Be Here Now

     Lucy wrote a blog post a few days ago for the EUIP blog about the Hollywood House mantra for the year: "Be Here Now."  And with less than a month left in LA, it seems more appropriate than ever to keep reminding ourselves what this year was, no IS, about.

     But it's difficult when you're in the middle of a transitional year not to think about where your life is headed.  Isn't that exactly part of why we all signed up for this year anyway?  A year of discernment, questioning, figuring it all out.  However, given a variety of factors that I'm not sure anyone saw coming, the program year didn't play out in the way a lot of people expected.  I can't speak for all the houses, but in Hollywood, from Day 1 everyone's schedules were jam-packed (shocker, living in LA), for the greater part of the year roommate-time was down to about two exhausted waking hours a day if we all ended up at home in the evenings, and weeks flew by with little sign of a reprieve. 
    Toward the spring, everyone started to worry, sometimes visibly, about what the coming months, and years, might hold.  We were all making plans and decisions, and not just about whether or not to head to the beach over the weekend (let's be honest, that was never really a question for us anyway), I'm talking big life-changing decisions, the kind that after they're made you feel a thousand times lighter, as though you might just float away. 
     And THAT'S when the "Be Here Now" mantra came in handy for me.  I've had a million (only a slight exaggeration) decisions to make in the last few months, most of which drew the greater part of my thoughts, dreams, and hopes away from the West Coast.  (I'll be moving to DC in less than a month to start a graduate program.)  And this thing that we keep saying to ourselves in Hollywood, be here now, has been one of the ways that I keep reminding myself to stay engaged and connected to the community I have here, to this place I've recently started catching myself referring to as home. 
    Despite the schedules and the seemingly nonexistent time to figure our lives out, discernment, and eventually decisions, bubbled up through every empty space in our go, go, go Hollywood lifestyles.  And now that most of those decisions are made and we can all float away if we so choose, I know my Hollywood girls will continue to live out and into our community, to be here now.

Twitterpated

     I've decided that I'm going to take over Twitter.  With no ill intention, of course.  On the contrary, my conquest has a benevolent purpose.  After initially remaining mostly silent on issues connected with Twitter, I've decided that NOT to use it is almost as (or potentially more?) unhelpful to the values to which I cling so dearly - namely human dignity and social justice - than to jump on the proverbial bandwagon.  Twitter is, after all, a platform - to be used however we see fit.
     Thus far it has been used largely to perpetuate a fabricated sense of celebrity, or to practice a dry and stultified sort of wit in response to the many absurdities of American mass culture.  What if, however, we use it to promote worthy causes?  Can we use it to redefine a generation?  I think it just might be possible.  So I'll be tweeting about community service, social justice, and hope.
#heresanidea #shakethedust #americanrevivalproject #generationserve

Cities That Speak

Sometimes I sigh and simultaneously hear the tired murmurs of the blood in my veins softly whispering of my yesterhood years when I rested feet dangling along the banks of the Allegheny or of the Ohio - rivers who in turn whispered back to me of their yesterhood years when steel and whiskey flowed freely down on toward the great mouth of America. Pittsburgh, the work of your hands and of your heart has flooded this nation, and your mighty struggle to reinvent yourself breathes hope back into the land.

Dreams of America

America, you land of dreams and hope and wishes and destiny manifest in all the rocks and mountains and rivers, you have failed your aching children.  Bullets ring inside our brains and it is heavy.  We are all left behind these days, running to catch up to the rest of the world.  Which of your people will courageously step forward?  Can we save you, America, land of dreams?  Land of the free – to what?  Free to speak words of hate.  Stay out, intruders.  This is my land.  It is not yours. 

Backyard Poetry

Tomorrow I’ll Remember

These days I do not hear the poetry

Laughing in the spaces between my ears.

I sit at night, listening patiently,

And hear the musty house settle and creak

In its old foundations, and hear

My lungs emitting nighttime sighs

That would be silent otherwise.

