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 oday
is a sort of mixed bag. It is both Robert Fulghum day, and a postlude to
Thanksgiving Day. A time to laugh, and a time to be grateful for our
lives so filled with good fortune. A time to reflect on some of the
truisms of life imbedded in daily experience, and a time to celebrate
our spiritual community. A time to get up close and personal with a
great Unitarian Universalist story teller, and a time to remind
ourselves what this past Thursday was really about.
Robert Fulghum
was born in 1937, and grew up in Waco, Texas. In an interview with USA
Today, in response to the question, did you have a happy childhood he
answered, “ “No. I was an only child. My mother had me for a strange
reason — as an answer to a prayer to heal her from TB, so she wanted me
to be a gift for God. My father didn't want children. My mother and I
never got along, and my father was never around.” Not the background you
would guess for one of our most treasured humorists.
In his youth he
worked as a ditch-digger, newspaper carrier, ranch hand, and singing
cowboy. After college and a short career with IBM, he returned to
graduate school to complete a degree in theology. For 22 years he served
as a parish minister of Unitarian Universalist churches in the Pacific
Northwest. During this same period he taught drawing, painting, and
philosophy at the Lakeside School in Seattle. Fulghum is an accomplished
painter and sculptor. He sings, and plays the guitar and mando-cello. He
was a founding member of the authors’ collective rock-and-roll band, the
Rock-Bottom Remainders.
Robert Fulghum
has four children and nine grandchildren. He lives in Seattle,
Washington, and on the Greek island of Crete.
He has published
seven best-selling books: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in
Kindergarten, It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It, Uh-Oh, Maybe (Maybe
Not), From Beginning to End—The Rituals of Our Lives, True Love and
Words I Wish I Wrote. There are currently more than 16 million copies of
his books in print, published in 27 languages in 103 countries.
The fifteenth
anniversary edition of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in
Kindergarten, reconsidered, revised, and expanded with twenty-five new
essays, was published recently by Ballantine Books .
What On Earth
Have I Done?, a new book of essays was published this fall by St.
Martin’s Press.
His novel, THIRD
WISH, was recently published in Czech, Slovak and Hungarian.
Fulghum has
performed in two television adaptations of his work for PBS, and is a
Grammy nominee for the spoken word award. He has been a speaker at
numerous colleges, conventions, and public events across the United
States. He has been a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist. His
writing has been adapted for the stage in two theater pieces: All I
Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,and Uh-Oh, Here Comes
Christmas.
Here is the
essay on which his fame primarily rests. It came from the UU church
newsletter he served in the Pacific Northwest. It was read and
appreciated by one of his parishioners who was a literary agent .. and
the rest is history.
“All I ever
needed to know, I learned in Kindergarten”
“Most of
what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and
how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of
the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand box at nursery
school.
These are
the things I learned. Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't
take things that aren't yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt
somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and
cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and
think some and draw some and paint and sing and dance and play and
work everyday.
Take a nap
every afternoon. When you go out in the world, watch for traffic,
hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the
little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes
up and nobody really knows how or why. We are like that.
And then
remember that book about Dick and Jane and the first word you
learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK! Everything you need to know
is there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation,
ecology, and politics and sane living.
Think of
what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had
cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down
with our blankets for a nap. Or we had a basic policy in our nation
and other nations to always put things back where we found them and
clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you
are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and
stick together.”
Fulghum went on
from there to write the books I listed during the opening. Most are
books of short essays, some are hysterically funny, others gently
insightful, some with a serious point at the end. Let me give you a
sample of the funny.
He begins this
essay saying that of over 1000 weddings at which he has officiated, this
is the most memorable. The primary mover in the story is the mother of
the bride who carries out the planning and execution of a wedding filled
with excess, from the 18 piece orchestra to each of the 18 attendants
having their own designer tuxedo or dress. He then picks up the
narrative.
READ EXCERPT
This story comes
from his book, “It was on Fire When I Lay Down on it.” The title comes
from a real incident cited in the local newspaper of the fellow who was
rescued by fire and rescue personnel from his burning house. The fire
had started in a mattress in an upstairs bedroom. When asked how the
fire in the mattress had started the man stated, “I don’t know. It was
on fire when I lay down on it.” The mind boggles with possibilities.
Rev. Fulghum has
also been invited to make regular contributions to NPR. One of his
recent essays, just last month went like this:
Weekend
Edition Sunday, October 28, 2007
I believe in
dancing.
I believe it
is in my nature to dance by virtue of the beat of my heart, the
pulse of my blood and the music in my mind. So I dance daily.
The
seldom-used dining room of my house is now an often-used ballroom —
an open space with a hardwood floor, stereo and a disco ball. The
CD-changer has six discs at the ready: waltz, swing, country, rock
'n' roll, salsa and tango.
