Inkspire and Other Events of the Week

I am tired this morning--it's a good tired because of a more intense week of good stuff, but a good tired is still tired.  Let me collect some fragments before they float away:

--One of my colleagues at Spartanburg Methodist College has been bringing in watermelon from her garden, which seems miraculous to me.  I've never been able to grow the larger, slower produce:  winter gourds/squash or melons.  I've been feasting on melons that someone else has cut up for me--a real treat.

--I was asked to be part of the search committee to find a new, full-time Speech hire.  I said yes, and I have no regrets:  as our provost said, it's one of the more important tasks that a college does.  But it will take a lot of time, and just thinking about it makes me tired (in a good way, but still tired).

--I am part of a student's Capstone project, and yesterday was her first event with me as a guest speaker.

It went really well.  It was a small group, but they were attentive.  I decided to talk about blocks and distractions that might keep us from writing and some techniques for dealing with those.  It was nothing earthshattering:  write in smaller increments--10 minutes a day can lead to having 150 to 300 pages in the course of a year.

--I love this broader view picture, the Inkspire event among many other events:

I love being part of a college that has so many events happening.

--Yesterday was a pizza party for Humanities majors, and we got good turnout.  Delightful!  But also tiring.

--In the midst of all of these events yesterday, I was sad to hear about the death of Annie Dillard.  She was not one of my writing/reading touchstones.  I remember a college summer of commuting when I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which I had heard so much about--but I was underwhelmed.  I felt the same way about all of her work, and I feel weird about that, with so many people whom I respect having a different experience.

--It's the time of the school year when I feel like it's getting harder to stay ahead, especially with copying.  In part, it's because I have a lot of competing ideas for my creative writing classes, and all of them seem worthwhile.

When I want to remember why I tend to do the same thing semester after semester in English 101, it's so that I can devote creative energy to other classes.

--The work on the fixer-upper house has felt more intense.  Last Thursday we rented a floor sander, and now the big spaces are done.  Now we need to get the insides of the closets and the edges near the baseboards.  We're renting a different kind of sander today--here's hoping it makes it easier.

Annual Dinner with Camp Counselors

Last night, we had dinner with the Lutheridge and Lutherock camp counselors.  We've done it before, and I always come away impressed.  The neighborhood community who lives in the residential section of Lutheridge brings a variety of desserts, and the camp provides burgers and hot dogs, chips and beverages.

We sat with a guy who's finishing the fall semester and then headed to Duke Divinity school and another senior staffer who hopes to come back for another summer or two before he said he probably should find a regular job.  I said, "Or you could continue working in outdoor ministries year round."

Happily, no one was there to point out the shrinking job opportunities in that field.  I will never understand why the larger church doesn't do more to help/commit to campus and outdoor ministries.  The counselors I spoke to last night are full of hope for all the ways their futures might unfold.  I've found that my SMC students are similarly optimistic.  It's refreshing.

Before the dinner, I spent the day trying to fix my course shell for my online class at Spartanburg Methodist College.  The book has changed editions (again--sigh), so the references to the book page numbers that students find in the assignments and discussion posts are wrong.  Ugh.  I'm teaching someone else's course, and so it's not intuitive to me, the way I would have if I had created it all--it takes more time to diagnose problems and fix them.

I also did some baking--I decided to bring a gluten free, dairy free dessert.  It worked beautifully.  It's an almond-coconut concoction, and I want to record it here:

1 C. sugar

3 eggs

1 1/2 C. almond flour (or grind up a lot of almonds into as fine a powder as possible)

1 1/2 C. coconut (I used sweetened and unsweetened in 2 different experiments--no difference)

Whip the sugar and eggs until tripled in volume or until tired of the noise of the mixer.  Fold in the almond flour and the coconut.  Pour in a 9 inch cake pan lined with parchment paper and greased or in cupcake pan.  Bake at 350 for 25ish minutes.  You can only tell if it's done by color--a golden, light brown color.  It will be sticky and delicious.  It keeps at room temperature for days, although the crispiness of the crust declines.

Thinking about Labor on Labor Day

Yesterday afternoon, on our way to a wedding that I'll write more about tomorrow, I asked my friend if she thought I could wear my white skirt with blue embroidered designs into late fall or even winter.  She asked about the fabric, which is cotton.  The skirt looks summery, but with the right top, I could see it looking wintry, like something with a snowflake design.

Then I laughed at myself.  How many decades has it been since we worried about wearing white after Labor Day?  And I'm teaching in a place that will not fire me for a fashion faux pas.  Most of my fellow faculty members seem to be at midlife or older, with a preference towards comfortable clothes with a zing of stylish touch.  My skirt will not be out of place.

Many of us think about Labor Day as the end of summer, and I'm old enough to remember when college classes started the Tuesday after Labor Day.  My mom does too; she said in her generation it was because college students had jobs at country clubs that would close after Labor Day.  In terms of weather, I've always lived in places where summer will stretch on through September and perhaps beyond.

Even though many of us will see today as simply a day off, it's a good day to think about work, both the kind we do for pay and the kind we do out of love. And what about the work we feel compelled to do? I'm thinking of that kind of documenting of family history, of cultural history, of all that might be lost without our efforts.  I'm thinking of our creative work.  There's so many more different kinds of work than just work for pay.

I'm thinking about our attitude towards work too.  I am glad to see that this article, published in 2016, about the theology of work is still online.  Here's my favorite quote from it, with ideas informed by Christian monasticism:  "Taking Benedict’s approach would force us to reconsider how we think about our work. Instead of, 'What work am I called to?' we might ask, 'How does the task before me contribute to or hinder my progress toward holiness?; Not 'How does this work cooperate with material creation?' but 'How does this work contribute to the life of the community and to others’ material and spiritual well-being?' Not 'Am I doing what I love?' but 'What activity is so important that I should, without exception, drop my work in order to do it?'”

