Middle School

Butterfinger candy bars taste like middle school to me. Specifically, they taste like middle school spring: that time when you can feel that it's getting warmer and the smell of green is in the air. Butterfingers are also a way that I find teaching middle school makes me subtly work through issues or memories that are 25 or more years old. Finding myself in a middle school setting these last 18 months, I have been surprised to find how often I have to put the brakes on a middle school mindset. I've written about that at length in another post.

Candy bars, however, conjure a memory and a mindset I don't mind. Not one bit.

Catching up

It really does get easier the second time you do something. Not easier...better.

I'm still often exhausted, and there isn't enough of me to go around, but it's better than last year. When I need perspective, I can just look to my overwhelmed, tired wife, and know that I'm in a better place than I was...and than she is (not to rub it in).

At this point, I think I have so much to say that I can almost say nothing. I'd like to start chipping away at those things, but no promises.

For now, despite it still being hard, it's better.

Hacking away at thoughts

I'm 36. This fall I feel a little bit like the grown up. I've had kids for 13 years. Sorry kids.

At the same time, my greatest success as a teacher and parent has come from letting go of "being the grown up."

These ideas that ancient traditions discuss, there's reality there.

Pride born out of brokenness is one of the major problems in our world.

The only way to win a war is to kill all of your enemies. All of them. This is the biggest reason they shouldn't be fought.

In Star Trek, do people on earth all get along as a result of having formed an planetary identity as humans?

Holidays are hard for me. I'm starting to learn this. I don't understand how people are supposed to enjoy each other. This is a mountain I need to climb.

There are 14,000 ft peaks to conquer in the minds of our children. Depths to dive into in their hearts. Many, many children are lacking good love in their lives.

Life is sweet, in spite of the misery.

I do not understand affiliations. I do not understand allegiances to faith, race, culture, ethnicity, etc., etc...

I often hope that I'll know when it's my time to die. I hope that I'll be old. I hope that I'll have the opportunity to just walk into Yosemite and die in the arms of the earth. I hope my children will understand.

I should be doing homework and grading right now. I'm drinking a beer instead.

I've learned about 300 new names in the last 4 months. That's not an exaggeration.

I really do want to record an album.

Pressure. Next. Pressure. Next.

I enjoy myself most when I can be very present in a moment. I enjoy myself most when I sit down with a child and teach them something.

I've been told to confess that it's going well.

That's a whole different kind of pressure. If it's going well, then better is...well...even better.

Early in the year I was chanting the mantra, "Everything is not this moment."

Now I find myself wishing I could really be present in all of the moments that are happening in my room.

I learned on Tuesday, during New Teacher Induction, that pain is relative and irrelative at the same time. Relative to the guy I met with 36 kids in a room smaller than mine, 30% of whom don't want to work, I've got it really good. Relative to the really good classrooms, I'm underwater.

“You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

― Eleanor Roosevelt

First quarter done

I just finished my first quarter teaching. It looked like this.

1st Quarter Data:

• 1.5 12oz bottles of hand sanitizer
• 54 pencils
• 100 sheets of notebook paper
• 5:30 am wake-up time
• Gallons and gallons of water
• at least 1 dozen observations with feedback
• 8 graduate school assignments
• 1/2 a box of copy paper
• 4 different table arrangements

Everything else I lost track of.

Little kids

Teaching middle school, I feel myself wrestling with middle school feelings that I didn't really know about before.

I really believed that I didn't care what people thought of me.

Standing in front of my classroom, I have to squelch the desire to be liked by the cool, powerful kids. I have to quiet my laughter at the awkward kids. I have to come to terms with my need to be cool, myself.

I am surprised by this reality, and humbled by my own humanity.

Automatic for the People

Tonight I'm wondering about the sweet spot between depth and efficiency.


So much to learn, so many to teach at one time. In a learning factory.

At the end of every day I get a pit in my stomach for the moments I didn't give love. For the moments I wasn't gentle with the little and big kinds of broken that I encounter every day.

Give love. Which requires stopping.

To my hero

Dear Megan,

Meditate on all you've done.

Take a breath. Get through this moment. You can do anything.

Meditate on all you've done.

You helped a boy mature into a man who can love with a healthy passion instead of dysfunction.
You helped turn a surprise into a loving family.
You finished your college degree while battling difficult depression.
You fought hard to overcome your postpartum, life-change-induced depression.
You worked hard to become a teacher when you'd had no training.
You held your head high and gave love in a time of dying.
You are a loving, giving daughter.
You fought through six months of painful baby croup and crying with love.
You care for the creation of a young woman, and a young man.
You jump in.
You make it happen.
You build things.
You build people.
You build relationships.
You do.
You are dignity.
You are elegance.
You are class.

Things seem hard. They've seemed hard before. You did it then. You'll do it now.

You're my hero.

Hold your head up, you silly girl. Look what you've done.

http://youtu.be/-SbCIFbJQDk

Do the Evolution

The part of teacher evolution I'm thinking about today, as I prepare to walk in to my first set of P/T conferences, is spatial ownership.

There's this space that I occupy at my school every day. Its number is assigned to me. All of the students who share the space during the day are assigned to me.

About six weeks ago, I blindly, frantically shaped this space in to a "classroom." In the time since then I've added to and taken from the space, both physically and emotionally.

Today, I feel like I belong in this space.

Today, I feel some ownership.

Today, this space is mine.

It's not a conquest, and it's not a hostile takeover.

It's an evolution. It's the propagation of helpful adaptations, and the annulment of old ways. It's the creation of a new being, in a new habitat.

I am evolving. One way I know this to be true is the way that my new home is starting to look, smell, feel, and live to me. I'm learning the ecosystem: both the local and the regional. I'm caring for it, and it is caring for me.

In addition, today I figured out a conversation that has been happening around me, but of which I was not a part. I figured out feelings and responses from my teammates about having three brand new teachers on a team of 12.

This was important not because of the knowledge it imparted (ok, that too), but because of the familiarity of that discovery. Gauging and understanding subtext and unspoken norms are things I'm good at. It was nice to feel that familiar warmth of understanding; nice to put knowledge in my pocket.

They say I'll slip back down this mountain more than once before next August.

So let it be written.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI

Just keep swimming

Hm.

Had a sub for the first time Friday. Monday was no big deal.

First parent-teacher conferences tomorrow. I'm a little nervous.

Taking 45 minutes of my night and listening to Elton John on Fresh Air. This is a little peace of terra firma for me.

Winfield happened. It was good.

Something is happening inside my brain and my heart. Something is growing.

I'm different, I'm told. I think I know this to be true.

One thing that's different is stress.

Stress is because I care about what's happening during my days.

Something is growing.

What's new? It's always new.

What's new?

It will be August of 2014 before I am consistently doing things that are not "firsts."

I have a very supportive principal who is willing to be tough on me, shoot straight, and push me to be better. And who texts after she's been out of the building to ask how new strategies worked out for me. That feels good.