Each morning
when I walk through the house on the way to make coffee, I turn on
the music, hit the "shuffle" button and it's Dance Time! I dance
alone to whatever is playing. It's a form of existential aerobics, a
moving meditation.
Tango is a
recent enthusiasm. It's a complex and difficult dance, so I'm up to
three lessons a week, three nights out dancing, and I'm off to
Buenos Aires for three months of immersion in tango culture.
The first
time I went tango dancing I was too intimidated to get out on the
floor. I remembered another time I had stayed on the sidelines, when
the dancing began after a village wedding on the Greek island of
Crete. The fancy footwork confused me. "Don't make a fool of
yourself," I thought. "Just watch."
Reading my
mind, an older woman dropped out of the dance, sat down beside me,
and said, "If you join the dancing, you will feel foolish. If you do
not, you will also feel foolish. So, why not dance?"
And, she
said she had a secret for me. She whispered, "If you do not dance,
we will know you are a fool. But if you dance, we will think well of
you for trying."
Recalling
her wise words, I took up the challenge of tango.
A friend
asked me if my tango-mania wasn't a little ambitious. "Tango? At
your age? You must be out of your mind!"
On the
contrary: It's a deeply pondered decision. My passion for tango
disguises a fearfulness. I fear the shrinking of life that goes with
aging. I fear the boredom that comes with not learning and not
taking chances. I fear the dying that goes on inside you when you
leave the game of life to wait in the final checkout line.
I seek the
sharp, scary pleasure that comes from beginning something new — that
calls on all my resources and challenges my mind, my body and my
spirit, all at once.
My goal now
is to dance all the dances as long as I can, and then to sit down
contented after the last elegant tango some sweet night and pass on
because there wasn't another dance left in me.
So, when
people say, "Tango? At your age? Have lost your mind?" I answer,
"No, and I don't intend to."
Fulghum has also
recently written a novel, in Czech, not yet in English. In it he has one
of his characters, a writer, talk about writing. He is describing the
writing process to his friend, an actress. It is, Fulghum says, a
telling passage into his own mind. It also demonstrates his depth as a
writer:
“Madness. I
risk madness. Going crazy. Most mornings I get up out of bed and
step into a pit – a wild animal trap. The pit is me. And I spend the
rest of the day trying to talk my way out of the hole on a ladder of
words.
“Children
are taught that ‘Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words
can never hurt you.’ Not true. Words can destroy your mind or break
your heart or take you on dangerous trips. Words and sentences and
paragraphs can destroy you. Imagination can kill you. Or make you
wish you were dead.
“Sometimes I
feel like I’m driving a wagon pulled by six wild horses down a steep
hill. Only luck prevents a disastrous spill at the bottom.
“There’s a
card in front of my computer that says, ‘It’s fiction. Invent
anything.’ If you give yourself that kind of permission to unlock
your inhibitions and live on the other side of the mirror, it can be
very hard to come back to the world of telephones and bills and real
people and trees.
“The world I
invent is usually more exciting, more interesting, and more
rewarding than the so-called real world. What might happen - what
could happen - is always more satisfying than what did or does
happen. That’s Aristotle’s notion, actually. ‘A probable
impossibility is preferable to an improbable possibility.’
“I can make
things be by thinking them up. I can exist on that. There are many
people in asylums who would understand and agree.”
Fulghum still
considers himself a Unitarian Universalist minister though he has not
been the minister at a specific church for about 20 years. He feels his
ministry is his writing. He also leads occasional workshops at Starr
King and other UU places around the country. When asked why his writing
has been as popular as it has over the years he responded “I talk about
very serious human affairs but with a lightness of heart.” Another
example of that lightness of heart with depth is:
“The grass
is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence.
Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is
watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend
the grass wherever you may be.”
After his first
three books of essays, Fulghum wrote a very different kind of book
called, “From Beginning to End,” the rituals of our lives. In it he
shares his long ministerial experience of welcoming little ones into the
world, marriage ceremonies, memorial services, and many other forms of
ritual. That part of what he has shared is a worthy introduction to our
own ritual today. As we turn from Robert’s words to a brief ritual of
gratitude, our finishing acknowledgement of our just completed
Thanksgiving holiday.
Moment of
silence. Ritual of gratitude…….simply say a word of phrase of what you
are thankful or grateful for in your life.
One of the many
things I am grateful for is humor. The lightness and joy that genuine
playful humor can bring into the world. That is the humor of Robert
Fulghum. Bob, we are grateful for your whimsical, kind, insightful,
playful, respectful, compassionate sense of humor. Which flows from your
essence, your own true self. You are a funny, profound, kind human
being. We are proud to claim you as our very own UU humorist.
Mark Twain, eat
your heart out!
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