And here's a Buddhist thought about work for your Labor Day, found in an interview with Bill Moyers and Jane Hirshfield who explains, "Teahouse practice means that you don't explicitly talk about Zen. It refers to leading your life as if you were an old woman who has a teahouse by the side of the road. Nobody knows why they like to go there, they just feel good drinking her tea. She's not known as a Buddhist teacher, she doesn't say, "This is the Zen teahouse." All she does is simply serve tea--but still, her decades of attentiveness are part of the way she does it. No one knows about her faithful attention to the practice, it's just there, in the serving of the tea, and the way she cleans the counters and washes the cups" (Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft, page 112).

First Day as Synod Authorized Minister

Yesterday was my first day as a Synod Authorized Minister, which is a position where I am allowed to do/have all the responsibilities and duties of a minister in a church, but only in one specific church that the Synod designates.  So, I can consecrate bread and wine, but only in that one church.  I can officiate a funeral, but perhaps not a wedding, since there might be state laws about that.  It's different from being an ordained minister, but much of the work looks the same.

Yesterday, we got in the car and drove over the mountains to Bristol, Tennessee.  We had no trouble finding the church, and we pulled in at the same time as one of the church leaders was walking across the parking lot.  I had 45 minutes to meet people and to get oriented to the building and the worship service I was about to lead (I had the bulletin in advance, so there weren't any unpleasant surprises).

I had wondered if any of my relatives still went to the church, and sure enough, a cousin introduced himself to me.  That led to me explaining my family connection to the other early arrivals at the church, and they knew my grandmother's sister, Martha, who worshipped at that church her whole life.  So, at the beginning of the service, when I introduced myself, I explained the family connection.

The worship service went smoothly.  The altar sits flush against the back wall, an older style.  I decided not to turn my back to the congregation as much as possible, and I asked how the previous pastor had located herself in the worship space.  She did much of the service down close to the congregation, which works for me.

I preached 2 sermons on the Trinity, since it was Trinity Sunday.  My children's sermon used ice, water, and steam from an electric kettle--hurrah for quick heating kettles that did produce steam.  My adult sermon focused on God the Creator who we meet in Genesis and God as Community.  I may say more about these sermons later.   I woke up thinking about how I could have made each better, but that tendency probably comes with the sermon territory.

After church, I talked to more parishioners and then de-robed and figured out the exiting process; I don't have a key for the door to the sanctuary (two other doors have a code for entry), but the person who does have the key stays to lock up.  People spent time lingering in the sanctuary to talk to each other after the worship service, a coffee hour of sorts, but without coffee and treats to eat.

We got in the car and drove back over the mountain, and the drive back seemed even easier/quicker than the drive there.  We didn't eat before the drive, and on the way home we saw a sign for a brewery called the Thirsty Monk.  We speculated about monasteries and breweries and followed more signs.  Alas, it wasn't a monastery, and the brewery was actually off site.  Still, we stayed for a flight of beers and fried pickles.  It was spontaneous and tasty and didn't take us too far off our itinerary.

One of our neighbors had an impromptu late afternoon neighborhood gathering in their beautiful backyard, which was a great way to end the day. Several of our neighbors are retired pastors, and they said, "It's a shame you're not further along in ordination" and told me about other churches that have also not had a full-time minister.  These are churches in the mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia--not unpleasant places to live.  I know that there could be many reasons for vacancies, but it does seem a bit troubling (and also not my problem to solve, not exactly).

We finished the evening on our own deck, overlooking our own beautiful back yard.  My spouse spread birdseed along a deck rail, and we watched the birds approach, eat, and fly away, over and over again.  I said, "It's like we're sitting in a cathedral made of birds!"  It was mystical and awe inspiring.

Mystical and awe inspiring--in many ways, key words to describe the whole day.  

Deferred Maintenance and New Opportunities

I don't have as much time to write today.  I have to take the car in for an oil change, a task that has been on my to-do list for many months.  Each time I've returned from seminary, I've been determined to get it done.  But other tasks got in the way.  And yes, I do see a pattern, and yes, I do see a larger metaphor for the way I'm living my life.

This summer will be partly one of taking care of deferred maintenance:  finding a dentist and getting our teeth cleaned for both of us, a mammogram for me, an annual exam for me, a dermatologist for me.

But it will also be a summer of exciting opportunities.  I'm signing up for volunteer positions at camp, which starts June 5:  mail delivery to campers, help in the camp store, and being the Bible study leader for middle school campers during the last week of camp.  I always wanted to live in the residential section so that I could do these kinds of things, and I don't want to wait for some future summer.  My schedule has a way of getting crowded.

I will write more about my other exciting opportunity tomorrow, when I know more after an afternoon Zoom meeting that happens today.  I am going to be a Synod Authorized Minister for a church in Bristol, Tennessee for the next 9 months.  It is a very part-time job, which will consist mostly of preaching on Sunday mornings.  Bristol is 2 hours away from me, but it's a beautiful drive through the mountains.

What I find interesting is that it's not very far away from one of my ancestral home places.  My mother's mother's family had a farm in Bluff City, Tennessee.  My grandfather came from his family farm in Lexington, SC to his first call as a Lutheran pastor, serving 5 churches in East Tennessee. That's where he met my grandmother, and they decided to join their lives together. 

Last week, when I drove back to seminary, I had a bit more time, so I decided to drive by the church through Bluff City.  I had this idea that I might be able to find the family farm, even though I haven't been to it since the early 80's.  It's a romantic idea that comes from too much idealistic reading in my youth, the idea that the land will be a sort of homing device, or that some sort of matrilineal homing device is part of my body, handed down from the ancestors.

Nope--I didn't find the homeplace or the church.  I was working from a memory of a map, so I don't see it as an ill omen, just an amusing story.  I realized it would be very easy to get very lost, even with my magical smart phone, so when I saw a sign that would take me back to the interstate, I went that way.

So, let me get ready for the day:  deferred maintenance and new opportunities.

