all human, we all have our strengths and weaknesses, your mom is a good person who loves you, and it’s all right to love her. What went on between your dad and mom wasn’t your fault and you are now lucky kids because you have two moms, and I’ll do my best to give you my love and guidance as best as I am able, just as your mom will give you her love and guidance as best as she is able. Just remember, you are loved by many people.”

If you can stay out of the wounded space between the two biological parents and assist in any way you can in returning that space to health, you will be offering those children a priceless gift.

One of the most interesting aspects of being in any creative field is watching the reviews of your work come in.

Last weekend saw the arrival of two new sets of observations on Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce.

The reviewer for Seattle’s Elliott Bay bookstore, one of America’s premier independent booksellers, called it “…a commanding work that paints the legend of this misrepresented chief with fresh and startling brushstrokes.”

The reviewer from the Washington Times, the major Washington D.C. daily that is the print equivalent of Fox News, called it a docudrama with invented dialogue and prose that “comes in shades of purple.”

Clearly, I prefer the glowing praise of the former assessment and take requisite umbrage at the petulant tones and false claims of invented dialogue in the latter. But one must look beyond the ultimate “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” of a reviewer in deciding whether or not listen to his or her judgment.

I did a fair amount of art reviewing a number of years ago, and what I learned is that the good review illuminates, the bad review judges. You, as the reader of a review, have a right to know the preconceptions of the reviewer, even if they are sketched in only a few sentences. And you have a right to expect a reviewer to walk you into the center of a work and give you the eyes with which to look around.

The very best reviewers are those who can craft sentences that illuminate with almost epiphanic brevity and clarity. They align your thinking on an entire work. They are the literary equivalents of Zen teachers who can, with a word or gesture, put everything you are seeing or thinking into a larger context.

As a writer, I look for the same thing in an editor. An editor who can help me see my work with a fresh eye is a thing to treasure; an editor who critiques and niggles the specifics is more of an obstruction than an aid.

You, as a reader/viewer/listener, need to be selective in taking in the words of reviewers. Reviewers are usually folks who either have too much on their plates to ever go as deeply as they’d like into a work, or are hired guns doing piecework for a newspaper or magazine and are trying to make their bones, grind a particular intellectual ax, or curry favor with a particular author,painter, composer, or whatever. With such odds stacked against them, it is small wonder that reviewers’ opinions can wander all over the map.

You need to learn to look upon a reviewer as a teacher. Did he or she illuminate a subject for you? Did his or her comments prepare you to more fully understand a work when you go confront it? Or did the comments just tell you whether a work was good or bad, with a few selected passages to buttress the reviewer’s opinion?

A good review takes you on a journey into the work or whacks you over the head with an insight that will illuminate your own journey through the work. If it does neither of these things, take it with a grain of salt.

Here’s the simple rule: If it deepens your own experience of discovery, it is a gift. If it tells you what to see or how to think about what to see, it is like going on a drive through unfamiliar country with a boor riding shotgun.