I love many of my co-workers.

I can see the line between firm and mean from where I stood today. It was a sight for sore eyes. ("Site for sore eyes," which I almost typed, would work too. And it's more fun to imagine.)

I love teaching about history. I love talking about current events.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of 9/11. I have at least 1 Muslim student, whom I love dearly. Today my students asked me, almost every hour, what were were going to talk about for 9/11. When I talked about this with them, I thought I was going to cry.

I told them the stories of two of the worst moments in my life: watching the towers burn with my 1-year-old child playing in front of the TV, and watching the Challenger explode as a 3rd grader. I told them that bad things happen. I told them that we still had learning to do. I told them that evil people aren't representative of their race or creed or gender or religion. I told them that we shouldn't stop the world to remember the time that crazy people did crazy things. I thought I would cry. It was the ethos I dreamed of imparting.

When my children and my world ask me the question, "Did I do all that I could? That I should have done?" I pray that the answer will be yes.

And I look forward to the day that I'm not running scared so that more of my moments are teaching and fewer are scrambling.

If that day is a myth, please don't tell me until next August.

I'd like to teach the world to sing...

There are so many things I'd go back three weeks and do differently. Not just because I see how they'd be better, but because I'm reaping the whirlwind of not having done them well.

So many things make so much more sense to me now.



I hope this chart that my friend shared with me is wrong. I've been told on a number of occasions that I'm already very reflective. I hope that's true. I think that's a good way to live a life. Maybe that means I'll be ahead of the curve.

I definitely dreaded going in today. Friday I had a mutiny in first hour. They just didn't care for my rules and my discipline. Hello, blind side.

Anything worth doing is hard. The big thing for me is regret that these kids won't get the teacher I someday hope to be.

Onward and upward. Or downward. Then upward.

Little lessons and questions

1. Don't use wet-erase spray to clean your dry-erase board. It makes a gunky mess.
2. There is no reason that 8th grade girls roll their eyes, make those faces, and sigh those sighs. It's just how they're built.
3. A little quiet respect goes a lot farther than volume and yelling.


1. Why do I feel like one of the primary goals I've been asked to achieve is to quash personality?
2. Why has no one ever explained to these kids why they say the pledge of allegiance? Or what it means?
3. My students, my loves. If Dr. Martin Luther King can't keep your attention for less than 1/3 of the incredibly powerful "I Have A Dream" speech, then what hope do I really have?
4. Are there really new teachers who can't own up to their own shortcomings? I can't really see anything else right now.

Today was good. I'm learning things for home at school, and things for school at home.
Today I achieved my goal of over-preparing.
Someday soon I will have to tackle the problem of different hours trying to learn at different paces.
That will probably look a lot like differentiated learning.
I need to go back and read up on differentiated learning.

What am I looking forward to about summer?

Time to lesson plan.

The hotter it is, you know the harder it gets (Lyle Lovett, "It Ought To Be Easier")

Today was good.

I gave my first test. Classroom management was decent. Being observant and clear-minded makes a big difference.

So does preparation. Preparation makes or breaks my day. Am I ready to engage my kids in their learning? Am I ready for what I don't know is going to happen?

Someone told me, "The thing you think will take ten minutes takes an hour. That's no big deal. It's when the hour thing takes ten minutes. That's when you're screwed. Are you ready for it?"

There's so much to say. There's so much I want to tell you all. So much I want to remember.

Right now I'm like the Pink Floyd lyric:

so you run, and you run

to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking

racing around, to come up behind you again

The sun is the same, in a relative way

but you're older

shorter of breath

and one day closer to death

I love it.

It humbles me.

It humiliates me.

It grows me.

It ages me.

It breaks me.

It wrecks me.

It makes me.

The very best thing about your life is a short stage in someone else's story. And that's enough. (quoted from here.)

*Oh yeah, the average grade on my test was 46%. That's on me. Mostly.

Too much

Yesterday (Friday) was too much. Parents asking to have their kids taken out of my class, students who just wouldn't quit talking, more discipline than I wanted to hand out in a year, tears and/or embarrassed anger from my students.

Yesterday was too much. Yesterday I didn't feel good about things.

I've never welcomed a weekend with such fervor.

More later.

I just want to alert you all to the resurrection of this space.

So much

One of the things that keeps me from blogging regularly is having too much to say. I let three or four commentaries ruminate in my brain and end up losing them all.

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is social media, and the way I think it might give us insight into the world views of our friends and acquaintances. As I read my News Feed every day, I see all kinds of languages. Some are "love languages," some are coping languages.

In snippets of observation, publicly whispered prayers, jokes, jabs, wishes, hopes, and dreams, I imagine that we see a little bit of each of our paradigms. I'm all about the paradigm.

My people know the language of pain, the language of love, the language of loneliness, of stress, of critique, of the mind, of the heart, of the body, of age and experience, of youth and confusion, of the human condition, the human condition, the human condition.

What a damned beautiful mess.

And I wonder about you all. And I wonder about me.

Here we are, sharing this life.

Who hurt you? What scared you? Where did those scars come from? That persistence? That belief? That strength? Those secrets? That steely gaze, persistence, and drive? Who are we all?

One of my learned languages, one of my coping languages, is music. I process it all, see it all, hear it all, through the observations of rock and folk songwriters. Just about everything brings a song to mind.

One of my default settings is "melodramatic," turned up to 11. Today, at 35 years old, it's a funny observation about myself. For years, it was hard to understand why my lovers and friends weren't on board with this.

So know this: my love for you, my friend; my love for my long-suffering wife; my love for my children, our world....all processed through a soundtrack of melodramatic pop music. Blame my mom, and then just keep blaming her for everything.

Classic melodramatic pop is the Bee Gees (catalog 1964-2000; way more than disco). I'm laughing as I even try to choose what song.  :-)

Okay, pay special attention to the keyboard playing, the bass clef, and the bass guitar during the chorus. It's crazy theatrical. Check how hard the notes are being struck.

I want to post so many melodramatic songs.  I'm dying of laughter here. Ask me about it some time.

So tired

The question of whether I COULD be ready for work or not by the time the kids go to school is easy. I could.

But I usually don't. I am woefully in need of a slow ramp up in the mornings. Not like the lovely lady who "sleeps" next to me. Despite rarely getting a good night's rest (she's highly stressed), she is unbelievably more disciplined than I. Like now, when I'm blogging instead of those other, required things.

Here's this: the heart of life is good

When Megan and I were dating, I would often ridicule her insistence on adhering to Anne Frank's quote, "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."

The concept was foreign to me: completely. People were bad.

I had a myopic experience with people.

I am blessed to be a part of a community with people focused on the other--focused on making this world better. Focused on loving.

And always, at the center of my community, of my world, that 19 year old girl with the hippie-dippy belief that people have good in them.

It doesn't mean they're in touch with it. But she is, and that's enough for me. Enough for me to love. Enough for me to care. Because she loves me, I love you.