Work that Lasts

Another day, another set of classified documents found in someone's house or office.  Not just any someone--high ranking officials, world leaders.  Did they not have to go through the same training that I did?

In my last full-time job, I was the campus person designated as the one authorized to be in charge of confidential documents and files, documents and files that needed safekeeping.  As such, I had to go through an annual training from a government agency, and take tests, and be prepared for the surprise inspections that the training assured us we might face.  As a result of that training, I didn't even like to take the confidential stuff out of my office to another spot on campus, much less to my house.  I felt nervous transporting them from campus to campus.

These documents weren't classified, in the sense that documents found in the possession of Trump, Biden, and now Pence, were classified.  No state secrets were in my possession.  I didn't know the identity of spies or special agents.  The information entrusted to me revolved around student records, faculty files, personal information from people applying for jobs, and eventually, the HR records of the whole campus.  I never left files out on my desk, but I also didn't keep them in a locked cabinet.  I should have been sure to lock my office door when I zipped across the hall to the bathroom, but I didn't.  

I felt guilty about this lapse of security.  I'm also fairly sure that after I left, the same care was not taken with the file cabinet of doom that contained so much information.  

Today I'm thinking about yesterday's chapel service and celebratory lunch afterwards, when one of my favorite professors here, the one who taught the Foundations of Preaching class last term, Dr. Veronice Miles was installed as the Mary Elizabeth McGehee Joyce Chair of Preaching.  As the luncheon wound down, various people spoke in tribute (pre-arranged, not spontaneous).  I felt a strange mix of emotions:  so happy to be able to benefit from her teaching and preaching, but also sad that I'm not having the same level of influence.

I write this realizing that she might be sad that she's having a diminishing level of influence.  There are far fewer seminary students now than there would have been when she first came here.  And I write also realizing that influence is probably not the most useful metric.

The truth, as I see it right now, is that most of us will do our work never knowing what will matter to future generations.  Today is the feast day that celebrates the conversion of St. Paul.  

I find it helpful to remember that Paul expected that Christ would return within the lifetime of everyone hearing or reading his words. He wasn't writing guidebooks for the centuries. He would be astonished to realize that we're still reading his letters--much the way that I would be if someone from 2000 years in the future told me that future communities treasured my blog posts or e-mails.

But honestly, if someone told me that my blog posts were treasured centuries into the future, I would be thrilled.

Measurements and Markers: All the Ways We Track Our Lives

I have been thinking about measurements and markers, all the ways we measure success, progress, and our proof of life on the planet.  Here are some of my scattered thoughts:

--Yesterday, I made this Facebook post:  

"Just back from a walk around the neighborhood around my seminary, and I'm amazed at how many people have already discarded the evergreen wreathes that once adorned the doors. I understand why the Christmas trees must go, but the wreathes seem appropriate for at least another winter month or two.

Then again, it's almost 70 degrees here in DC today, and I'm walking in shorts, so maybe winter is over."

--I've been tracking the miles that I walk since I walk with the phone, and Google Maps will do the tracking.  It fascinates me.  Over the holiday, I went on a hike with poet Dave Bonta.  He uses Google Maps too, but mainly to figure out how far he can go with the time and weather that he has on the given day; he tracks out his hike in advance, whereas I head out and later check to see how far I went.  I was intrigued by the difference in our mindsets.

--I am no longer tracking calories or pounds or my heart rate.  I think about all the logs I have kept in the past, all the markers that mattered to me.  I am keeping a list of books I've read and places where I've sent my creative writing.

--I took my spouse to the airport yesterday and returned back to my seminary apartment in the early afternoon.  By bedtime, I had fabric draped over all sorts of surfaces.  I am going to try to make some serious progress on my various quilting projects over the next few weeks and into February before my seminary projects will take over much of my free time.

I love having a project like quilting the big project together and having it draped over me, keeping me warm, along with having a project that consists of small pieces.

--As I moved about my afternoon, I kept an eye/ear on the Speaker of the House elections.  I don't understand why Kevin McCarthy wants this job so desperately.  It's clearly going to be a very toxic work situation.  Yuck.

--But then I also wonder about me--what does it say about me that I have never wanted a job that desperately?  Perhaps that I am happy to say goodbye to all sorts of things--power, prestige, money--if I can avoid a toxic situation.  The jobs that I might want that desperately may not even exist anymore--that factor, too, is one explanation of why I look at Kevin McCarthy and shake my head.

Labor and Labor Day

It is Labor Day Monday, a paid time off holiday for some.  Technically I have today off, but since I am teaching online classes, if I wanted, I could take every Monday off.  I'm also a student, so my Monday class doesn't meet tonight--but I did have a written assignment due, which I've turned in.

I've spent this Labor Day week-end in Williamsburg, Virginia with my parents.  It's been a delightful time.  I will head back this morning in hopes of avoiding the worst of Labor Day traffic.  Once back at my seminary apartment, I'll work on an assignment due in my Foundations of Preaching class tomorrow and do some grading.

Many of us think about Labor Day as the end of summer, and I'm old enough to remember when college classes started the Tuesday after Labor Day.  My mom does too; she said in her generation it was because college students had jobs at country clubs that would close after Labor Day.  In terms of weather, I've always lived in places where summer will stretch on through September and perhaps beyond.

It's interesting to think about Labor Day in this time of "quiet quitting" and people restructuring their working lives.  Will we see this time period as one that changed labor relations forever?  Or will we see the forces of capitalism and empire crack down and break the momentum of workers?

Even though many of us will see today as simply a day off, it's a good day to think about work, both the kind we do for pay and the kind we do out of love. And what about the work we feel compelled to do? I'm thinking of that kind of documenting of family history, of cultural history, of all that might be lost without our efforts.  I'm thinking of our creative work.  There's so many more different kinds of work than just work for pay.

