MEREDITH. Our reading this morning is a segment from the conclusion of the classic 1936 Three-Act play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart, “You Can’t Take It With You.” Here’s the story leading up to the segment we will share.
The family patriarch, Grandpa Martin Vanderhof, has rejected the rat race and spends his days attending circuses and collecting snakes. Grandpa’s daughter Penny has taken to a typewriter that was accidentally delivered. She pounds away on it, turning out terrible play after terrible play. Grandpa’s son-in-law, Penny’s husband Paul, makes fireworks in the basement with Mr. De Pinna, a man who came to deliver ice years ago and never left. Penny and Paul have two young-adult daughters, Grandpa’s grand-daughters: Essie and Alice. Essie aspires to be a ballerina and makes candy. Essie’s husband Ed helps her with the candy business and loves printing strange slogans on his printing press.
Essie’s sister Alice is “the normal one.” Alice works as a secretary in a Wall Street office and she has fallen in love with Tony Kirby, her boss’s son. Alice worries that her family’s eccentricities might ruin her relationship with Tony. Tony is less concerned – he loves Alice for who she is. But Alice insists on having both families meet before they consider marriage — and she’s nervous about how that meeting will go. Act I ends with plans for a dinner where the very conventional, upper-class Kirbys will meet the unconventional, anarchic Sycamores.
In Act II, the Kirbys and Sycamores meet at the Sycamore home -- but the conservative Kirbys show up a day early. The son, Tony Kirby, has deliberately brought his parents over on the wrong day because he wants them to see the Sycamores as they naturally are. Tony hopes such an experience will show his parents that valuing freedom, individuality, and joy, as the Sycamores do, is a legitimate alternative to the Kirby values of wealth, status, and propriety. Disaster ensues.
The Kirbys are utterly bewildered and scandalized by the Sycamores' unconventional behavior. The evening spirals into awkward chaos: Penny wants to play silly parlor games about people's secret desires. Grandpa challenges Mr. Kirby’s rigid views on wealth and success. Mr. De Pinna bursts in covered in soot from the basement fireworks. Essie dances through the living room in her ballet costume. Essie’s husband Ed hands out pamphlets he has printed on his printing press, apparently oblivious to their seditious content.
Suddenly there’s an explosion from the homemade fireworks in the basement. In the chaos, the police arrive, arresting everyone for disturbing the peace and possessing illegal fireworks. Act II ends with everyone being carted off to jail — a social and literal explosion of the dinner’s intended civility.
The third and final act takes place the next day in the Sycamore living room, after the night of chaos and arrests. Alice is humiliated by the disastrous dinner and the social clash between the two families. Feeling that their worlds are too different, she decides to break off her engagement to Tony and plans to leave town. Mr. Kirby arrives to take Tony home and away from the chaos of the Sycamore family. But Grandpa has some thoughts to share with Mr. Kirby.
[Enter Kirby, Grandpa, Alice, and Tony]
KIRBY. [Trying go ease situation.] I need hardly say that this is as painful to Mrs. Kirby and myself as it is to you people. I—I'm sorry, but I'm sure you understand.
GRANDPA. Well yes – and in a way, no. Now, I'm not the kind of person tries to run other people's lives, but the fact is, Mr. Kirby, I don't think these two young people have got as much sense as—ah—you and I have.
ALICE. [Tense.] Grandpa, will you please not do this?
GRANDPA. [Disarmingly.] I'm just talking to Mr. Kirby. A cat can look at a king, can't he?
KIRBY. Are you ready, Tony?
GRANDPA. Mr. Kirby, I suppose after last night you think this family is kind of crazy?
KIRBY. No, I would not say that, although I am not accustomed to going out to dinner and spending the night in jail.
GRANDPA. Well, you've got to remember, Mr. Kirby, you came on the wrong night. Now tonight, I'Il bet you, nothing'll happen at all. Maybe.