That's kind of good.

Be well.

 

Lonely week

Sometimes I think, "It's weird to be everyone's friend, and no one's best friend." Then I have a week (maybe even just a couple of days) without Megan and I remember that I'm married to my best friend. And it is good.

Hey!

It's been almost a year since I've posted here. I'm trying to decipher whether both of my blogs send notifications to the same group. Please comment below if you were notified of this post.

Toby

Life lesson

Something occurred to me this morning, and I've shared it with almost everyone I've seen, so I'd just as well put it down here.

I think some of what keeps me from being a more regular blogger is just this: that I say what I'm thinking to all of those who cross my path.  By the time it comes down to creating a post, I already feel redundant.

Today was the day on my Flatrock 25K training schedule when I was to run 6 miles.  The training schedule I'm using, and most schedules I've perused, use the weekends as a long run opportunity.  It's become clear to me that this is a common method because it works.  Now last year, as I trained for this same race, I decided that the long weekend runs were a bad idea.  In all of my wisdom as a novice long-distance runner I knew I could outsmart the system.

This morning as a began to think about the long run ahead of me (having only run 3 miles 3 times this week, and poorly running two 4ish mile legs (minus mistakes) during the Brew-to-Brew Relay in April - or March - I don't remember) I began once again to have feelings of misgiving regarding this long run.  Thankfully my friend Zach didn't wait for me to call him, and texted me with a suggested time, to which I agreed, otherwise I think I may have skipped it altogether.

As I was preparing to go meet him, I was struck by a realization.  I was scared.  I was scared to go out and try to run 6 miles.  As that thought started to sink in, it became clear that fear was the real reason I altered my training last year.  The long runs intimidate me.  Not for the distance I think; but for the fact that they might find me wanting.  Wanting in that very area that I hope running will help me improve: self-discipline.

I shared this realization with Megan, and it felt good.  It felt good to let go of preconceived ideas about manhood and worth.  It felt good to own and embrace what I see (saw?) as a shortcoming.  I was free now to meet this challenge, face this fear, on my own terms, within my own limits.

All I did was go out, comfortable in that skin, and have the greatest running experience of my life.  No world beater of a time at 10 minutes/mile, but exactly where I'd hoped to be, and I never felt strained.  I was in my skin the whole time.  I know not every run will be like this, but I've given myself permission to do my best, not anyone else's.

Win or lose: a tie is like kissing your sister (unless you're from Kentucky, in which case a tie is like kissing someone more than one relative away)

I was able to overcome the damage that Spanish class and (what I believe to be) a less-than-stellar professor did to my undergraduate record. I am a graduate student.

This has been a pain in the ass.

The Master in Public Administration program at the college in question requires a 3.0 in your last 60 ours in order to gain admission to the program. Exceptions are made based on career aspirations, work experience, and letters of recommendation.

I have a 2.85 in my last 60 hours. In my next-to-last semester I had a C- in Spanish. In my last semester, a D- in Spanish. 8 credit hours out of the last 60 with a sub 2.0. Ouch.

Take out those 8 hours and add in 8 hours that didn't get counted otherwise? 8 hours that happen to be a 4.0? Over 3.0.

Here's the pain in the ass.

The folks at the university stopped at the printed GPA. I got my letter of declination based on a sub-standard GPA.

So I called. And I emailed. And I called again a week later after my email was never answered.

"What's the process for appealing a decision?"

What follows here is an approximation of what that conversation sounded like to me:

Let me get your email.

I think I...oh...I guess I didn't reply...

Let me get your file.

Basically you don't have a high enough GPA.

Let me look here.

Really you just, you need to have a 3.0 in your last hours.

Let me look.

I see here a D- in Spanish.

And a C- before that. And a C in Biblical Literature.

Oh, those are 8 Spanish credits, but let's look farther back.

Oh here is an F........oh wait, that was retaken and replaced with an A.

Well, if we go farther back...oh...well that semester was a 4.0...3.7...4.0...but...um...well..

Here is....

(sound of tearing paper)

hm...hm...um...well you're letters of recommendation are very impressive...I just..well...

There's really no process...but...well there's definitely an argument here...

Let me do a transcript analysis and I'll call you back.

They guy repeated that same outloud thought process twice after telling me he'd look into it and call me back. I shit you not. Unimpressive.

He said he'd call me back the next morning.

No call.

I just about wrote them off.

Today I got an email from the very VERY helpful administrative assistant informing me that I'd been admitted to the program.

You're damn right I have been. Dumbasses.

Some perspective for those of you who are doing the math: My first 24 hours of college credit attempted (1995-6) resulted in 24 hours attempted, 9 hours credit, 1.0 GPA, and an invitation not to come back to college. Those hours obviously affected the final outcome of my GPA.

But let's analyze my conversation with the guy at the grad school. I don't think my letter of intent was even read, because in it I laid out the whole Spanish thing and it's effects and my performance if you ignore those classes, etc. No one had even opened my letters of recommendation, based on the sound of opening envelopes I heard right before he commented on them. He was going through my transcript piece by piece to show me how I was not good enough, but surprise to him, my grades were great!

Tirade over.

That was poor customer service, but I advocated for myself and I got results.

So despite that bad experience, I'm still going to become a part of the program because it's convenient, it's a good price, and my plan from the beginning was to depend on myself to get everything I need from the program. They only underscored my need to depend on me, and not them.

So I'm a grad student. I'm excited. I'm happy.

(Longest post ever.)

11 years ago today, we were pregnant, unmarried, and completely lost. 6 months before that we weren't even together. The four years before that were filled with the most dysfunctional dating experience you've ever heard of, and you wouldn't have bet your hard-earned money that in 2011 Toby Tyner and Megan Upton would be together and in love.

So there we were trying to figure out how to make a go of it. Megan dropped out of college. I was a college failure trying to figure out what kind of job I could get to support a family. I had no family network to lean on, and Megan's folks were feeling the strain of being our only safety net. Three weeks later we'd be newlyweds. Some of the most downtrodden newlyweds you've ever seen. JOP marriage so that the baby could be covered by the insurance from my job.

In the 11 years since that time, Megan has finished her undergrad and is now 12 hours from finishing her Master's Degree. Megan is a college professor. Somewhere deep in me, though I've seen the imperfections of those humans, that is still a damned impressive job-title. We created a marriage and a family from something that was destined to be a statistic in the decline of American values. We had another baby. They're both beautiful pains in the ass. We fixed my terrible credit and bought a house.

Then we crapped on our credit for the sake of getting me a degree. A degree that, if I stop and appreciate it, I'm still very proud to have completed. Now we're fixing our credit again. Hopefully for the last time.

11 years ago we were pretty much alone. Now, we have a robust, wide net of deep friendships and meaningful acquaintances. We lost Jim. We lost Grandma. We lost Aunt Kay. We gained a modicum of adulthood.