I'm thinking about our attitude towards work too.  I am glad to see that this article, published in 2016, about the theology of work is still online.  Here's my favorite quote from it, with ideas informed by Christian monasticism:  "Taking Benedict’s approach would force us to reconsider how we think about our work. Instead of, 'What work am I called to?' we might ask, 'How does the task before me contribute to or hinder my progress toward holiness?; Not 'How does this work cooperate with material creation?' but 'How does this work contribute to the life of the community and to others’ material and spiritual well-being?' Not 'Am I doing what I love?' but 'What activity is so important that I should, without exception, drop my work in order to do it?'”

And here's a Buddhist thought about work for your Labor Day, found in an interview with Bill Moyers and Jane Hirshfield who explains, "Teahouse practice means that you don't explicitly talk about Zen. It refers to leading your life as if you were an old woman who has a teahouse by the side of the road. Nobody knows why they like to go there, they just feel good drinking her tea. She's not known as a Buddhist teacher, she doesn't say, "This is the Zen teahouse." All she does is simply serve tea--but still, her decades of attentiveness are part of the way she does it. No one knows about her faithful attention to the practice, it's just there, in the serving of the tea, and the way she cleans the counters and washes the cups" (Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft, page 112).

Visits and Virtual Life and Escapes, from Labs and Otherwise

It has been quite a week, the kind of week that leaves me wrung out and exhausted.  Am I trying to do too much?  I have been doing my regular job while also doing an onground intensive for my spiritual direction certificate program; for more on that experience, see this blog post.  I have also been working on getting rental documents together, which is a much more involved process than it once was, and getting registered for seminary classes in the fall.

In this blog post, let me collect some odds and ends and fragments:

--I am listening to an episode of Fresh Air that looks at the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from a lab in China.  At first I dismissed that idea as kookiness, but the more I hear and read, the more intrigued/horrified I am.  I would say it's like a plot line from a movie, but so much of this disease seems like plot lines from a movie script, a script that got rejected because it was too boring or because it lacked believability--or both.  What a very strange year.

--Yesterday morning I went to a meeting virtually.  We spent over an hour listening to our new process about how we will house our accreditation documents.  I'm fine with a new process, as our old way wasn't very user-friendly.  But our new way involves a shared drive that I don't have access to.  I can get access, of course, but it seems like an ominous sign, a bad beginning:  "Go to this section of your computer, and you'll see the drive.  Let's take a tour!"  The process will involve lots of uploading of documents, hundreds and hundreds of pages, while also collecting other materials and uploading, while also analyzing the current data and writing the end of accreditation year reports, while also doing the work of teaching current students.  The meeting left one of my department chairs in tears, and I wasn't far from it myself.

--On top of all of this, we will be preparing for a visit from accreditors.  Our self-study is due in November.  We knew that the sale of the school would trigger a visit, but hearing the haranguing pep talk about how we must gird our loins to get ready--just dispiriting.

--You might ask, "Wait--isn't your campus closing?"  Yes, and later in the day, I made a phone call--no need to disrupt a multi-campus meeting with a question that's only relevant to one campus.  So, yes, according to most timelines, the visit would happen after my campus has closed, but we might still need some/most (perhaps none) of the documents, depending on decisions that have yet to be made.  Or maybe they've been made and not communicated.

--And then, after the meeting that left us in tears, I went to a brief workshop on Ignatian questions:  "Is this life giving?  Is this bringing me joy?"  The presenter was talking about how she used these questions to discern a major life change, going from being a pastor to a seminary professor.  I thought about the accreditation meeting I had just attended, the work ahead, work for a campus that is closing, work that might not be necessary at all. 

--But let me end on a happy note.  Happy Juneteenth which will be celebrated on Friday this year, since the holiday is tomorrow!  Happy new federal holiday!  Amazing that it happened this quickly, that the branches of government were able to agree and enact this legislation.

Appreciation for Work in All Its Forms

The rhythms of life on a campus interest me, how some weeks are fairly laid back, while others are much more intense.  Then there's the time here and there that compresses that rhythm into an entire week.  But most of my weeks are like that--some days are oddly empty of communication, where I have a colleague send me an e-mail, just to make sure the system isn't broken, and then there's the day when all the week's e-mails seem to come in one hour, demanding immediate attention.

I expected yesterday to be one of those intense days; it was the rare day when we were expecting so many people to come to campus that we made a list of who we should be on the lookout for.  Later, I made this Facebook post:

"We were expecting many people to come to campus today: the health inspector doing the annual check on biohazardous waste storage, the head of IT, the student considering enrolling in our Vet Tech program, and the person delivering coffee/tea pods. We were not expecting the plumber.

But we do have toilets in the women's restroom that need to be replaced, and he's here with new toilets and parts. And we don't have male students on campus today, so we can use the men's room.

Progress!"

In the end, we didn't ever see the head of IT or the health inspector.  We did get 4 of our 5 boxes of tea pods, but the potential student never came.  It was the kind of day where I didn't want to immerse myself too deeply in any projects because I knew I was likely to be interrupted.

Some of the interruptions were worth it.  Late in the afternoon, a student stopped by.  She gave me a thank you card with a kind note that thanked me for helping her.  I got downright teary.

Much of what I do to keep the school running is unseen by students, which is as it should be.  Most of the students in the school where I'm an administrator will never have me as a teacher, which makes me even more invisible.  I do find meaning in keeping the school running smoothly--being persistent in insisting that we need the toilets to be fixed, filling up the snack basket, strategizing with faculty about how to solve issues.  Often I get verbal thank yous, particularly from faculty.  

I will keep that card--I have a whole file of stuff that I save to remind me that my work is important.  Happily, there aren't many days when I need to look at the file.  I am in a space where I'm appreciated--and some days, I even get a card to remind me of that fact.

Random Fragments from a Week with a Cold

Before last week gets lost, let me record a few impressions from the week:

--Spending a week coughing is a good way to develop some abs.