KIRBY. Mr. Vandethof, it was not merely last night that convinced Mrs. Kirby and myself that this engagement would be unwise.
TONY. Father, I can handle my own affairs. Alice, for the last time, will you marry me?
ALICE. No, Tony. I know exactly what your father means, and he's right.
TONY. No, he's not, Alice.
GRANDPA. Alice, you're in love with this boy, and you're not marrying him because we're the kind of people we are.
ALICE. Grandpa --
GRANDPA. I know. You think the two families wouldn't get along. Well, maybe they wouldn't — but who says they're right and we're wrong?
ALICE. I didn't say that, Grandpa. I only feel….
GRANDPA. Well, what I feel is that Tony's too nice a boy to wake up twenty years from now with nothing in his life but stocks and bonds.
KIRBY. How's that?
GRANDPA. Yes. Mixed up and unhappy, the way you are.
[Alice exits]
KIRBY. [Outraged.] I beg your pardon, Mr. Vanderhof. I am a very happy man.
GRANDPA, Are you?
KIRBY. Certainly I am.
GRANDPA. I don't think so. What do you think you get your indigestion from? Happiness? No, sir. You get it because most of your time is spent.in doing things you don't want to do.
KIRBY. I don't do anything I don't want to do.
GRANDPA. Yes, you do. You said last night that at the end of a week in Wall Street you're pretty near crazy. Why do you keep on doing it?
KIRBY. Why do I keep on—-why, that's my business. A man can't give up his business.
GRANDPA. Why not? You've got all the money you need. You can't take it with you.
KIRBY. That's a very easy thing to say, Mr. Vanderhof. But I have spent my entire life building up my business.
GRANDPA. And what's it got you ? Same kind of mail every morning, same kind of deals, same kind of meetings, same dinners at night, same indigestion. Where does the fun come in? Don't you think there ought to be something more, Mr. Kirby? You must have wanted more than that when you started out. We haven't got too much time, you know—any of us.
KIRRBY. What do you expect me to do? Live the way you do? Do nothing?
GRANDPA. Well, I have a lot of fun. Time enough for everything — read, talk, visit the zoo now and then, practice my darts, even have time to notice when spring comes around. Don't see anybody I don't want to, don't have six hours of things I have to do every day before I get one hour to do what I like in — and I haven't taken bicarbonate of soda in thirty-five years. What's the matter with that?
KIRBY. The matter with that? Suppose we all did it? A fine world we'd have, everybody going to zoos. Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Vanderhof. Who would do the work?
GRANDPA. There's always people that like to work — you can't stop them. Inventions, and they fly the ocean. There're always people to go down to Wall Street, too — because they like it. But from what I've seen of you I don't think you're one of them. I think you're missing something.
KIRBY. I am not aware of missing anything.
GRANDPA. I wasn't either, till I quit. I used to get down to that office nine o'clock sharp no matter how I felt. Lay awake nights for fear I wouldn't get that contract. Used to worry about the world, too. Got all worked up about whether Cleveland or Blaine was going to be elected President—seemed awful important at the time, but who cares now? What I'm trying to say, Mr. Kirby, is that I've had thirty-five years that nobody can take away from me, no matter what they do to the world. See?
KIRBY. Yes, I do see. And it's a very dangerous philosophy, Mr. Vanderhof. It's—it's un-American. And it's exactly why I'm opposed to this marriage. I don't want Tony to come under its influence.
TONY. What's the matter with it, Father?
KIRBY. Matter with it? Why, it’s – it’s downright Communism, that's what it is.
TONY. You didn't always think so.
KIRBY. I most certainly did. What are you talking about?
TONY. I'll tell you what I'm talking about. You didn't always think so, because there was a time when you wanted to be a trapeze artist.
KIRBY. Why — why, don't be an idiot, Tony.
TONY. Oh, yes, you did. I came across those letters you wrote to Grandfather. Do you remember those?
