Tom Sawyer and the Magpie Mind
Taking Stock Half Way Through 2025
“Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” -Tom Sawyer1
On July 2nd, I was sitting on the balcony of my condo in Los Angeles. We were exactly halfway through the year on that day and I was taking stock. My mind was taking me back before January 1 and well back beyond the 23 years my wife and sons had lived in L.A. I saw myself as a child in Houston, Texas on a Saturday morning. My father had given me some yard work to do while he worked on other home chores. But when he returned to check on my progress, he found me diligently working at my task, but with several friends helping me. As he later told me, he had seen me do this before. On this Saturday, however, he gave me a new name. He christened me “Tom Sawyer.”
I haven’t always been comfortable with the natural inclination to include others in what I’m doing. I used to fear it was a sign of laziness or that I was somehow making people do things they didn’t want to do. But now, as I take stock of my life decades later, I can see this tendency is a gift that I have been able to share with others.
It is a gift that keeps on giving.
My sons are now 26 and 19. Lucas, the oldest, is married to Karren and both are gainfully employed. My younger son, Sam, is preparing for his sophomore year at Northeastern University. They are older and more mature. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need their father. They need me differently.
Further afield, my mother-in-law is moving toward her 9th decade of life, while my father and mother have already reached that incredible milestone. My step-mother is well into her 7th decade of life with my widowed sister about a decade behind her. They haven’t “needed” me for decades. But now that we are in a different chapter of life, they do. The role of family “patriarch” has become heavier on my brow since we lost my father-in-law and my brother-in-law in the last few years. For the youngest child of the family, it is an unfamiliar role. It isn’t fully mine yet, but I can grow in the role by leveraging my “Tom Sawyer. ” My goal isn’t to make my family do what I want them to do. I want to embody some of the qualities of the now negative title of patriarch, Greek “patria” meaning family and “pater” meaning father. As Patriarch Tom Sawyer, my role is about helping my family live into the gifts they have been given as we do life together.
The Magpie Mind
I walked up to the second floor of our condo (past our garage…how many people have a garage on the second floor of their home?) to my office on the third floor. Though I liked the idea of growing old as Patriarch Tom Sawyer I felt a familiar frustration. I’ve been bothered by the plethora of half-read books, stacks of half-baked ideas, the profusion of unfinished essays (presently numbering 48 drafts on Substack alone) that surround me in my office. I felt this way for decades. But a new understanding of the situation struck me.
I remembered reading in a biography entitled Super-Infinite that described the poet and preacher John Donne, as having a “magpie mind.” That is:
“Donne's poetry is characterized by its eclectic nature, drawing from a vast and diverse array of sources and knowledge bases. He gathered ideas from fields like science, romance, theology, politics, and logic, incorporating them into his work.”
When I read this paragraph it was as though I had looked in a mirror. Not only do I see Tom Sawyer in my reflection, but I also see a Magpie looking right back at me. The description continued:
“Similar to how a magpie collects shiny objects, Donne collected and stored ideas, images, and authoritative references in his mind, and possibly through devices like a Commonplace Book.”
The books, ideas, and essays I see around me are not supposed to be finished. They are the beginning of my work, not the end. They are the source of my study, not the goal. I put my Mapgie mind together with my unfinished projects and saw that they weren’t a sign of some lack of character, but were yet another gift to be enjoyed.
The major motivation in my life is new ideas. A fresh and creative thought in the morning motivates me like nothing else. I am energized to follow the idea, to research it, to see where it leads. Sometimes this process goes nowhere. But I enjoy the journey so much that a dead end takes nothing away from the pleasure of the experience. Sometimes it does result in a finished Substack article, a book or a sermon. But the most important thing to me is to collect interesting thoughts and ideas in my “nest,” to throw them together in unusual ways, and to see what results. I could do that with joy for the rest of my life. I’m not going to call my office “my office.” It is my study. It is my artist studio!
Now, how to put Tom Sawyer and the Magpie Mind together. That is the subject of a future Substack post.
In the meantime, what are some aspects of your personality that you are uncomfortable with? Do you need to get rid of them, or is there a way you could own them and make more good happen in your life, relationships, and community?
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, Chapter 2, p. 12.
I love that your Heavenly Father, who knows you better than you know yourself, is opening insights into how you are wonderfully and fearfully made.