And now I'm going to prove that Megan believing in me, and Jim suggesting that she should all those years ago, was the right decision.

It ain't perfect, but it's more than I deserve.

I become a censor

I tried to watch Gangs of New York tonight.

Couldn't do it.

This is entertainment?

We think it's a good story? Children watching men and women carve eachother, driven to the edge of humanity for the sake of survival?

You think that's fiction?

Fools.

Children see their parents murdered every day.

It's not glory.

It's not legend.

It's horrid.

It's sad.

Children.

When will it end?

I don't think I can watch violent movies any more.

The knowledge is too much.

There is nothing for which I would wage war.

War is not righteous.

War is carnage.

War is animal.

I had the same experience with American History X. And Saving Private Ryan.

Saving Private Ryan had as much to do with me becoming a pacifist as anything.

That child in Gangs of New York watched hundreds of men kill eachother. Watched his father be killed and then had nothing left.

Maybe he brings peace in the end because he sees the futility.

I'll never know.

Superstitions

Last week, as is not unusual for this time of year, there was a well-defined thunderstorm line immediately to the west, which we were driving toward on our way home. Lennon didn't ask me anything about it, although it was a very distinct characteristic of our immediate view. It occurred to me that, as a Kansas kid, this is probably no longer an odd sight to him at nearly six years old.

But I couldn't remember ever needing to explain to him what the giant shadow with flashing lights in the sky was. I wondered what I said. I bet I told him about storms in a very scientific way. I bet I told him everything I've learned that other people discovered about weather.

Then I thought about the Plains tribes who didn't have the meteorological knowledge--just experience and superstition. What did they say?

They created the best explanation they could for this monumental, unavoidable natural force that was holding their children's attention. Just like I did. They probably told the same story they were told as children.

And then I wondered, did they believe it to be fact? Or were they comfortable with metaphor?

What if they were?

And, as is not unusual for me, I wondered about all ancient religions and their lore, their explanations. I wonder at what point the story to explain the unknown and tame the wild crossed the line into "fact;" into religion. Was there an elder who knew it was bullshit?

What if we're the simple ones for elevating campfire stories to god status?

A long way to go

True story:

As I sat in a parking lot in Wichita on Saturday, waiting for Megan to come out of the Dollar General we'd stopped at to get Maggie socks for her performance, I watched a black man approach the door.

He was tall to me, maybe 6 foot, had long, straightened hair, was dressed all in blue, held his left hand over his crotch and walked with a swagger. He had on dark sunglasses and white boat shoes. I wondered if he was a Crip.

From the other direction, a small white woman, maybe in her early to mid sixties, approached the same door. She was white-haired, well-dressed, a little swollen from middle-class living, with dangling sterling earrings that flashed in my eyes as I watched her.

I wondered if she'd be scared.

The man reached for the handle at the same time she did. He pulled the door open and took half a step back to make room for her to go through. She stopped, looked up at him, spoke something I couldn't hear, and touched his arm. His head threw back in laughter and I saw her shoulders shake with laughter at the same time. They shared a few more words and another smile and she went into the store as he followed right behind.

As the door closed on them my self-righteousness was torn ragged from my eyes, my prejudices bared to me.

They were beautiful, human, and right. And I was glad to see it. And ashamed of what I thought would be.

I have a long way to go. My only solace is that we all have so much to learn.

Not What It Used To Be

Not What It Used To Be

Toby Tyner

All Rights Reserved

Sittin' in a lawn chair

Wastin' my time

Sippin' on a cold beer

That was brewed by a friend of mine

Kids in the back yard

Dog in the sunlight

Strummin' this old guitar

Singin' everything is gointa be alright

Our love is not what it used to be

I just don't love you like I used to

Baby you've changed and it's clear to me

Our love is not what it used to be

I see you walkin' by

A book in your hand

I used to see just your eyes

But now it's those and the woes of the years that have gone by

See you how you used to be

But remember in a different way

With everything you've given me

I amazed with you and I just gotta say

Our love...

Love's so much deeper

Love's so much more fun

Your kisses are sweeter

Than they were when we were young and dumb

Thinkin' 'bout someday

Sittin' in a rockin' chair

After you fly away

Consumed with the room and the time that we spent there

I'll cry for a minute

Miss you for a lifetime

Love is for givin'

I'm forever in debt for the love that you made mine

Our love...

Don't hit

There is something satisfyingly corporeal about hitting someone.

Football players know what I am talking about.

It's inherently kinaesthetic. Contact with another person's body gives you a distinct and measurable sense of the position and balance of your own. It's like sex that way. So much of the experience is in the depth of your own existence relative to another's.

I've seen it. I've done it. It's been done to me. I've wanted to do it and haven't.

I'm not talking about the desire to swat your kids, or bop them on the head, which I've also wanted to do, and have done - usually with regret.

I mean a full-on desire to punch someone in the face; to define for them where their world stops and yours begins. It's satisfying and primeval. It is a basic and animalistic assertion of authority.

But we are not animals. It is virtuous to control those animal instincts. Whether because we believe god created us differently, or that we've evolved beyond them, it is a show of civilized behavior (civilised behaviour if you're British) to rise above the violent reactions.

I wish I never felt that way. I wish there was nothing to rise above. I wish there was no anger.

It's a big big world

I don't really know what to do or say about the realization I had this evening. I was redoing the sheets on Lennon's bed, mattress back on the springs he'd dragged it down from, protective covering for accidents, sheets and blankets, etc., and I had a very vivid flash of a man somewhere in this world laying his child down on the hard ground to sleep. It was real, and it happened as the same sun slipped under a connected western horizon, perhaps my horizon.

How did this come to be, that I would take for granted more swaddling than millions of humans ever had? How did it come to be that people should expect so much just for sleeping?

I'm not saying comfort is wrong of itself, but to be comfortable through luck when the unlucky suffer....

There IS enough. There is enough food. There are enough blankets. There are enough mosquito nets. There is enough medicine.

Why are human beings so afraid to care for each other?

Why am I?

Please, for the sake of the future

Let's just all try to use the word "proclivity" a little more often.

A lightning flash of self-revelation

A thought just occurred to me about my nature: I have always been quick to fall in love. Eager even. Certainly always willing. That disposition provided a lot of drama in all of my relationships. Looking back, it existed in romantic and platonic relationships. The quickness/eagerness/willingness always came with an intense need to know that I was loved back. Most of those relationships, romantic and otherwise, that pop into my head ended poorly. I have zero former "girlfriends" with whom I discourse, and most of my longtime friends can speak to some awkward interaction or another which I can link to a feeling of needing to feel that we were "in love" (thought they may not know/have known that). Certainly Megan can speak to that reality, and she's the one who had the stones to get through it all. She's the one.

There is still some truth to all of that for me. I'm pretty unsure how to be friends with someone without being "besties," and the comfort and ease of friendship is something I'm only just learning to know. But I am learning. This blog has documented missteps, confusion, and even a little drama from me about how to walk, how to think.