--Taking aspirin for the headaches caused by the coughing and taking ibuprofen for the sore back caused by the coughing--these help with the arthritic feet.

--My cold didn't seem like a major one, although it was noticeable to people.  It's taken me awhile to shake it.

--I'm glad that I didn't have to miss the 2018 Broward Teacher of the Year Awards.  It's good to remember how many people are out there quietly doing good work.

--A local high school choral ensemble performed.  My colleague and I were there early because she created centerpieces, and we had to set them up.  There was lots of down time, and some of the ensemble members worked on other pieces. 

--It is strange to hear a Bon Jovi song arranged for a choral group.

--Yesterday I heard Maria Shriver interviewed during an On Being episode on NPR.  I was struck by her final thoughts.  She talked about being on book tour and seeing people who had books in their hands.  Her first thought was that she was on the wrong stage, that those people were waiting for someone else.  She reflected on the idea that's she's 62 and spent so many years working on the political campaigns of others and that she only now feels like she has time and focus for her own work.  She encouraged those of us who are feeling like it's taking a long time to come into our own.

--Yesterday I spent the morning being in charge at church.  It went well.  As always, when preaching goes well, I wonder if God is trying to tell me something.

--As always, I tuck those thoughts away for a later day. 

Inspirations from a High School Awards Ceremony

Yesterday was book-ended by awards ceremonies.  We recognized scholarship winners at the Davie-Cooper City Chamber of Commerce at their breakfast meeting, and then, in the evening, we went to Cooper City High School to recognize the winners in that high school's awards night.

I finished our part of the awards ceremony last night by saying, "These students give us hope for the future, and we look forward to seeing what they do with their potential."  As I drove home, listening to the 80's music of my own high school days, I thought about how true it is.

We saw applications from students who have all sorts of plans, many of which involve helping others:  working with special needs children, designing better prosthetics, that sort of thing.  I was also impressed by how many of them have already been working for the good of their communities.

I realize that most of them will not transform the nation.  If we're lucky, they'll continue to work to transform their individual communities.  If we're lucky, we'll get to be part of communities that are being transformed.  If we're extra-lucky, the nation and the world will be full of these communities, full of people, working hard to make their communities better in a variety of ways.

In this time of graduations and bright hope that students evoke in us, let us remember that it's not up to youth alone to do this transformative work.  It's a time when many of us may be feeling despair about political events on the national and international stage, but it's urgent that we not let that despair paralyze us.

In every action, we move our various communities more towards good or more towards evil.  That's true even of actions we might think of as mundane, like how we treat our colleagues, how much we donate to charity, what we choose to eat.  I think of my Fitbit that shows me how my little actions are moving me closer to my health goals or further away.  Let's also think of our daily lives in the same way:  are we moving ourselves and our communities closer to good or closer to evil?

Labor Day Prompts Thoughts of Meaningful Work

--Labor Day dawns.  Will you spend today putting away your white clothes and your sandals?  I will not.  I wear sandals year round, and I have one white skirt that I'll wear until October or November.  But I am old enough to remember a time when we were not allowed to wear white to church after Labor Day.  It was just not done in the traditional states of the U.S. South where I spent my childhood--even though the hot weather would continue well into September and October.  Back to school meant that feet went back into closed shoes--no more sandals.

--Even though many of us will see today as simply a day off, it's a good day to think about work, both the kind we do for pay and the kind we do out of love.  And what about the work we feel compelled to do?  I'm thinking of that kind of documenting of family history, of cultural history, of all that might be lost without our efforts.

--I'm thinking of Vertamae Grosvenor (who in later years used the name Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor) and her death on Saturday.  I first became aware of her in the late 80's or so, as I learned about her important work in documenting and preserving the culture of the Lowcountry islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia.

--Her work also made me think of my own heritage as something worth preserving.  For example, as I've watched people discover kale, I've thought of winter fields, like the ones my grandparents and great-grandparents would have tended, those winter crops, sold for so much less than they might sell for now.  Someone's getting rich off of kale, but it's likely not farmers like my ancestors.

--To get a sense of Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor's authentic voice, listen to this piece on NPR's Morning Edition.  And do be sure to listen--you need to hear her voice.

--I will spend much of today getting ready for a justice event, God's Work, Our Hands, that my church will have on Sunday, September 11.  I'm in charge of helping people work on quilts for Lutheran World Relief.  I need to prepare some bindings for the quilts.

--I also spent some time completing some mandatory trainings.  Perhaps I will write more on this later.  Or perhaps I'll try not to ever think of it again.

--I will be grateful for the work I have that nourishes me.

--If you're in the mood for some substantial thinking about the issue of work, particularly in theological terms, I recommend this article.

--It's interesting to think about the way that a Benedictine/monastic approach would reshape the questions that we ask about work:  "Taking Benedict’s approach would force us to reconsider how we think about our work. Instead of, 'What work am I called to?' we might ask, 'How does the task before me contribute to or hinder my progress toward holiness?; Not 'How does this work cooperate with material creation?' but 'How does this work contribute to the life of the community and to others’ material and spiritual well-being?' Not 'Am I doing what I love?' but 'What activity is so important that I should, without exception, drop my work in order to do it?'”

--These are good questions for Labor Day--or any day.

Wednesday Wonderings/Wanderings: Words and Language

--Occasionally, in my role as an administrator, I read a rough draft here and there.  Occasionally, I'm helping a colleague with a project.  But more often, I'm helping a student.

--I find it rewarding in the midst of administrator tasks, to work one on one with a student.  Sometimes they're students who want someone to take a last look at their portfolio, a last proofreading.  Sometimes, it's a first year student.  Thus, I read a wide variety of writing.

--When I was working with a student, the student said, "Because of my autism, it takes me awhile to get the words right." 

--I said, "I'll let you in on a secret:  even people without autism usually don't get the words perfect right away."

--Not for the first time, I thought of the fact that so many of us believe that writing should be easy; after all, we use words every day, right?

