Game of Thrones came up over dinner last night. One of our party was not a viewer but had stumbled upon the final five minutes of the series finale while channel surfing. “It didn’t seem as bad as everyone said,” was his review.

I disagreed. “Oh it was that bad.”

Then a third person asked for examples of shows that had ended well, gently tapping around the edge of an assertion that fans are never happy with the endings of the shows they love. I’m ready for this. I have two available for immediate recall: Halt And Catch Fire and The Leftovers. Both produced finales that were disappointing and fulfilling in all the right ways. The Americans was offered as a third example. I concur.

What I want from the ending of a show I love is ambiguity. Please don’t try to resolve every conflict. I also want consistency; if your characters have ingratiated themselves to the audience by making self-defeating decisions and suffering the consequences, please don’t bail them out in the finale. Likewise, please don’t produce new traits and tendencies in the penultimate episode that need resolved in the finale.

Narrative endings are hard. When done well they are a gift.

“How long does it have to be?” is the wrong question for a writing assignment.

“Will this be on the final?” is the wrong question for a course.

“How many credits are required to graduate?” is the wrong question for a degree.

“Which degree is required?” is the wrong question for a career.

“What career will make me happy?” is the wrong question for a vocation.

The Lord of The Rings.

Game of Thrones.

Harry Potter.

They all have a a pre-story containing a great victory over the main story’s antagonist. We’ve-seen-this-before is a prescient warning of each story’s protagonists.

This Memorial Day I can’t help noting the narrative device in the real world, because the foes my history teachers taught me our Allied Forces defeated two generations ago seem to have returned. Economic isolationism and ethnic nationalism feel especially ascendant. We’ve seen this before.

Remembering should include a commitment to resist the evils of the past today.

The syllabus listed the assignment for this week, so I gave it no thought before this week. That is, until the professor made reference to it in the past tense, like, “That assignment you did.”

Uh oh.

Sure enough, though it’s listed for this week it clearly says to bring it on the first day, and I’m the only flunkie who failed to do it.

Read the syllabus, kids. All of it.

I’m back in school because someone wrote me a letter by hand, in pen, on stationary. That’s not the only reason, of course; I was already looking at schools, so I was in the right frame of mind when the letter arrived, but I’m not sure anything but this letter would have moved me to pick up the phone and call the letter writer, and once I did that my application was in the mail.

The letter writer is a friend from the last time I was in school, 15 years ago. This is the second letter he’s written me in the intervening years. The first one sat on my desk begging for an answer for months, but the weight of expectation for a well-penned, thoughtful epistle in response grew too heavy and I eventually put it in the recycling. But I didn’t forget.

Writing a letter is a powerful act. When you can message, text, email, or call, the intention demanded by the medium becomes part of the message. A letter is a gift, but it conveys a loaded question as well: do you value me as much as I clearly value you? I wrote you a letter.

The answer may be no. You may not get a letter in return. But there are other ways letters work. My immediate response to the last letter I received was cumulative; the weight of my failure to reply to the first letter, years ago, was fully behind the urgency to jump at this one.

Write the letter.

I’m going back to school today. This should be the best educational experience of my life, because it’s backed by the most experience and motivated by the clearest sense of purpose I’ve ever directed towards an academic pursuit. Experience and purpose are powerful ingredients in education.

In our work of education and formation, though, many of the young people we work with are both inexperienced and unmotivated. They don’t know all the things they don’t know, and they’re there because their parents make them be.* The motivated ones are the easiest to teach and feel, right away, the most rewarding, because they validate our interest in our subject, be it the book of Genesis or T.S. Eliot.

The best teachers learn how to fashion what they need to do the work, even if out of thin air. My 12th grade English teacher created shared classroom experiences of literature that grounded learning and sparked motivation. I’m certain it took him decades in the profession to learn how to do that.

Here’s to school and the best teachers, the ones who never stop learning.

*Yes, I just used “they’re,” “there,” and “their” in the same sentence

I gave Daily Prayer books to the youth who were ordained and installed as officers yesterday. My church has ordained youth and installed them to one-year terms as Deacons and Elders since before I got there (my previous church did too), but it’s never occurred to me to mark the occasion of their ordination as a big deal. I’m slow on some things.

The gift itself will probably not be immediately useful, although I could be wrong about that; I was most ardent about daily Scripture reading and prayer when I was young. Still, it’s more an investment in a youth officer’s life of faith beyond their ordination and beyond their youth. I wrote a note in each one explaining that I’ve used one of these for 15 years.

What other ways to we have of signalling to young people that this faith and this church are longer-than-youth?

I got the bike from the repair shop yesterday. It’s good as new and ready to ride to work.

And it’s raining.

There’s always Monday.

I saw one of my favorite bands last night for the third time. Each show I’ve seen has been an utterly unique combination from their extensive catalog, even though they play some of the same fan favorites at all their shows. Last night there were deep cuts for the die-hards mixed in with lots of new stuff for the band to work on.

The best way to have new stuff to work on is to build a back catalog. And the best way to build a back catalog is to work on new stuff today.

Monday brought some warm, sunny weather. In the morning I encountered my neighbor saddling up his bike for a ride to work, and I thought of my bike, sequestered in the garage, un-ridden for about 20 months. Later that morning I got it out, brought out a soapy bucket and wiped it down, and rode it down the alley and back. Still works.

It’s at the bike shop now getting a tuneup. And a new chain. And saddle. I hope to ride it to work on Friday.

I’m very tentative about this kind of thing, when I try something new for the first time. I expect I won’t be able to keep it up, and so it will take a lot for me to say, “I ride my bike to work.” I’m not like my friend, who dives into new interests and pursuits with single-minded focus and uses phrases like, “The hiking community.” I’m more like my other friend. She ran the Boulder Boulder, like, five times, and yet she would say, “I’m not a runner.”

I’m a novice at everything. Don’t tell the pros.

I’m afraid the pros will call me a poseur. In high school I bought this beautiful pair of Diadora shoes, black with neon trim. I’d seen some of the soccer players wearing Diadora, and I thought they looked cool. The first time I wore them to school those soccer players gave me Hell. I wasn’t a soccer player; why was I wearing Diadora sneakers? I quit wearing them.

Everybody is trying it on, you know? Even the pros could stop tomorrow. That jogger you pass in your car who prompts a shock of guilt maybe hasn’t run for weeks, or ever. Today could be her first attempt. Or she could be training for her fifth marathon. What’s it matter?

One of the dangers of a culture driven by expertise and high performance is the loss of the novice.