The Story of a Lifetime

     Have you ever read any of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude?  I started to read it last summer, and actually never finished the entirety of it.  It required patience and resolve that I just didn't have at the time.  The story spans, as its title indicates, one hundred years in one family.  You see generation after generation of complexity, and Marquez captures the magic and the myth that gets passed down from one to the next.  He is a brilliant storyteller. 
     For many reasons I have been thinking recently a great deal about stories and how they function in our lives and in our culture, personal and public narrative if you will (with a wink to fellow ESCers).  What is my life story?  What will it amount to?  Will it have all the structurally sound elements - strong plot with clear conflict, resolution, and character development?  What about a theme - will my story have a moral? 
     I'm not sure at this point what my story is or where it's going.  It's hard to analyze the theme when you're in the middle of the book.  I do think I have settled on one thing though, which is that I don't see myself as the author.  I'm leaving that job up to the Big Man.  His stories are far more magnificent than I could ever write, so I'm fine with letting Him tell His story through me. 
     I can feel an argument about agency coming, so without trying to get into a debate, I will only say that allowing God to write your story is a choice.  It is agency.  I choose to see my life as part of a story told by God to his creation, and it certainly takes a great deal of courage to hand over the pen.

Fix You

     For the past week I've been doing some interesting experiments with my students.  Along with one of the resource specialists at my school, I've been designing some cognitive tests for my special needs students.  We're trying to assess where the gaps in processing skills are, and then trying to figure out what types of intervention activities can help build skills. 
     In doing all of this I've been speaking with several different people about the fundamental assumptions of special education.  One of the school psychologists told me that these kids have certain disabilities, and it's not a matter of trying to fix their brains.  My kids' brains are how they are, and that's all there is to it.  Our challenge is to find a way to help them find strategies to overcome their disabilities (calculators for example...). 
     I'm not so sure I can accept that though.  My friend (the resource specialist with whom I've been doing all of this) and I believe that our students can overcome their disabilities.  Yes, it is incredibly difficult for them, and yes, it will take some inventive strategies. But, the brain is an amazing organ.  It has the capacity to rewire itself, to create new pathways.  We just have to figure out how to generate those connections.  Will it be the same as normally functioning students?  No.  Absolutely not.  But can it be done?  I have to believe it.

I AM

     I was talking with a friend today about the passage "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." (John 14:6).  We were discussing the idea of a personal transformation that can be lived out every day, and I was led to think about a film I saw recently.  It is called I AM, and it is by a director named Tom Shadyac.  The film is rooted in the idea of personal transformation that can go on to change the world. 
     Here is a description of just that from the film's website:

...while he does explore what’s wrong with the world, the film’s overwhelming emphasis is focused on what we can do to make it better.  Watching I AM is ultimately, for many, a transformative experience, yet Shadyac is reluctant to give specific steps for viewers who have been energized by the film.  “What can I do?” “I get asked that a lot,” he says.  “But the solution begins with a deeper transformation that must occur in each of us.  I AM isn’t as much about what you can do, as who you can be.  And from that transformation of being, action will naturally follow.”

A Night Already Devoid of Stars

      Yesterday, after watching Americans flock to public spaces in celebration of Osama bin Laden's death, I posted a quote from Proverbs on my Facebook page: "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, And do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles. Proverbs 24:17"  A friend took issue with my post, saying that it was a judgmental use of scripture against those who would celebrate.


     I sent him an email, some of which said:
     It (my post) was intended, rather, as a reminder to be wary of our actions, both outward displays and also the inner actions of our hearts.  The fear and anger inspired by the (9/11) attacks, though justified, have been identified with one man.  That's what worries me most.  Osama bin Laden has been turned into an object of fear and hate (in much the same way that America has been objectified by al-Qaeda to represent vanity and excess), and I take issue with the objectification of any person, no matter the evil they may have committed. Objectification dehumanizes both parties, the one who has been objectified and the one doing the objectification. 

     What's more, if you take a look at what some of the families of victims are saying, this event brings no closure for them.  One more man's death does not bring a beloved family member back.  It doesn't rebuild the towers.  (And in my opinion it still doesn't justify ten years of war.) 

     Revenge is a childish reaction, as is taking joy in it, and for this reason I cannot say I am surprised that most of the revelers last night were college students.  It is much harder, but much more adult, to choose the path of forgiveness and mercy.  I am disappointed, yet not surprised, to see our country once again represented to the world as one of childish reactionary impulses. 