--And we do a poor job of talking about writing as having a variety of purposes and a variety of audiences.  The paper that you're writing for your teacher is different than the e-mail that you'll send the teacher and it's all different, probably, from the texting that you and your friends do.

--I'm beginning to think of texting as another language, not just another form of writing.  More and more I get an e-mail written in texting language, and I have to write back to say, "I have no idea what this is supposed to mean."

--Maybe it's not texting as a different language but voice recognition software that approaches English as a Second Language.

--I think of the discussions about the meaning of words that I've had in recent weeks.  We've talked about the meaning of the word "support"--as in "Do you support this student's appeal?"  We've talked about the word "possible"--as in "Is it possible for the student to pass this class?"

--Sure, if we believe that past behavior is a predictor of future behavior, we'd interpret that question differently than someone who wants to believe in the possibility of human change.  The question is really a math question, in the case of the particular form where we find the question.  Mathematically, can the student possibly pass the class at this point?

--We think of mathematics as a clean language, a black and white language, a language which leaves no wiggle room.  But I wonder if we think that way because we aren't trained in Math. 

--Maybe a Ph.D. in Math would shake his/her head over my belief that math is a more precise language.

--Suddenly I find myself longing for more time to dive into the issue of language.  I'd like to spend the morning reading books about chaos theory.

--Instead, I'll head to the office and herd the e-mails and the forms and the numbers.

--Once men herded cattle (and yes, I'm using gendered language on purpose).  Now men and women herd words.

--But will our words change a continent?  How I long to believe! 

--But as I sort through old e-mails (so many in one day!), I find myself full of doubt.

--And worse, the words that might change a continent are left to moulder in unsent packets of submissions.

--Sigh.

Intimations of Mortality

--Yesterday I got to work to find that none of the plugs in my office worked.  Hmm.  I tried not to see it as an ominous omen.

--You'd think a circuit breaker had tripped, but that was not the case.  Luckily, the electricians who had been replacing lights in the hall were still in the building.  Something in a distant ceiling had come undone while they were replacing lights, and they could fix it.  Ninety minutes later, I had power.

--While I was waiting for the plugs to work, which means the computer access necessary for most of my work, I went to various classes to talk about the Art Grant.  Our school has created this opportunity for students to reduce their tuition cost by 15-20%.  Part of it is naked self-interest, in the light of the Gainful Employment legislation.  But it ultimately helps students, so I'm willing to advocate for it.

--Some have speculated that the money freed up from the discontinuing of the company's match of our 401K accounts will go to this Art Grant.  On some level, I hope that's true.  I mind less losing money to student grants than the thought of the company match going to executive bonuses.

--In my idealistic grad school years, I would never have dreamed I would write a sentence like the last one.

--I spent the rest of the work day engaged in pursuits that I hope will make a difference:  telling classes about the Art Grant, helping students with transfer credit questions, welcoming new students at Orientation, taking a Math class off hold for a bit of time so that registration could happen, all the minutiae which hopefully helps students towards graduation.

--I ended the day by going to a funeral.  It was oddly inspiring in its own right.  For more on the spiritual aspect, see this post on my theology blog.

--It was sort of like a family reunion.  I saw church members who worship at different services, church members who have been away tending sick relatives, members who have moved to different churches.  It was good to see everyone, good to rejoice in a life well lived.

--It was good to be reminded that life is very short.  Does that make me seem strange?  I often think of monks who sleep in their coffins or artists like John Keats, who cough up a bit of their lungs each morning and thus reminded of impending death, go on to produce their best work.

--I think of the Grandmother and the Misfit in that Flannery O'Connor classic, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find."  I think of the Misfit saying that the Grandmother would have been a good woman if there had been someone there to shoot her every day of her life.

--That reminder of mortality--it's a powerful jolt.

--So this morning, back to wrestling with poems.  I'm working with images of paintbrushes buried in the dirt, poinsettias who hear an ancient music, and the strange songs of comets.

Yearning for the Cell of Julian of Norwich

Today is the feast day of Julian of Norwich, a 14th century mystic who kept herself in almost total isolation in a small room attached to a cathedral.  I've written about her before, and today, my post about her is up at the Living Lutheran site.  Go here to read it.

You may be asking why I would mention a 14th century mystic on my creativity blog.  Here are some reasons:

--Julian of Norwich wasn't just a mystic; she actually wrote down her visions.  She is likely the first woman to write a book-length work in English.

--And what a series of visions!  She gives God a distinctly feminine face, although it might not be the kind of face that attracts modern feminists.  She's groundbreaking in that way too, although I'm fairly sure she didn't set out to be groundbreaking.

--She might see herself as unworthy of being thought of as a writer. After all, she was only writing the visions that God sent her (in her eyes).  However, those of us who write know that one can utilize any number of techniques to write down a vision, even if one gives credit for the vision to someone else.  Julian of Norwich wrote those visions with amazing craft and art.

I've also been thinking about the little cell which she almost never left.  Lately, I'm beginning to feel the same way about my office.

My office is likely smaller than Julian of Norwich's cell, although unlike some of my colleagues, I do have the advantage of a door that shuts.  The door is heavy; the walls, alas, are not.  I find myself envying the stone walls of Julian of Norwich's cell, walls which would have kept out the sound far more effectively than my office walls.

If I began receiving visions, I'd assume I was going mad from the constant bombardment of sound.

Those of you who knew me in my younger years might think I'm getting my just rewards.  In my younger years, I was often the one bombarding others with sound, although the loud stereos of my youth did not have that throbbing bass beat (the thumpity thump music, as my grandmother called it).

In my older years, I think longingly of monasteries and other places where vows of silence are kept.

I try to use the noise of the modern office as a call to prayer, much the way that cathedral bells used to be a call to prayer.  I confess that I'm not very good at it.

My Lenten discipline was praying for all the angry people who crossed my path.  I had no idea how many angry people crossed my path until I began to pray for them.  Happily, they weren't angry at me, for the most part.  Still, it was rather sobering.