All of this is to say...I don't regret my propensity to love. I love you all.

I love.

And that makes me happy.

Some might call it a guilty pleasure...

...but Rob Thomas and his bandmates got me through some of my darkest days. Unbridled passion. I felt it, he gets it. I still feel it, he still helps me tap into it.

A new song: Alone

I can't say why the river flows

Where it goes, I guess everybody knows

You can't say what's been on my mind

Whatever it is I think about it all the time

Cuz it's a long, long lonely road

But only if you go alone

People everywhere with a heavy load

Thoughts turned in, heads sinking low

Shine those eyes on the world outside

Cuz nobody here gonna get out alive

And it's a long, long lonely road

But only if you go alone

Cry if it makes you feel better

To remove all the dust from your eyes

When you do, I think you see things much clearer

And what you find just might be a big surprise

There's a room with a real good view

Come on in, we been waiting for you

Take a drink of the cool night air

Feel the beat of your heart and the wind in your hair

Don't hold in, put on your dancin' shoes

You're gonna dance away all of your blues

Come a day, you're gonna need a friend

And you and me, we gonna do this again

Cuz it's a long, long lonely road

But only if you go alone

Your white elephant exchange

I never look longingly back at the way it used to be. I am lucky enough to say that every period of my adult life has been an improvement on the previous. I am also lucky enough to know that I can't change what's already happened.

Is it a form of looking back, though, to try and understand how the past created and continues to create who you are today?

There is no better way to listen to music than through headphones.

It's just humbling to be so imperfect. I crave to be more contemplative and less sharp-witted in the immediacy of the moment.

When Bono sings "all the colors really bleed into one, and yes I'm still running," I think he's saying that he's still in the process of melting into the rest of the world. And I like that idea.

I believe that George Harrison is the gentlest person I've known.

One great lyric that not enough people know:

Saw the people standin', thousand years in chains.
Somebody said it's different now; look, it's just the same.
Pharoahs spin the message, round and round the truth.
They could have saved a million people. How can I tell you?

John Fogerty "Wrote a Song For Everyone"

I'll be presenting a forum in Pittsburg, PA in July about social networking for the Mennonite Church USA national conference.

What the hell does Steve Miller say? Is it the pompetice of love?

http://tokezone.net/announce/pompitous.htm

Moments: an epilogue and a repost (or riposte at myself)

I am blessed with friends. Blessed. And I should be thankful. I wonder if losing sight of that thankfulness, replacing it with entitlement, is one of my great unseen crimes? I fear it might be.

On that note, a reminder post for myself, of something I've already reminded myself of in the recent past, but clearly need again:

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Moments

The moments we miss, in a moment we experience, are infinite. Among those billions of starry moments are many that we dearly wish we could have been present for. A group of friends gathered together; a birth; a death; a song; a kiss.

On some level, that has to be okay.

I think the easiest way to drive yourself insane is to be too acutely aware of all of the things that are happening without you, and allowing yourself to feel small, insignificant or unloved in that knowledge. Life goes on around us, everywhere.

I cannot allow myself to blot out the moments I experience by mourning the moments I WISH I'd experienced. The world--even my own personal world--moves without my direction; and it CAN. It is okay not to be chosen for every moment, it's not a critique.. They're allowed. You're allowed. I'm allowed.

Breathe. Let go. Live.

Morning

Mornings. What mysterious variances they are. What things they say to and about each of us when they arrive.

You were up too late.
You didn't sleep well.
You had a nightmare.
You couldn't sleep at all.

You're well-rested.
You slept like a log.
You fell in love again in your dreams.
You overslept.

You popped up ready to go.
You couldn't drag your ass out of bed.

Every morning in our house I experience a sort of looking glass reality. Megan is always up first. She's the responsible morning person. It doesn't matter if she slept well or at all, if she has to get up to get ready for the day she does it. Period.

So I most often wake up to the sound of Megan pleading with Maggie to get up so that she'll be ready for school in time. Maggie cries...and yells...and whines...and refuses..and groans...and begs for more time.

The funny thing, the looking glass thing, is that all of the things Maggie says and does are in my head, too. She and I feel exactly the same way in the morning. Those moments when you see yourself in your kids are always so neat. And so, lately, I've been actually getting up with a wry outlook, even a wry smile, and helping to rouse Maggie because I totally get where she's at. I used to get angry, and frustrated. Then I remembered being on the receiving end of that anger and frustration, and how I felt it was unfair because I wasn't choosing to be so hard to get up. I look at Maggie and I know, it's just how her body works. So it's a long process to get her up, but I totally get it.

And, like always, I learn from my kids how to be a better adult, a better father, and a better husband. I have taken "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by U2 as my opus for parenting. I have climbed highest mountain, I have run through the fields, only to be with you; but I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

I have come so far for the chance to parent you, but I'm not good enough yet. I'll keep climbing, keep running.

I read the news today, oh boy...

That is the opening line of The Beatles' "A Day In the Life," John Lennon's evocation of despair and hopelessness in a world of violence. It's beautifully contrasted by the bridge of Paul McCartney's carefree daydreamer character, cruising through his day with seemingly no weight on his mind. Check this song out, and really listen to the emotions and how the music and the lyrics perfectly compliment each other.

But why do I bring this up?

Well, I've sung this lyric tens of thousands of times, but it's not always as meaningful as it was this morning when it popped in to my head. I was, as you might have guessed, reading the news. And what did I see?

• War
• Corruption and censure
• Rich getting richer
• Murder
• Theft
• Hate
• Oppression
• Religion
• Suicide
• Disease

And in my mind, John's tired voice singing: I read the news today, oh boy...

Hot Baths

As I think back, more people have shaken their heads than nodded them when they discover that I prefer baths over showers (assuming I'm alone in there). They usually say something about bathing in the dirt you just washed off your body. Overactive hypochondria. Or maybe they should stop getting so dirty.

I've usually chalked it up to the difference between air temperature and water temperature, much preferring to be covered in warmth than wetted down and left to stand in the cold air. But yesterday, whilst plugging my nose and limply lying in the bath, I had another, altogether more primal thought.

As I pinched my nose and sank beneath the steaming, still water, sounds became far away, sight was gone, the incessant need to inhale and exhale became calm, my muscles completely relaxed and I was suspended in time and space. Into that space came the metaphor of a womb, the ultimate iconography of protection and warmth. For those precious seconds in my hot bath I can feel protected and insulated, free from the hurry and worry and the constant drive that even my breathing and heartbeat demand from me. It is more than relaxation; it is freedom.

Be well.

Grudges

I know that I learned growing up that grudges are important, and are to be held. I think grudges and relationship "scorekeeping" may have actually been the primary ingredients of the adult relationships I witnessed as a child. Wrongs were never forgiven, never forgotten, but held as a living part of every relationship, always on the table.

