Untying Knots
by Alan Howell
Director of Church Relations
In Jerry Spinelli’s children’s book, Maniac Magee, the titular character is an orphan who ends up navigating two worlds in the same, segregated town. Even though he is homeless for much of the story, he is the one who, in some surprising ways, ends up bridging challenging cultural and racial differences.
There is a scene in the middle of the book that has really captured my imagination. While staying with Amanda’s family, they discover that Maniac is great at untangling knots. Kids in the neighborhood line up to get his help with their shoelaces, their yo-yos, etc. And then Amanda encourages Maniac to take on something bigger: there is a local pizza restaurant that offers a prize to the person who can untie an old, gigantic knot. Cobble’s Knot has been an icon in this racially divided town. While there have been many contestants over the years, no one has been able to untie it.
Maniac and Amanda arrive at the restaurant, and the owner starts the contest by hanging the Knot from a flagpole and bringing out a square table for Maniac to stand on. “Besides the tangle itself, there was the weathering of that first year, when the Knot hung outside and became hard as a rock. You could barely make out the individual strands. It was grimy, moldy, crusted over. Here and there a loop stuck out, maybe big enough to stick your pinky finger through, pitiful testimony to the challengers who had tried and failed. And there stood Maniac, turning the Knot, checking it out.” (p. 70). He began by patiently pecking at it slowly, knocking away the crust and teasing out different loops.
Now, this restaurant is situated between the white side and the black side of town, and as word gets out about Maniac taking on the knot, a crowd from all over gathered. “What people saw they didn’t believe. The knot had grown, swelled, exploded. It was a frizzy globe—the newspaper the next day described it as a ‘gigantic hairball.’ Now, except for a packed-in clump at the center, it was practically all loops. You could look through it and see Maniac calmly working on the other side. ‘He found the end!’ somebody gasped, and the corner burst into applause” (p. 71-2).
Then after a brief snack, Spinelli says that “Maniac did the last thing anybody expected: he lay down and took a nap right there on the table, the knot hanging above him like a small hairy planet, the mob buzzing all around him. Maniac knew what the rest of them didn’t: the hardest part was yet to come. He had to find the right routes to untangle the mess, or it would just close up again like a rock and probably stay that way forever… In exactly fifteen minutes, he woke up and started back in… And then, around dinnertime, a huge roar went up, a volcano of cheers. Cobble’s Knot was dead. Undone. Gone. It was nothing but string” (p. 72-3).
The world is complicated. It is full of knots - big and small. And if we’re around people long enough we’ll find that knotty complications have been with them (and us) for a while. What do we do when we encounter old and crusty problems? How do we begin to untie knots formed by history, mistakes, good intentions, bad motives, biases, etc.? It may take some time for us to get a good feel for the scope of the problem. We may need to take the lead in untying knots, and we may be called to stand with others and encourage them to keep at it, doing whatever we can to help. And after spending time unpacking the problem, it will likely get hairier and messier. Knotty problems often get bigger before they get better.
So, we’ll need to pace ourselves! Sometimes the right move is to take a break (to take a nap like Maniac) or to break up the challenge into different components to make sure that we are bringing sufficient energy to the task. And it is appropriate to celebrate when knots (both big and small) are untied. Often what is left when the problem is unwound is just string. Spinelli answers a question in a footnote that I was curious about, saying that the string was four and a half blocks long (p. 74). I love that detail and I love that it is in a footnote… because while I do love footnotes… that information is more of a footnote than a feature to the story.
When I am trying to be a good neighbor, I may be curious about certain details of the problem. As we work to unravel a knot in someone’s life, we may wonder: Just how long is this string(!)? But when helping a neighbor deal with a problem, it could be a distraction for me and for them to get caught up in measuring the string over encouraging the metamorphosis (untying the knot). So, approaching the challenge of knowing and blessing our neighbors requires the right kind of curiosity. Maniac’s curiosity is a key element in untying the knot and being a good neighbor. When a disciple of Jesus can leverage her own curiosity in service of others (multiplying their own curiosity), we’ve got the potential to change the world… or at least the chance to celebrate with some pizza.
When you think about knowing your neighbors - both locally and globally, here are some questions to consider:
What would they say is the big knot that needs to be untied?
What problems has this knot caused?
Who do you know who is good at untying knots like that and could be a resource person for you and for them?
Often problems must get messier and bigger before they get better... is that scary to you?
Once that knot is untied, what would that look like? What would it free up in your life or in their life? How would you celebrate?
One of the things we do at MRN is to help deal churches and kingdom workers deal with giant knots. These may be knots and messes that we’ve created or ones we’re encountering from the outside. We’re glad to get to join churches and missionaries in working through the challenging knots of our day – big or small. Would you like some help with a problem that you are facing? We would love to come alongside you and assist you in any way that we can.
If you’d like a partner to talk through the challenges and opportunities you are facing, send me an email at alan.howell@mrnet.org. Looking forward to working with you to untie the knots we’re facing together!