I'm afraid that if I pray every time I feel the flash of irritation from too much noise, I might realize how much noise there really is.  I might not recover. 

If I pray every time I feel the flash of irritation from too much noise, I might get very little else done at the office.

And here's the philosophical thought for the day:  would that be such a bad thing?

May Day: Maypoles, Marx, and Miracles

May 1:  have you been up before sunrise, putting bouquets of flowers on the porches of those you love?

Me neither--but when I was in elementary school, it always sounded neat.

I have May Day memories from my youth, memories of Maypoles and ribbons and weaving something interesting out of scraps.

It's only been more recently that I've thought of the labor relations aspects of this day.  I have a BA in Sociology in addition to English, so I could give a little lecture on Marx and how his writings seem more relevant today in some ways than they did when I first read them in undergraduate school in the 80's.  We could talk about workers and alienation and who owns the means of production. 

But let's begin in a more simple place.

With the collapse of the factory (in Bangladesh?) that makes cheap clothes for Westerners, it seems a good day to think about where our clothes come from.  Just after the collapse of that factory, I heard a commenter on NPR say that we're sensitized to where our food comes from and safety issues with all sorts of commodities, but most of us don't give much thought to our clothes.

I'm not sure I agree.  I know many people who think about it, but it's hard to find clothes that come from non-third-world countries.  All of those industries have been moved.

It's a good day to think about who sews those clothes in those Dickensian factories, who grows the food we eat, who ships all of our goods to us.  It's a good day to think about who cleans up our workplaces after we're gone for the day.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about meaningful work and what I'd like to do with the second half of my life.  It's a good day to be grateful that I have the luxury to do that, and to say a prayer for those who don't have that freedom.

We could also say a prayer for workers of the future.  Today is the day for many schools when students must put down a deposit to secure their space for fall.  What will they study?  What career fields will exist for them that we can't even imagine now?

It's also the feast day of St. Philip and James; for a spiritual take on May Day, try this post over at my theology blog.  I'm intrigued by how small a role Philip and James have as apostles.  Yet still, they get a feast day.

Perhaps there's a lesson there for all of us.  I spend a lot of time feeling like my work doesn't matter.  It's only occasionally when I say to myself, "Hey, this woman has a full-time teaching job at the community college.  I gave her one of her first teaching opportunities, when she had almost no teaching experience.  I couldn't give her a full-time job, but the adjunct job I could give her surely paved the way to better things."

I do my best to transfer in credits, to mediate disputes, to give faculty and students good schedules, to plan for the future at work--it's not all writing meaningless, yet lyrical, e-mails.

I often wish there was more success at the end of a day:  factories saved from collapse, working conditions improved across the globe, better opportunities for more people.  But I can only do so much on my own.

So, on this May 1, this Worker's Day, let's remember all those who don't have good working conditions.  Let's envision a world where workers will be safe--that envisioning is the first step.  Let's imagine a world of increasing opportunities, not collapsing futures.  Let's not give up on miracles!

Remembering Romero

On this day 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated as he celebrated Communion during Mass.  I've written about him numerous times, so I won't go into the history here.  If you want a post that compares the lives of Christ and Romero, head over to this piece on my theology blog. 

You may wonder why this event looms large in my brain, especially if you are younger.  The political situations in both Central America and South Africa formed the backdrop, and sometimes the forground, of my college years.  We talked about U.S. involvement and what our individual responses should be.  I met many Central American refugees.  I spent summers in the D.C. area, which had lots of refugees, and I went for week-end visits to Jubilee Partners, an intentional Christian community birthed by the Koinonia group, which devoted itself to helping Central Americans get safely to Canada, where they could get asylum.

Now the event looms large for me not just because of how it's woven into my past.  As I get older, I'm haunted by the ways I'm not living up to my full potential, or the ways I feel like I'm not.  As I've discussed before, I don't focus on all the good things I do, but all the good things I haven't yet done.

I'm collecting stories of people who have done their world-altering work and/or achieved success in midlife or after midlife.  I hadn't considered the story of Romero from that angle until I watched the movie Romero yesterday.

The movie makes clear, as does the history, that Romero was chosen to be archbishop because he was the safe choice, the one that wouldn't make waves, the man who would be lost in a book not out transforming the church.  In the early part of the movie, he argues for the middle way of the church, by which he means the non-confrontational way.

Romero will not retain his detachment, as history crowds in on him.  Priests are killed, along with huge swaths of the population, and it becomes clear that being part of the church will protect no one.  Romero argues forcefully against the killings.  He becomes a human rights hero.  And he is killed.

I want to argue that in death he becomes more powerful than in life, but the slaughter in El Salvador continued for the decade after his death.  I do think that an archbishop being killed during mass makes a stronger headline than the mass slaughter of peasants and perhaps does more to change minds and foreign policy.

But there I go, being naive again, thinking that foreign policy follows the will of the people and looks out human rights of all.  After watching Romero, we watched Missing.  That movie makes it clear that foreign policy is not always looking out for human rights, not always protecting all or an U. S. citizens.  It's a devastating movie.

And here we are at Palm Sunday, a church festival which may seem to have nothing to do with recent political history.  But for some of us modern folks, especially those who have been shaped by Liberation Theology, we see the Christ story as inherently political.

Take the crucifixion, for example.  The Romans executed people in all sorts of ways; crucifixion was reserved for enemies of the state.  I won't belabor the point here, since it's my creativity blog, not my theology blog.  But clearly, the Roman rulers felt so threatened by the message of Jesus that they crucified him.

Christ, Romero, and Missing:  all potent examples of what happens when one is on a collision course with the ruling powers of one's day.  When I hear Baby Boomers whine about how the younger generation doesn't get involved politically, I think of these cautionary tales. 

And when I think about how I'm not living in sync with my values, perhaps I should also think of the story of Archbishop Romero and what the ultimate cost could be.

