Week-end Update: Quiet but Satisfying

It was a quiet week-end, the kind of week-end where we both had lots of grading to do, and so we didn't do much in the way of making plans.  We got some work done around the house, the constant upkeep kind of work that comes with having a house that has a yard and a pool, and I got some sorting done on Friday night.

Yesterday I led all 3 services at church, which went well.  I was lucky--I had a good text:  turning the other cheek, which I taught as resistance text (thank you Walter Wink!).  For more on yesterday's approach, see this post on my theology blog.

I got a bit of writing done, and the plotting that often happens before the writing was also going on in my head.

I've been reading some Neil Gaimon before I launch into the next big reading project with my reading buddy friend (who is also my Hindu writer friend):  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which I've heard recommended as a book with interesting insight to our political times.  When I was in the library to get that book, I found a collection of Gaimon's nonfiction, which is almost too complete.  Some of the speeches interest me, while the introductions to various books only interest me if I've heard of the book.

My friend had recommended a Gaimon short story to me, so I got a collection of his short stories.  It didn't have the one my friend recommended ("Chivalry").  But I did read "The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury"--who can resist that title?

I want to remember that dinner a few months ago when my friend told me she'd been reading Neil Gaimon's short stories.  I misunderstood and thought that Neil Diamond had turned his creative skills to short stories, which struck me as curious but not impossible.

Throughout the week-end we cooked simple meals of burritos and nachos.  I did some baking for our school's chocolate potluck tomorrow--more on that later.  I'll be interested to discover how my Mississippi Mud cake turned out.  It's a recipe from the 70's that I copied long ago.  It calls for things like 1 jar of marshmallow fluff and 1 box powdered sugar--here's hoping I got the measurements right.  Of course, it won't realy matter in this gooey decadence of a cake.

And so, the week-end comes to an end.  Let me get ready for today.

Cycles, both Seasonal and Spiritual

As I've been watching the moon move to fullness, I've been thinking about the last time I saw the full moon:  when I was at Mepkin Abbey.  A month ago, I'd have already been on the road for a few hours.

My brain is also thinking about the future--soon, summer will be over.  I'm seeing displays of school supplies in the stores already, and I confess to wishing it was time to decorate for Christmas.  Part of it is the relentless heat.  Part of it is my inner restlessness--learning to enjoy the season I'm in will be my lifetime task, I suspect.

I've been thinking about other times I was struck by the full moon--when we first moved to this house, I became much more aware of which phase the moon was in.  One October, I couldn't get enough of that huge full moon.  I felt like it watched over me as I worked as a new adjunct faculty member to understand how the online system worked.

Now, too, I'm learning a different online system:  having avoided the Blackboard learning management system for my whole teaching life, now my spouse is newly hired as an adjunct and needs to come up to speed quickly, so we're working on it as a group project.

I think about the next time the moon will be full.  We'll have hosted camp counselors who are coming at the end of July to run a VBS program at my church.  We'll know if a former colleague wants to live in the cottage.  We'll be getting ready for an end-of-summer visit from my sister and nephew.  At work, we'll know how our numbers are sorting out.

Let me focus on the day at hand.  Soon I will head to church to lead services today so that my pastor can enjoy some vacation time.  When I agreed to do it, July 9 seemed so far into the future.  We are finishing a sermon series on The Sermon on the Mount.  Today's reading is about turning the other cheek.  I will be introducing the congregation to the work of Walter Wink, who sees this text from Matthew as a resistance text. 

You might have been taught that it preaches passivity in the face of violence.  Wink argues that this text shows us how to resist evil in such a way that evil elements will not turn around and destroy us and how to resist evil in such a way that we don’t become the evil that we are resisting.

For more, see this post on my theology blog.

From the Detritus, A Midsummer Art Project Plan

Last night, as my spouse talked on the phone, I tried to sort through some shelves.  We moved into this house 4 years ago, and I haven't touched many of the things I put onto the shelves since then.  I wanted to make sure that we still needed those things.

What did I find?  Lots of detritus of technology past.  In one packet of stuff that came with a computer that I no longer remember, I found a CD that I can load onto my computer which will let me have a free trial of AOL for 30 days--how many generations of computer software ago was that?

On a shelf of even older technology, I looked through what I assumed would be blank paper journals.  Lo and behold, some of them had writing.  From 2007, I found a log I kept when I was first Assistant Chair of General Education--just in case anyone ever asked me to justify myself.  I decided not to look through that one too closely.