I hold some grudges, not many I hope. The baggage from that childhood lesson for me tends to manifest as a fear, an expectation, that others will hold grudges against me. That leads me to be hyper-paranoid about every glitch, every misstep, every impropriety. As a middle-schooler, I was so hyper-paranoid of being judged and pigeon-holed that I would silently mouth back to myself every sentence that I spoke, just to be sure it was correct. My friends noticed this very obvious practice and would then (and sometimes still) tease me about it. It probably looked very funny, and I look back and can laugh about how it must have appeared. But I still remember the terror of speaking. The terror that I would offend someone with words or syntax and it would be forever held against me. These days I just quickly repeat my sentences in my head. :)

I'll just breathe now.

Be well.

A seed of thought

What does it look like, a revolution that overthrows and kills corruption without killing people?

King, Carmichael, and Malcom X were all at odds about the use of violence to achieve their goals.

What did Ghandi achieve in the end?

Can it be done with votes?

I'm not sure it can.

Stuck in my head

I love music. It's the one thing that's always been important in my life.

Right now I have this lyric from Gordon Lightfoot stuck in my head:

Her name was Ann and I'll be damned if I recall her face/She left me not knowin' what to do.

I love that lyric. I love the way it frames a man's struggle with heartbreak. Pretending to be strong, with a vulnerability that is at once immediate and a thousand miles away.

Collared

I'd like to further explore (but probably not very deep) a concept I introduced in my last blog.

Skilled and unskilled.

I've discovered that I feel guilty because I don't have a real job.

That doesn't make any sense. I have responsibilities, outcomes, paydays, reviews, co-workers, projects...all of the things that make a job.

But I've realized recently that I don't FEEL like I have a real job.

Now I think I know why.

I am white-collar. Decidedly. But I don't have any white-collar references. All of my frame of reference is blue-collar, and bitter blue-collar at that. I grew up in a place where you don't trust men in ties. They have the money, and they don't want you to have it. They don't get their hands dirty. They don't work for their money, which makes their having it all the worse. They are pencil-pushers, or schmoozers. They won't be useful after the nuclear apocalypse. They won't be able to weld things, or build things, or fix things...or anything.

But that's me, white-collar. I have a degree, but feel as though I have no skills. Not the skills that the paradigm in my mind finds valuable. I'm soft.

So, I rail against my white-collar job. I sabotage myself. People like me (paradigm-me, blue-collar me) don't have to dress up, so I don't when I should. People like me don't have to shave our ratty beards because we're REAL, not like those pretty softies in glass offices. People like me, people like me, people like me...

It's weird to realize that you are not who you feel you are. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with what I am, intellectually speaking--I just don't quite know how to be that. I'm not inauthentic, I'm just out of my own league.

So here I am, white-collar. Weird.

Our House, is a very, very, very fine house

This is a photo of the last house I lived in with my parents. I visited a friend this spring, but he wasn't home, and I found myself sitting on his porch, face-to-face with a relic from the past.

This is a lousy house. It was lousy 15 years ago. It's worse now, but not a lot. The windows are covered--with blankets, not curtains. The front door appears unusable. I saw a woman pull up and use the back entrance while I was watching; the back entrance that leads to a mudroom where our cocker spaniel, Leon, lived in fleas and feces, neglected until he finally died. We can all share the blame equally, we rarely paid attention to him.

This is the house to which I brought Megan to meet my family.

Though my siblings will blanche, I really feel that I have a lot of experience with the houses of the poor. I wonder about them, at the same time that I remember living in, and visiting, them. Why do they all look so similar? The sunlight is blocked out of so many of them. More often by blankets than curtains. Why? Odd sleep schedules defined by the only work available to the unskilled?

Unskilled. I've been thinking about this word a lot lately. What market skills do I have? On the surface, I can talk to people. That's about it. And it's not the sort of skill that skilled workers like welders or electricians put much stock in. It's not a man's skill.

What are those windows hiding? The world from the occupants, or the occupants from the world.

More later.

It's all so overdue

Winfield was great, after this almost killed John and me:

We continued to build depth in our village, most of which is at Winfield with us, in our camp and elsewhere.

I'll try to get back in the habit of recording these things that, without record, fade too quickly.

Something worth posting

I had two moments today that have changed the way I see the world.

This morning, Maggie, as 10 as the day is long, donned a pair of baggy denim overalls over a T-shirt and headed off to school. She was the reflection of the Megan that I met in 1996, 18 years old and living in a couple of pairs of denim overalls. She looked so much like Megan to me that in that moment, as I looked at my wife, all of the girl that I knew, all of the child that has been a part of how I've known her, melted away. I saw for the first time a woman, a professional, an educator, an adult. I saw her cares, her responsibilities, everything she balances--she was suddenly mature to me. I could see all of the times I've treated her as a child because I once knew her as one. She's accomplished, respected and driven. She even looked different. I've used the words "class" and "elegance" to describe her before, but I see now it was only in reference to what I thought she could be. Today I saw, for the first time, that mature grace and soulfulness that she holds. And I knew that I was in over my head.

And so, as if to reinforce my new discovery, she gave me a second moment to shred my paradigm.

Megan has been leading her students for these many years, and I've never been in the right place to witness her connect with them. Well, today she did her faculty introduction, which is a tradition for new, full-time faculty at Bethel College. It was stomach-punch sincere, with complete control over her audience. I've never been enraptured by her like I was then; standing tall, confident and in control, she handed her students (the entire student body) a piece of herself with the dignity and grace of Jacqueline Kennedy O'nassis. And I knew that I was in over my head.

New Song - Fear of Failure

Will there be no one to mourn me,

on the day of my demise?

No enemy to scorn me?

No legacy to revise?

'Cause many were chosen but few ever called,

and loneliness winds up as shame.

But I have a story with sins to absolve,

and I don't even know their names.

It's a hell of a thing to be standing there

when the last of the heroes falls.

It's another thing all together,

to be the hero taking the fall.

When the last thing that you counted on

is the only thing you can see,

It's a hell of a thing to be standing there

wishing there was some place else to be.

Who's gonna help me fake it

when I'm sad and crazy from the pain?

When my soul is heavy and jaded

and the love that I gave was in vain?

'Cause many were chosen but few ever called.

And loneliness winds up as shame.

But I have a story with sins to absolve,

and I don't even know their names.

Will there be no one to mourn me

on the day of my demise?

America Revisited

I found America, bleeding and dying
In an old dusty well by the side of the road.
Where lawyers and bankers'd tied on old rusty anchors
And left her for dead with their dollars in tow.

I found America, all out of breath
And blue in the face at the end of a rope.
A sign there did read, "Passers-by ye take heed,
The death on this rope once was our great hope.

I found America, witless and wandering,
Matted grey hair and a tattered old coat.
Once the strength of the people, the spire of the steeple,
But twisted by greed her own downfall she wrote.

You can hitchhike for four days from Seattle or Saginaw,
Board you a Greyhound for Tucson or Maine.
By plane or by train, it's all one and the same,
Of America's future only memories remain.