Let It Move You

I wrote this last summer after spending an afternoon talking about life with a old man named Nick.  He passed away this Fall, and I've only recently recorded this.  Click the link below to hear it.

Let It Move You

At Least I Know I'm Free

     I had a conversation today with a dear friend of mine during which I expounded from the depths of my patriot heart upon the notion that the great democracy is standing in the doorway of decline. 
     "All empires eventually crumble," she said with a bated smile.
     "Sure, but there have been empires that were close to the brink of decay, yet underwent a resurgence of vitality.  We are the generation," I said to her, "that can make a change.  We are the new decision-makers." 
     "And what will our choice be?"
     Well right.  That's exactly the point.  We stand in the midst of a recession, staring almost powerlessly as our troops march into yet another war, while on our own turf we have an education system that seems almost beyond repair, and our integrity and self-worth are drowning in the rising tide of consumerism.  We are the generation, though, that can begin to change this country.  To bring it out of the jaw of recession, and despite what John Mayer might suggest, we can't afford anymore to wait on the world to change.  It is up to us to pull this country up by its bootstraps and make its citizens once again proud to be Americans.

Reading (?) in the Car

     Ok, so I didn't actually pick up that dangerous habit.  I have however finished the entirety of Seven Years in Tibet in spurts during my commute to and from work for the past few weeks.  A while back I was at a thrift store, and to my great joy I discovered, or re-discovered I suppose, books on tape.  Given that my car is a particularly old and junky piece and still has an old selectively-functioning tape deck, I decided that rather than listening to the same five songs on the radio for an hour of my life every day, I would pick up a few of these inexpensive bits of nostalgia (yes, cassette tapes are nostalgic for me) and expand the literary region of my mind that has recently gone into atrophy due to a severe lack of me-time.
      I'd recommend reading the book if you're at all interested in Tibetan culture or history or religion.  It was fascinating, and written in a style to which I am not at all accustomed - long, narrative prose with no dialogue at all.  It seemed odd at first, but after a few minutes of puzzled distraction, I settled nicely into the story and was transported to the unforgiving mountains of Tibet and the windswept plateau on which the capital of Lhasa sits. 
     I'm excited to start my next set of tapes - Medieval Jewish philosophy of Maimonides.  Light reading, as always.
    

Sometimes I Get Nervous

Can You Help Me Now

Amos Lee, ladies and gentlemen.

Working Catholic

Rather than writing a huge post about where God is in my life right now, I'm giving you a link to this New York Times article about Dorothy Day.  If I'm ever confused about where God might be in my life at the moment, I find it helpful to turn to the stories of those people whose lives were undoubtedly touched by God.

Here and Now

It's a problem of our time.  The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him.  The lunchtime here-and-now stuff is a specialty too.
Robert M. Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

De-Electrifying Life

     I was recently reading an article by David Pogue in Scientific American entitled "Gadget Politics."  I can just see many of you tilting your heads, wondering why I, the perpetually humanities obsessed bookworm, would ever be reading something that has anything to do with science, but I'll remind you that I very nearly chose to spend four years studying higher level physics.  In any case, apologetics aside, the article addressed some issues that have concerned me for the past few years, but upon which I was neither articulate nor astute enough to remark. 

What’s going on here? Why do people work themselves into such a lather over their choice of phone, for heaven’s sake?
First, tech companies these days work hard to link their products to style and image. Those colorful, silhouetted dancing iPod ads never mention a single feature—except how cool it makes you. The message seems to be, “You’re not worthy if you don’t buy one”—and suddenly, if someone disses your gadget, they’re also dissing you as a person.
A second factor is that gadgets are expensive, and they quickly become obsolete. You become invested in the superiority of your purchase. People see you using it, judging your choice—so you defend your choice. Insult my gadget? You’re insulting me...
But why gadgets?
...the Internet effect. The kinds of people who peg their self-worth to their gadgets are precisely the kind of people who live online, where the standards for civility are very different from the real world’s. When you’re online, you’re anonymous, so you don’t experience the same impulse control you would if you were face-to-face with somebody.
Is there hope for a détente in the electronics wars? Not as long as nobody knows your real identity online, as long as the gadget mill cranks out new models twice a year, and the marketing machines make us believe that our self-worth depends on the brands we carry.
David Pogue, March 2011