I found a journal that I forgot I ever kept.  Long ago, before my current pastor was my pastor, he asked me to be part of a group he formed to help him with his dissertation, which looked at how we might encounter God in the outdoors.  Our group went to various locations, experienced the location, wrote in our journals, and then discussed.  We walked around the lake at the community college, the Hollywood Beach Broadwalk, and a labyrinth at an Episcopal school.  Once our pastor was done with our journals for his dissertation writing, he gave them back to us.  Fascinating!

I found a lot of materials that we kept in anticipation of doing more collaging.  I decided to throw away old calendars.  But I kept the envelopes of images and words that I cut out and saved--and I've developed a mid-summer art project plan.  I will collage with these materials that I collected at least 5 years ago.  I'll also go through the pile of magazines that I have in the living room.

So, this will be a different kind of collaging.  I've always collaged with images that spoke to me from magazines--I've never used images that I collected years ago.  Will it be an experience of time looping back on itself?  Or just a different curating of images from which to choose?

Stay tuned!

Sands Through an Hourglass

Yesterday was punctuated by 3 soul satisfying times.  I started by writing part of a poem.  I'd been thinking about a Jesus in the world poem:  Jesus and the accrediting team.  I wrote part of it before becoming a bit stumped by Jesus taking the team to an externship site.  So I went for a walk and got to see a beautiful pre-sunrise near the marina, where the sailboats who don't want to pay slip fees park for the night.  The sight made me happy, as it always does, but the poem writing made me happier; it has not come easily to me this summer.

I got to work and midway through the morning, we had a swearing in ceremony of the Student Ambassadors--it's a group that's a mix of honor society and service club, and we haven't had one on our campus in a very long time, if ever.  When we first talked about resurrecting it, I must confess to feeling doubtful that we would have much student interest--but I was happy to be wrong. 

I was pleased with my remarks--I kept them short and focused on students and leadership.  I had a sense of what I wanted to say, but I didn't write it all out, so I was even more pleased that the words came easily.  My new boss later complimented me on the ceremony, which made me happy.

On my way home from work, I stopped by the Hollywood library.  I browsed the new book section and picked up Dani Shapiro's Hourglass:  Time, Memory, Marriage, which I came home and devoured in one big gulp.  What a wonderful book.

Once I'd have read this book and been frustrated because I would have wanted more information about The Writing Life.  While this book has some of that, it's more of an exploration of both marriage and aging--not the aging that comes later in life, but midlife aging.  The memoir does its exploring through the lens of marriage:  two people who would have had very different lives and careers if they hadn't met, two people who have been together 18 years.  It's poignant and tender, as one would expect.  It's also bracingly honest:  there's no betrayal, in the form we might be expecting, but there's the betrayal of careers that suddenly stall, of family members who have crises, of a house that needs constant work.  There's the writing of our youth that haunts our midlife.  There's the loss of people who are no longer with us--including our younger selves.

In short, it spoke to me exactly where I am.  It's rare that I encounter a book that wrestles with much of what haunts me during the times I stop to ponder my life.

Wild Florida and Tamed Kristin

Last night I stayed late at work.  It was the last day of drop-add, and I wanted to make sure that every student was taken care of.  Suffice it to say, my plan to write in the evenings while my spouse is at class isn't working out.  The last thing I wanted last night was to spend more time at the screen and the keyboard.

Plus I was starved.  I watched Master Chef and ate a simple, but satisfying meal of black bean burritos.  Very nourishing and filling. 

At 9, I tuned into The Forgotten Coast: Return to Wild Florida, a great show on PBS.  When I saw the previews, I had assumed that the coast they would explore would be the Everglades, but they actually started at the headwaters of the Everglades (near Orlando) and headed west and then north and then west again, all the way to the western end of the Florida panhandle.

They tried to follow paths that wildlife would take, which was an interesting exploration of how development impacts wildlife.  But for most of the show, the 3 person team was in very remote parts of the state along the Gulf coast.

They hiked, swam, and used a variety of non-motorized vehicles:  kayaks, paddleboards, and bikes.  It was the kind of show that made me want to know the back story.  They were gone over multiple weeks and hundreds of miles--did they have a support team that brought their various pieces of equipment at certain segments?  In shots of the three in their kayaks, they weren't dragging bikes with them.  And they didn't seem to have all their food for the whole trip with them.

But it wasn't that kind of show.  It was much discussion of species and habitat and weather--and wonderful photography and filming.  It made me want to pack a few things on my back (I first typed bike--hmmm) and head towards the Everglades, where I would find a nice clearing and build myself a shack.  How soon would it take to tire of that?