I found America, waving and smiling,
Her hair it was perfect, her teeth nearly shone.
I drew back the curtain just to be certain
But her smile was for sale, her words not her own.

I found America, red, white and blue,
Lost in the distance between me and you.
Send your tired and your poor to her great golden door,
But remember, above all, to thine ownself be true.

I found America, hope for tomorrow
In the cycle of life, the cycle of sorrow.
Are the deep and dark eyes of my son and my daughter
The one saving grace of my mother and father?

Peace

Without violence there is no pacifism, there is only peace.

Pacifism is the active seeking of peace in the face of violence. Pacifism and peace are very different. Many people are committed to, beholden to, pacifism and experience little peace because of that commitment. Since it is, by definition, in defiance of something, pacifism is not a peaceful experience. It's much the same concept as, "Imagine there's no heaven" or country or hunger. Peace is something achieved only after the struggle to achieve it becomes obsolete.

A new song - The Road

The Road - Toby Tyner

As you roll

out on that highway tonight

If you should stray

far from your path

Fear not my soul

if you should wrestle the past

all good news travels fast,

there is freedom at last,

at the end of this road.

You'll meet a girl

fresh like the daisies of spring

She'll take your hand

bumps along the way

She'll always be

there in the front of your mind

with your heart keeping time

eyes that sparkle and shine

like a beacon on this road.

A little child

cast in her mother's design

A piece of God

right in your hands

How can you ever

be the same again

it's not if, but when

will the struggle begin

to protect her from this road.

A little boy, will he look just like you?

Will he wonder the things that you do with the questions you ask?

A little boy, and what will you do

When his eyes turn to you and he says show me how I should act?

As you roll

out on that highway tonight

If you should stray

far from your path

Fear not my son

if you should wrestle the past

all good news travels fast

there is freedom that lasts

at the end of this road.

all good news travels fast

there is freedom that lasts

at the end of this road.

Coming soon!

What I've been hoping to do since I started this blog! Video postings of my original acoustic compositions! Thanks to our purchase of a netbook with a webcam for Megan, I can now offer myself up for ridicule, or adulation.

Color me excited!

I may have just had plastic surgery

In perhaps the most vain move I have ever made, I elected to have a large mole removed from my hairline today. The most difficult thing about it was, since I made the decision to do it, going around my day-to-day life and seeing folks who are totally confident with their moles in unfortunate places. I wish that could be me, but it's not.

Thanks for the sentiment, honey

How do you know, despite your wife's insistence to the contrary, that people think of you in their minds as a person who "has a gut?" A significant portion of people who learn that I'm training for a 25K trail run instinctively look to my midsection when I tell them. And they're not checking to see if my badassness is visible through my trousers either.

Those looks to my gut are a great motivator early in the morning when I don't want to get up, or don't want to keep going.

But it still stings a little. I used to be really thin. Too thin, probably, but still.

Be well. Well is good.

Big Win Week!

Mark: the end of my first week of training for the Flatrock25 in September.

3 4K runs, a 5K and a 7K. The 5K just happened to coincide with the running of the Chisholm Trail Festival 5K here in Newton, so I signed up. I had to walk 3 blocks due to starting too quickly and tweaking my left calf muscle, but I fought the rest of the way and kept up my jog. It was especially hard through the last 4 blocks, but fortunately Maggie was there to bike beside me the rest of the way. What a great help! But I bounced back nicely today with a 7K on the Sand Creek Trail in North Newton, being internally present, tackling it piece by piece, cheering myself on. I kept up my jog all the way, with some ebbs and flows in the pace, but I'm proud to say I did that! That's not quite 1/3 of the distance I'm training to run.

On to week 2!

Discipline

I haven't been very happy with me lately. Sure, it's a little bit of the depression that comes with this big life, but it's also been a good long look in the mirror. I tend not to give my best effort at ANYTHING. Weigh too much? I deserve to eat good things, and lots of them. You want me to play/sing for an event? Sure, I'll look at the music the day of. Housework? Rarely. My job? Flying by the seat of my pants. Friendships? Me-focused, validation-hungry.

I am wholly undisciplined. No more. I've agreed to run the Flatrock 25K in September! Training began today with a 4K run, and I look forward to becoming much more disciplined in every part of my life. Here comes an intense effort to marry fun with adulthood! Wish me luck!

I should have said weeks ago...

...how excited I am; how proud I am; how humbled I am.

Megan will be joining that faculty at Bethel College, in the role of director of theatre. I am so proud of what she has built for herself. Good on ya, mate!

Fathers' Day

I have a difficult, complicated, un-deep relationship with my father, so Fathers' Day can be weird for me. In addition, Megan lost her dad three years ago this year on Fathers' Day; it's a heavy day at my house, what can I say. But the recognition and passing of another holiday to honor dads reminds me of a story I've been thinking I'd like to post, but I'm not sure I can relate the poignancy that existed in my mind. Here goes:

Recently, my mother-in-law needed some work done on the house. It seemed that some little birdies had made their way in through a water-damaged corner of the eaves and were none-too-quiet at night, interrupting Mary's sleep. Standing on a ladder, examining the damage, it became clear that the gutter in that corner had been overflowing for quite some time. After a trip to the lumberyard proved fruitless (they were out of the material I needed) I decided to patch it up with some boards until I could get the correct material.

I searched through the garage for the items I needed--wood, a hammer, nails. I have discovered before that going through the belongings of someone who has moved on, readily transitions into nostalgia and memory hallucination. This time around proved no different. Over here is where he used to sit with his chiminea, feeding it hickory chips for that distinctive smell. Over there is the corner that he always seemed to be organizing, never making any headway. Here is a perfect stack of lumber, exactly what I need for a temporary patch. Perhaps he had set it aside, four, maybe five years ago, saying to himself "that corner by the bedroom is starting to rot--I'm going to need to patch it soon." And as I gathered his things and began the job, I wondered what he would think, to see me acting as an adult, serving. As an Episcopal Deacon, his call was to serve, much as our decision to become Mennonites was in answer to a need to make the world a better place. And here I was, serving in his place.

On a summer day fourteen years earlier--to the day for all I know--I walked out of my new girlfriend's house, where we'd been spending the afternoon. As she pulled away from the house, I turned the key in my ignition, only to be greeted by the sick sound of a dead battery. I walked nervously back up the house, where I had to ask this girl's dad (who I wanted to impress!) for a jumpstart. Of course he was more than happy to help, brought around his car and jumper cables and handed me one side. I stared blankly at the cables, realizing I'd never jumped a vehicle before. I asked him what to do, he showed me, with neither hesitation nor judgment, and we got the car running. As he collected the cables from me he turned back, his blue eyes shining with that sparkle I would come to love, and told me: You know, this is really one of those things that girls expect all-American boys to know how to do.