      I hadn't thought about it until Pogue pointed it out, but he's absolutely right.  The uneasiness I had felt about all the incessant gagetry in the world comes not only from the effects it has on person to person interaction, but from the effects it has had on self worth.  I see it every day in my students who constantly judge each other on who's got the best phone (despite the fact that they're not allowed to have them at school).  I've had several students comment on how expensive my MacBook is with an approving tone.  (Mind you, I only bought it because my PC died, so I decided to try a different operating system.  I couldn't care less about the brand; I just want a machine that works.)  This self worth thing is a pretty big problem though.  So long as Americans keep pinning their self worth on superficial things like technology and not on the dignity of personhood, our culture is going to continue its downward spiral of moral decay. 

Dirty Foreheads

     Every Ash Wednesday, I am always led to contemplate just why Catholics (and Episcopalians as I found out) come crawling out of the woodwork, even and especially those who don't practice during the rest of the year, to attend a religious service during which we literally smear dirt over our foreheads.  What is the appeal?
     Why are we so enthralled and compelled to get dirty?  Is it because it's one of the days that you get to take something away from Church?  (Let's remember that the other day that the church-going population spawns, aside from Christmas and Easter, is Palm Sunday, the day when we get to take home a few palm fronds.  Give the people free things, and they will come to your service.)   Or is it to show that we belong to the cool religious club?  To brag silently that we are better than the heathen we pass during the day who don't share our ashen marking and smugly nod to those of our brothers who do?
     There was a meditation in the Lenten Magnificat on Ash Wednesday entitled "Actors."  It reads:

It takes someone who knows and loves art to know how sad it is to cheat oneself by only pretending to know and love art.  It is the same with God.  Jesus is not angry with the Pharisees for their practices of prayer, alms giving, and fasting.  He is angry and sad because they are content to take their practices as evidence that they have genuine knowledge of his Father.  They are actors who have forgotten that they are playing a part.

I think the point is that the outward symbol of a smudge of ash on our foreheads is not actually meant for outside observers.  That smudge of ash on my forehead is not for the other people I encounter in the day - it is for me, a symbol of my own mortality and weakness.  If we go into the Ash Wednesday services, and the Lenten season for that matter, with a spirit of showmanship, i.e. look at all the fasting I'm doing, look at how holy I am, we're going in for the wrong reasons.  This season is an intensely personal time to reflect on our own lives and how they might become better. 

A Change of P(l)ace

From Terrier to Cardinal?

     After a few weeks of wondering whether or not I had somehow failed in my quest to obtain a Masters degree, I just received word yesterday that I have been admitted to Catholic University.  I celebrated with Megan and a glass of wine.  I'm still waiting to hear back from the University of Pittsburgh, but it feels nice to have a door open after so many windows have recently shut. 
     The news forces the question though - am I ready to haul out to Washington DC after just one measly year in Los Angeles?  Maybe it's time for another change of pace - away from the frenetic rush of teaching middle school 55 hours a week, and back into the steady churn of higher education.  The theoretical side of my brain has begun to atrophy.
     In any case, I now find myself with more than a few options.  Washington DC, Los Angeles, maybe Pittsburgh, and I have been considering moving to France to teach English.  I had been wondering what the right choice might be, and how to begin making that decision.  I have friends in all of those cities and a million external reasons to choose each place, so I wasn't sure how I would begin to make that choice.  Recently though, I had a few doors slam in my face - perfect timing really - so it seems that God is helping me to make this discernment about me.  I have a habit of making decisions based on other people rather than for myself, but I think this next year is clearly going to be about what I need. 

It Still Moves

     I just recently visited the Gene Autry museum of the American West, and I picked up a cheap book called "It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways and the Search for the Next American Music."  I'm inconceivably thrilled to read it.

     The book starts with the following epigram: "A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image."  - Joan Didion

     In the meantime I am plugging through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Chronicles of Narnia.

     Other suggestions??