KIRBY. NO! How dared you read those letters ? How dared you?
GRANDPA: Why, isn't that wonderful? Did you wear tights, Mr. Kirby?
KIRBY, Certainly not! The whole thing is absurd. I was fourteen years old at the time.
TONY. Yes, but at eighteen you wanted to be a saxophone player, didn't you?
KIRBY. Tony!
TONY. And at twenty-one you ran away from home because Grandfather wanted you to go into the business. It's all down there in black and white. You didn't always think so.
GRANDPA. Well, well, well!
KIRBY. I may have had silly notions in my youth, but thank God my father knocked them out of me. I went into the business and forgot about them.
TONY. Not altogether, Father. There's still a saxophone in the back of your clothes closet.
GRANDPA. There is?
KIRBY. [Quietly.] That’s enough, Tony. We'll discuss this later.
[Alice re-enters]
TONY, No, I want to talk about it now. I think Mr. Vanderhof is right—dead right. I'm never going back to that office. I've always hated it, and I'm not going on with it. And I'll tell you something else. I didn't make a mistake last night. I knew it was the wrong night. I brought you here on purpose.
ALICE. Tony!
TONY. Because I wanted to wake you up. I wanted you to see a real family—as they really were. A family that loved and understood each other. You don't understand me. You've never had time. Well, I'm not going to make your mistake. I'm clearing out.
KIRBY. Clearing out ? What do you mean?
TONY, I mean I'm not going to be pushed into the business just because I'm your son. I'm getting out while there's still time.
KIRBY. But, Tony, what are you going to do?
TONY. I don't know. Maybe I'll be a bricklayer, but at least I'll be doing something I want to do.
GRANDPA. You know, Mr. Kirby, Tony is going through just what you and did when we were his age. I think if you listen hard enough you can hear yourself saying the same things to your father twenty-five years ago. We all did it. And we were right. How many of us would be willing to settle when we're young for what we eventually get? All those plans we make -- what happens to them? It's only a handful of the lucky ones that can look back and say that they even came close. So, before they clean out that closet, Mr. Kirby, I think I'd get in a few good hours on that saxophone.
MEREDITH: At just that point, the Grand Duchess Olga Katrina comes in from the kitchen. She’s a deposed Russian royal now working in Manhattan as a waitress, and, as a friend of Kolenkhov, Essie’s Russian ballet instructor, she has become yet another colorful character in the Sycamores’ circle. The Grand Duchess announces that she has been cooking dinner for everyone and the blintzes are now ready. Mr. Kirby begins to soften -- perhaps from Grandpa’s words – or from his son’s revelations and the remembrance of his own youthful aspirations – or perhaps he’s impressed that the Sycamores have a Grand Duchess cooking blintzes in their kitchen. He agrees to stay for dinner. Tony and Alice reconcile. As the family gathers around the table, Grandpa offers a blessing.
GRANDPA. Well, Sir, here we are again. We want to say thanks once more for everything You've done for us. Things seem to be going along fine. Alice is going to marry Tony, and it looks as if they're going to be very happy. Of course, the fireworks blew up, but that was Mr. De Pinna's fault, not Yours. We've all got our health, and, as far as anything else is concerned, we'll leave it to You. Thank You.
* * * * * * *
SERMON
During this graduation season, what I have for you today is as much a Commencement Address as it is a sermon because it’s about discerning your vocation as you head forth. I’m speaking today especially to our graduating seniors – though all of us are, after all, graduating from our pasts and commencing into what is next. So I will begin this Commencement Address as a true old fogey such as myself would begin an address to young graduates: by saying, “When I was your age . . .”
When I was about your age – 17 or so -- I saw two plays within the span of about a year that were transformative for me. They changed my outlook on life. Both these plays were originally written and produced in the 1930s.