No Future?

On the heels of watching Silkwood, and then reading about MOOCs and all the other ways my industry is being destroyed, I came across this blog post with its clip of The Sex Pistols singing "God Save the Queen."  A few hours earlier, my friend said, "I worry about what's ahead for the younger generation."

I said, "I worry about my generation."  But I really worry about us all.

I find old punk music to be oddly comforting.  We've thought we were doomed before--watch The Sex Pistols sing it:  "No future, no future, no future for you."  Reread Margaret Drabble's The Radiant Way to remember just how bad the social conditions were that spawned the punk movement.

Maybe we'll get some vibrant music out of these hard times.  Maybe some unlikely heroes will emerge.

I've been immersed in the 80's, so it was strange to wake up this morning to hear that C. Everett Koop had died.

There are very few members of the Reagan administration whom I respected much, although time has softened my outlook.  I tend to believe that people are doing the best job that they can do, which doesn't stop them from being horribly uninformed or working under outdated paradigms or feeling the beginning effects of diseases which dull the judgment.

But I still find Koop's story inspiring.  I remember him as being the only Reagan administration official who would even talk about AIDS--and then he did it so openly and matter-of-factly that I thought we might survive the plague after all.

Now in an age when so many people view AIDS as a manageable disease, we forget how terrifying it was in its early days.  I'm convinced that it was a more virulent disease then--watch those documentaries that have footage from the early days of the disease and notice how quickly those AIDS victims were turned into walking corpses--and then dead corpses.

Could more people have been saved if we'd just been honest from the beginning and had a frank discussion about body fluids, clean needles, and condoms?  Maybe.  In the intervening years, I've been amazed at the poor decisions of all sorts that people make as they gamble that the ill effects won't catch up with them or that reality doesn't apply to them.

I remember cheering for Koop, who steadfastly acted like a scientist and the nation's doctor, not like a moralist.  He showed us all how to behave like grown ups.

Today I read this article in The Washington Post about Koop's life.  I knew about his accomplishments during my lifetime, but I didn't realize how much he had done in the field of pediatric medicine, particularly surgery.  Not only do we have a generation or two who came of age in the early days of AIDS alive because of Koop's actions, but countless babies too.

I love that Koop was 64 and retired when he was tapped to be surgeon general.  I'm collecting these stories of people who go on to accomplish important events when they're at midlife or beyond.  They make me feel hopeful.

Koop also had no training in public health--but look at what he was able to accomplish.  Yesterday I talked about Silkwood, and being amazed at the depiction of the constant smoking in that movie.  People smoked at work, in restaurants, everywhere--but we don't do that anymore, and Koop deserves a chunk of credit for changing our habits.  He was just as blunt about the effects of tobacco as he was about AIDS and unprotected sex.

I want to watch the movie How to Survive a Plague, and it's cheap enough and sounds inspiring enough that I'll probably buy a copy.  It's about those early days of the AIDS crisis, and how people came together to demand social justice.  It's good to remember what can be accomplished.

Koop's life reminds us how much one human life can make a difference too, and how we may not fully know what we'll be called upon to do.  In the days when it feels like I'm a victim of events I can't control (the economy, which still feels wretched to me, the changes coming to higher ed, the changes coming to my own school), it's good to remember that ordinary humans can live in the face of extraordinary changes and make the world better.

In Praise of Friendships Fast and True

Today is the birthday of Anne Bronte, the least well-known of the writing Bronte sisters (there were 2 sisters who didn't write). She wrote  Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Throughout their lives, the Bronte sisters supported each other in their creative writing.  Today's post on The Writer's Almanac reminds us of their early project, before they went on to write novels:  "The three sisters hatched a plan to publish a book of poetry under three male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell."  Though the book didn't sell well, it engendered much speculation about who the authors could be.

Could they be--gasp!--women??!!

I say this mockingly, but it's all too easy to forget how difficult a path women writers faced in the early part of the nineteenth century.  Most galling would be the attitudes towards women in general, and women who dared to be creative in particular.  Many nineteenth century people were quite convinced that women couldn't write, literally, that they were physically incapable.  As women began to show that they could, the attack on the content of the work came hard and consistently.

Anne Bronte said this about the matter:  "I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man."


Frankly, we still see some of these arguments today.  I grow weary of them, but I also know that it's a luxury that I can declare myself weary and carry on.

I started grad school in 1987, and the canon we studied in most classes was still mostly male, mostly dead, and mostly white.  I remember earlier versions of the Norton anthologies that included only 1 or 2 women writers.

I will always be grateful to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, who helped expand the canon with The Madwoman in the Attic and The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women.  I've already written several posts which mention the importance of Gilber and Gubar to my life as a writer and a scholar; the most extensive post is here.

And now, they will be honored with the National Book Critics Lifetime Achievement Award.  Hurrah!

The Washington Post has this great story, for those who have missed this chapter of feminist histor--or for those who want to be inspired.  I love this narrative of female support and friendship.  I love that they continued to do important work and to support each other, even when they moved away from each other.  The Post article concludes this way:  "Both Gilbert and Gubar hope to attend the NBCC awards ceremony in late February, though Gilbert will be in Italy and Gubar is being treated for cancer. They haven’t worked together for several years, but Gubar says, 'We’ve remained fast and true friends.'”

Fast and true friends, indeed.  And from that friendship, the world has changed.  Now, for the most part, at least one Bronte sister is in the canon; we can argue about whether or not that should be the case.  We can argue about which sister it should be or what makes them worthy or not.  But they are not dismissed simply because of their gender, the way they often were before the work of Gilbert and Gubar.

The Bronte sisters were fast and true friends.  And from that friendship, too, the world changed.

Today is a great day to think about our fast and true friends.  Today is a great day to strengthen our resolve to keep our friendships fast and true, to support each other when the world may not, to hope that we change the world for the better for the generations who will follow us.