And now here I was, fourteen years later, working on his house, and I wondered what he would think--how does it look to see the gawky teenager at the door asking for your daughter grow into a man, a father, a friend? To be sure, it was painful, and poignant, to be doing the work that I wished he had been there to do. But it was also a source of pride, and a bit of a nod to his belief in me.

The hole is patched, Jim. The birds have not made their way back in. I still need to get over to the lumberyard and pick up that proper material. I won't wait much longer.

I hope I turned into something like what you hoped your daughter's husband would be. I'm still trying. You told me you knew I would. Your grandkids are beautiful. I wish you were here. Happy Fathers' Day.

For Megan, the one true thing I know

You could say I lost my faith in science and progress
You could say I lost my belief in the holy church
You could say I lost my sense of direction
You could say all of this and worse but

If I ever lose my faith in you
There'd be nothing left for me to do

Some would say I was a lost man in a lost world
You could say I lost my faith in the people on TV
You could say I'd lost my belief in our politicians
They all seemed like game show hosts to me

If I ever lose my faith in you
There'd be nothing left for me to do

I could be lost inside their lies without a trace
But every time I close my eyes I see your face

I never saw no miracle of science
That didn't go from a blessing to a curse
I never saw no military solution
That didn't always end up as something worse but
Let me say this first

If I ever lose my faith in you
There'd be nothing left for me to do

Meditation on Imagine by John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine there's no country
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed nor hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

It's not really about religion, or God. Come on, folks. I was going to link you to some of the online discussion surrounding these lyrics, but a simple search will show you all the fanatical positions out there. Don't be scared.

John Lennon's--and my--opposition was not to religion as spirituality, it was to what religion has become: an excuse to marginalize, caste, demonize, murder, judge, separate, oppress, and devalue people. Let's open our eyes, Religion--big "R"--is a sham. It's a competition. Who's closest to God? Who's cornered the market on truth? There are a few churches who manage to avoid getting hung up on the dogma and leave room for the diversity of our world; but not many. It just feels so good to be on the "right" team.

The same goes for "country," or "nation," or "state." It's a club, it's a creation. It's nothing but an idea. "What about our culture?" some will say. Nations don't have culture, people do. American culture in Hillsboro, KS has distinct and important, unashamed differences from American culture in New York, NY. Free your mind! We've all, worldwide, been sold these clubs that have colors and their own flags, and someone is telling us that we should be willing to kill and be killed in the name of something that isn't even real. In our blood, in the eyes of whoever is watching the human race, we are the same! Languages, flags, customs and colors can never change that! It's so much easier to just love.

But in the end, it all comes down to selfish human pride. Greed. If I own the best truth, and the best stuff, and the best team, I can demonstrate that I'm the best human. Why do we have so much more than we need? Why do we need to raise ourselves up when so many are pushed down--pushed down by the very mechanisms we use to raise ourselves up: religion, nationhood, status. We starve them, we damn them, we kill them, and we believe we're better. And we back it up with our faux-Christianity, which mimics the Pharisees and ignores Jesus' message that laws are made for people, not people for the laws.

Imagine ALL the people living life in peace.

Filter

According to my memory, I'm at 3 posts that were offensive enough to delete. 3 in 17 months. I feel good.

Moments

The moments we miss, in a moment we experience, are infinite. Among those billions of starry moments are many that we dearly wish we could have been present for. A group of friends gathered together; a birth; a death; a song; a kiss.

On some level, that has to be okay.

I think the easiest way to drive yourself insane is to be too acutely aware of all of the things that are happening without you, and allowing yourself to feel small, insignificant or unloved in that knowledge. Life goes on around us, everywhere.

I cannot allow myself to blot out the moments I experience by mourning the moments I WISH I'd experienced. The world--even my own personal world--moves without my direction; and it CAN. It is okay not to be chosen for every moment, it's not a critique.. They're allowed. You're allowed. I'm allowed.

Breathe. Let go. Live.

My dangerous blog

I am often tempted in this space to wallow in the small difficulties and personal battles that I imagine plague us all in our walk through this life. I covet other blog authors' and photographers' abilities to show beauty in their lives and their worlds.

I need a summer day, with nothing on the calendar, no wind, no agenda. You know the kind of day where the earth grows life into you from the soles of your feet, and the sun shines life onto your skin in waves of glorious warmth. And then, when the sun has set, the sharpness of stars against the black sky remind you that the universe is vast, and the guitars play softly around a fire as voices rise here and then there in snippets of song, young children sleeping on their parents while the older children laugh or argue together.

Someday everything is gonna' sound like a rhapsody,
When I paint my masterpiece.
--Bob Dylan

The smell of things

When I was young, I would often (without a choice) accompany my grandparents to what we always called an "old folks home" after church. Grandma and Grandpa would bring a guitar and an autoharp and play hymns--by request if they came from the audience. Sometimes my mom would play along on a badly tuned piano, if she was feeling confident that day, which was rare. Always, we were expected to sing along. I dreaded every trip.

The people scared me in their various states of dependence. Wheelchairs, walkers, canes, slobber, wordless cries of dementia, the smells of bodily waste and Lysol all crowd my memories of those trips. Before we reached the gathering of people, there was always the stale smell of cafeteria food; bland and fibery. As I write this, it occurs to me that these trips are quite likely to have been a major contributor to my distaste for hymns.

Last week I went to visit my grandfather at his new home, an independent living division of a local retirement community. As I drove in--on my scooter as usual--the smell of "old folks home" food entrenched itself in my nostrils until I was well past the primary care facility. I found Grandpa's new place (Grandma died--I can't even remember when; 2001 or 2002. Grandpa is remarried now) and went to the sitting room in the back where he was eating a roll and watching the ducks on the pond. He greeted me with the slightly confused laughter that has marked my last few conversations with him. We talked for an hour or so and I headed on my way.

On my way back through the complex I couldn't help but feel sad about the toll age has taken on him, and how close he is to sitting in the seats of those to whom he used to sing so many years ago. Time marches on, and age erodes our faculties as surely as the sea wears away the land. Sadly, but almost predictably, no amount of time I see him in his last years will ease the pain of the years we can't live again; the years that we cannot hold more closely.

Such is this life.

Be well.

The Hunter

As I bumped along on my scooter through a dark Victorian neighborhood here in town, with only dim lights behind drawn shades to mark the houses, I breathed in the bite of a crisp spring night. With the smell of freshly cut grass strong in my nose I looked to the yawning westward sky as I wound my way home through the town that has become so familiar to me over my lifetime. Far above the brick street I traveled, above the lights of Main Street, above civilization itself, strode the Hunter, Orion.

Not surprisingly Orion was the first constellation I learned to identify as a child, and is one of only a few I still recognize. The perceived alignment of the stars of Orion's belt are a thing not often seen in the tumultuous heavens. There is something comforting and orderly about that string of cosmic pearls. It's easy to see why the ancients wove stories around this elegant, giant feature in the spring and summer skies. Welcome to the seasonal skies, my old friend; your presence is welcome.

Be well.