One was Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” – which powerfully impressed upon me the transience and preciousness of ordinary human life decades before I had Zen teachers who stressed this point. Even the smallest, most mundane moments of daily life hold profound beauty and meaning. Emily Webb comes to realize this in the final act, after her death, and she cries out:
“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?”Emily’s challenge pierced my teenage heart, and it has lived there ever since.
The other formative play I saw in my youth was George Kaufman and Moss Hart’s, “You Can’t Take It With You.” I was charmed with the eccentric Sycamores, as theatre-goers have been since 1936. The particular point that got me was Grandpa’s response when Mr. Kirby says: “Who would do the work?” When Kirby asked that question, I leaned forward in my seat because that’s just what I was wondering, too. The Sycamores were delightful characters, but somebody’s got to do the work, right?
Grandpa replies:
“There's always people that like to work — you can't stop them. There're always people to go down to Wall Street, too—because they like it.”That was such a liberating message. It gave me permission, before I’d heard of Joseph Campbell, to “follow my bliss.” A few years later, I was a college sophomore settling on a major, and I chose philosophy – not pre-law, or pre-med, or business – and Grandpa Vanderhof’s permission helped make that decision possible.
In the course of those philosophy classes, I learned about Kantian ethics, which casts some light back on the issue between Mr. Kirby and Grandpa. Kantian ethics tells us to “so act that the maxim of our action could be willed a universal law for all.” In other words, before you do something, ask yourself, “What if everybody did that?” Mr. Kirby, may, perhaps, be seen as operating from Kantian principles. “Suppose we all did it?” he asks Grandpa – insinuating that if everyone lived as Grandpa did then the world would be a mess.
But Grandpa points out the weakness in Kantian ethics. We need not – at least, not always – guide ourselves by what would happen if everybody did something because the empirical fact is that, whatever you might decide to do, most other people simply won’t also do that.
So you might turn to utilitarianism: a school of ethics that says, so act as to create the greatest good for the greatest number. The problem with basing our actions on their results is that we know very little of what the results of a given action will be. Aside from a few possible actions with foreseeable short term consequences, calculating the probabilities of all possible outcomes within a given time period, and deciding how to weight the value of each outcome, is more than a human brain can do with any accuracy. If Kantian ethics is not empirical enough – that is, it ignores the empirical reality that other people will do different things – then utilitarian ethics to too empirical – that is, it asks us to predict empirical results beyond human capacity to do so.
What both of those schools of ethics ask us to do is think about what would be the right thing to do for anyone similarly situated. They offer different procedures for deciding what would be the right thing to do for anybody who finds themselves in a given situation, but their root concern is with what is right for any person.
But the question of calling asks a different question: what are you called to do? You, in all your uniqueness, with your particular gifts and shadows, obsessions and interests, knowing what you know and having the blind spots you have – what is yours to do that wouldn’t be anyone else’s?
A person’s true calling cannot be assessed on Kantian grounds or on utilitarian grounds. In discerning your calling, the question is not, “What if everybody did that?” but, rather, “What is it that calls to my unique heart to do, knowing that others will make other choices?” Not: “What will be the consequences for the world?” (because, except in a very limited way, those cannot be predicted), but, rather, “How do I be true to who I am?”
Grandpa says there will always be people who want to work in business and on Wall Street. Some people are called to that sort of work. Others are called to a different path. We need not worry about whether the world will fall apart if everyone follows our example – because not everyone will.
The discernment and carrying out of your life’s calling involves balancing three directives. One: follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell says. But that’s not the only factor. Two, try to help others. Tend to the needs of this bruised and hurting world. It’s true that we can’t predict consequences very well, but we can try to live from care – and then let consequences take care of themselves. Three, bring a wholesome discipline to the execution of your vocation. The denizens of the Sycamore household are great at following their bliss, but rather neglectful of numbers two and three: helping the world, and having some discipline.
The point about balancing your unique talents and interests with the world’s need was elegantly expressed in an oft-quoted passage from the 1973 book, Wishful Thinking, by presbyterian minister and theologian Frederick Buechner. It is worth remembering.