The show didn't shy away from issues of climate change.  The segment that most spoke to me was one of exploration of how salt water is intruding into fresh water in the swamp where the river meets the Gulf.  A family runs a remote lodge there, and they noticed that around 2004, the trees began retreating from the salt water at a much increased pace.  The pictures proved the tale--and showed how just a bit of sea level rise can have huge impact.

I felt a bit of sadness as I watched these super-fit people (2 men and 1 woman) make their way across the rugged-ish terrain of Florida's non-beach coast.  When I was young, I planned to hike the Appalachian Trail from beginning to end and/or to bike from coast to coast, an activity that was popular when my family made our way west during the summer of 1976.  Although a long hike might be in my future, I can't see myself making a long trip by kayak or bike.  And even a long trip would require sleeping on the hard ground--many mornings I have trouble with my back after a night in my bed.

This morning, as I walked to the marina to watch the sun rise over the sailboats, or more accurately, the sky changing colors before sunrise, I thought about my sadness of feats of fitness I will likely never master.  But I reminded myself that there are other expeditions that can bring me joy.  Let me start planning some of those.

A Relatively Quiet Independence Day

I suspect that I am like much of the nation in that I didn't get much sleep last night, and yet, off I go to work this morning.  Right now, I feel O.K.--will I still say that by 3 or 4 this afternoon?

One reason why I didn't get much sleep was that we took a nap that lasted 2 and a half hours--so I wasn't tired at my normal bed time.

I went outside to see if I could see the fireworks at Hollywood Beach; I really couldn't.  I stood outside anyway, since my spouse had gone up onto the roof to see what he could see.  He had a better view, but I still enjoyed seeing occasional bursts of color through the palm frond shadows.

I came in and watched the very end of A Capitol Fourth; and then, happily, our PBS station showed it again.  And then, at the end of that showing, at 11 p.m., I got interested in the next show on the history of the Mall in downtown D.C.--fascinating!

I didn't get to bed until midnight, and then I had trouble staying asleep.  But any tiredness I feel today will be worth it--that's how good the show on the Mall was.

It was a relatively quiet holiday, and it's not as smoky outside as it sometimes is on July 5.  We didn't have as much evening foot traffic as we have the past two years, but I enjoyed sitting on the porch, drinking some wine, wishing those who walked by a happy 4th.  We got some work done, but never as much as we would have wished.  I decided not to celebrate another holiday by pulling weeds, so it was great to spend time in the pool.

Yes, all in all, a great Independence Day.  May there be many more to celebrate!

Independence Day Thoughts on Liberty

Yesterday I made copies of the Declaration of Independence.  As I gave out granola bars and fruit, I said, "I have granola bars, I have fruit, I have copies of the Declaration of Independence--all you need to get your holiday week started out right."

A few students took a copy, which made me happy.  But even if few people took my hint and my handout, I'm glad that I could be there to remind us all that there's more to Independence Day than having the day off, than wearing patriotic colors, than having a cookout or enjoying fireworks (or comforting our pets and PSTD sufferers who do not enjoy fireworks).

I am already thinking about next year:  could we stage a reading of the Declaration?  I'd like to do more with these holidays to help students remember the larger picture.

I have said before that the advantage to being part of a smaller campus that's part of a larger network is that I can do certain things, like buy granola bars and hand them out.  If we decided to read the Declaration of Independence out loud next year, we'd be free to do that. 

My old school was also part of a larger network, but we didn't seem to be nimble enough to try out new ideas.  Or maybe by the time we realized we needed to do that, it was too late; morale was already so low that it was hard to motivate people to do anything at all.

My current campus is fairly new, and that's an advantage too.  We don't have people mourning the loss of the school's glory days.  We have people excited about the idea of campus growth--it's a different feeling than the one of desperation at my old school, where we knew that population was falling at a scary rate, and we knew the implications, but we were frozen with fear.

On this Independence Day, of course I have our country's founding parents on my brain.  What made some of them so convinced of their vision that they were willing to risk being hung for treason?  Were events just so intolerable that the risk of death didn't matter?  Or were they enchanted by a vision of life as it could be?

For each patriot, I suspect the answer was different.

I am happy that at this point in my life, I don't have choices to make like those that faced people in 1775 or 1776.  I am worried that we are headed down that road.  I think of the ending of the Declaration:  "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

In the coming years, I wonder how many of us will have to do some serious thinking about what is worth the price of that pledge.