“ ‘Vocation’ ” he writes, “comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God.”(Or as we might say: the work a person is called to by their true, authentic self.)
“There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-Interest.”(I.e., what is the authentic voice for you in the midst of your passing impulses)
“By and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren't helping your patients much either. Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”So, yes, you do have to take into account what the world needs – along with looking at your unique gifts and interests – the idiosyncratic joy that swells your heart even if it swells no one else’s.
A healthy society needs diversity: some to trade stocks (if that’s their joy), some to dance through the living room, some to make blintzes for whoever’s around. But neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do.
Around that same time that I first saw “Our Town” and “You Can’t Take It with you,” another voice from earlier in the 20th century was also ringing in my ears: Max Ehrmann’s 1927 “Desiderata,” which has a line,
“Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.”So, there’s factor number 3: there is a role for wholesome discipline – for sticking with something even when it isn’t all that joyful. If your joy is painting landscapes, or writing poetry, or playing music, for those activities to rise from hobby to vocation – even if it’s an unpaid vocation -- will require a discipline, a commitment to practice your chosen craft even when you might not feel like it. Follow your bliss, yes, and follow it even when it’s not feeling very blissful. Discipline and hard work matter. As both Joseph Campbell and Parker Palmer both emphasize, true vocation requires commitment, labor, and resilience to bring good to the world. In that sense, the Sycamores embody the spark of vocation without the steady flame.
“You Can’t Take It With You,” has had enduring popularity since it first hit the stage in the 1930s. Through the 1950s and 60s, it seemed every high school in the country was putting on “You Can’t Take It With You.” It was less common in the 1970s and 80s – though that’s when I first saw it. Then, starting in the 1990s, there has been a modest resurgence of productions of the play. A successful revival with James Earl Jones as Grandpa Vanderhof opened on Broadway in 2014 to critical acclaim and multiple award nominations. Our own Faithyna Leonard tells me that the Simpson College senior play of 2018 was “You Can’t Take It With You,” and that she herself played Penny Sycamore in that production.
It’s a play with perennial appeal because we need that reminder that one’s worth is not dependent on one’s bank account, that life can be meaningful and joyful without money, status, or conformity. We need to see an exuberant celebration of people doing what brings them joy, not driven by duty or market value. We need to see loving, generous, tolerant people who have made their household a haven of hospitality for outsiders and misfits, who don’t take themselves too seriously, who reject the capitalist notion of relentless self-improvement in favor of delight for delight’s sake. We need to be prompted to ask ourselves what might be in our closets gathering dust like Mr. Kirby’s saxophone – and reminded that it’s not too late to pull it out, and blow on that thing for an hour every now and then.
But what we need to BE – as opposed to the reminders we need to see on a stage – is people engaged in social justice, civic responsibility, and addressing the suffering of the broader world – people with the discipline to turn interests and inclinations into real service or lasting beauty. Without that, the Sycamores don’t have vocations – they just have hobbies. Hobbies are nice to have along with a vocation, but they are no substitute for vocation.
What Grandpa Vanderhof tried to teach Mr. Kirby, what Emily Webb learned too late, and what Joseph Campbell and Frederick Buechner and Max Ehrmann are all pointing to -- is this: This brief and precious life is not something to be endured while chasing wealth, or status, or the approval of others. We are called to discover what makes our hearts sing — and then, to bring commitment and discipline to training ourselves to sing it.
Whether you are graduating from high school or graduating into your 97th year, you have gifts. So: what hunger in the world might your gladness help to feed? And, along with that vocation, what are the recreations that restore your spirit? Pull that saxophone out of the closet. Write that poem, plant that garden, march in that Pride parade, teach that child, tend that wound, befriend that lonely soul. Not because everyone should — but because it is what is yours to do.
May it be so. Amen.
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