Advent Unease

I've been adding Advent entries to my other journal.  If you're so inclined, I highly recommend trying a spiritual journal of some sort.  I'm really enjoying what goes into thinking about and writing one.

Chicago at Night

I love walking around a vibrant and exciting city at night.  We had a terrific time with our kids on Thursday -- got to Chicago around noon after driving part way in the blizzard the night before, ate lunch at a Thai restaurant in Hyde Park, checked into our hotel on Michigan Avenue and relaxed awhile, took a reasonably long walk, and than had a late Thanksgiving Dinner.  Our kids -- one still at home and two in different colleges -- really enjoy each other's company, which is a great pleasure to witness.

On the home front -- I have a new wallet, a new driver's license, a new bank account and ATM card, and credit and debit cards are on the way.  I learned how to put a warning notice on my credit reports, so if some fool tries to open new accounts in my name, she might be caught red-handed.  The driver's license bureau was a pain, but everyone else was great -- including the vet, where I had to pick the doggie up from her visit and leave with a promise to pay later in the week.

Too bad about the person who lifted my purse -- but there are a lot of wonderful people out there doing their jobs extremely well and graciously.

Black Sunday

Moon Over Lake Michigan

We had a really, really nice Thanksgiving with our children in Chicago. Chicago is a great city and I love it and I love being with all my kids.  I'll write more about that as the week goes on.

For today, however:

By 11:00 I was on my way home from the grocery, congratulating myself on already having put in an hour's worth of writing a paper and another's hour's worth of grading papers, and having slipped out to buy several days' worth of food before anyone else was up.  I decided that I needed to gas up the car, and suddenly realized with a sinking feeling that I had no recollection of tossing my wallet/purse into the back with the groceries.  I pulled over, ascertained that there was, indeed, no purse in the car, and high-tailed it back the few blocks to the store.  I could only have left it in my cart in the parking lot. 

From which someone had taken it. 

Honestly.  The last four hours of my life, spent cancelling cards and bank accounts, would have been so much more pleasant and productive if whoever saw that purse in the cart had said, "Oh!  Look!  Someone will be really upset!  I'll just take this right in to customer service!"  I mean, what does that take? 

But no.  There was maybe all of $10.00 in that purse, which means that someone has probably already thrown it in the gutter or trash in frustration.  Unless, of course, it was lifted by some career criminal who knows what to do with things like social security and bank account numbers.  Make my day.  Is that creepy or what? -- to think that someone out there might already be turning herself into me.

Not a thing I can do about it -- except spend more hours in the next few days opening new accounts and trying to duplicate everything that's missing. 

I hope I am not about to be sucked into a new expertise in identity theft.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It seems that, way back in their young elementary school years, my eighth graders somehow unearthed the newly discovered fact that Christopher Columbus and the Pilgrims shared the first Thanksgiving.  I thought we had gotten that little misconception all sorted out last month, when we were studying early European explorations of the Americas. However, Christopher Columbus and his voyage on the Mayflower made a re-appearance last week as we began to talk about the early English settlements of Jamestown and Plimouth.

Me:  Ok, look guys:  Christopher Columbus was an Italian who sailed on the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, from Spain, in 1492, to what we now call the Carribean.  The Pilgrims sailed on the Mayflower, from England, in 1619, to what became Massachusetts.  Different nationalities, different boats, 130 years and 1000 miles apart. 

One young man, imploringly:  "But then, Ms. C, how did Christopher Columbus get on the Mayflower?

Me, in utter exasperation: Christopher Columbus was never anywhere near the Mayflower!

Entire class, in deflated astonishment:  Oh.

When I related this story to my family, they noted that it would have in addition been a most unlikely event in either the 1400s or the 1600s for an Italian Catholic captain to share sailing space with a band of English Puritans.

We are, indeed, making a tiny bit of progress in our effort to provide room for all Americans.  So, whether you are of Native American, European Catholic or Protestant, Mideastern or European Jewish, African, Arab, Muslim, Asian, Hindu, Buddhist, Southern Pacific or any other descent: Happy Thanksgiving to All!

Just So You Know...

I'm really sick, sick enough that I didn't teach today, that I'm not at Parent Conference Night, and that I've been lounging around in the living room watching the news.  I wasn't going to write an entry today but...

ABC News tonight included a report on the Christian Right and the belief of its constituents that they are responsible for the President's re-election and, as a result, want to see payback in the form of, among other things, Supreme Court rulings against abortion and gay marriage.

Sigh.  I turned up the sound and pulled out a pen so I could take notes on the soccer catalog lying next to me.

Several ladies stated with conviction that they believe that God was at work in the election and that he put Mr. Bush in the White House. 

The Catholic scholar and priest who teaches my graduate class said last night, just as an aside, that Jesus is not interested in government.

One gentleman responded to a reporter's questions by saying that he doesn't want to go to a school ball game and see a gay couple there being affectionate with one another.

Yep.  Pretty awful stuff. Those ladies I saw holding hands as they walked by the -- oops --local high school -- today: you better believe they are out to rend the place asunder, and our entire community, too, while they're at it.  I know that because they stop by here every night with pamphlets urging my husband and me to get a divorce.

The church where these Christian folks were interviewed is the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church of Fort Lauderdale.  I looked it up and I just want to clarify that it's a PC Church of America, not a PC (USA) -- the church which I'm proud to call home.  It's got a pretty interesting website, and states that the third prong of its Three-Purpose Ministry is as follows:

"Reforming the Culture - Protecting religious liberty and America’s Christian heritage by encouraging the application of biblical principles to all spheres of our culture and to all of life."

In case you do not want the PCA's version of Biblical principles applied to all spheres of your life, you need not fear.  The senior minister of the congregation also leads the Center for Reclaiming America, which among other aspects of its mission seeks to "enabl[e Christians]  to defend and implement the Biblical principles on which our country was founded."

By the time these people are through with us, we will have a theocracy of the highest order.  And how do I know this?  Because the minister said tonight that what he preaches is "The Truth."

A little earlier, I was curled up in bed hoping to die and increasingly bored by the process.  I called to my daughter to come and talk with me for awhile after she got home from school.  We lay there in the dark, maybe for an hour, trying to figure out why some folks have such a deep-seated need for rigidity in belief and intolerance in politics and others have such an equally deep-rooted belief in the importance of space and acceptance for all of us.  Personally, I think my beautiful daughter (who, by the way, is not the least bit religious) is a good deal closer to an understanding of The Truth than the gentleman from Coral Ridge PCA.

Just my .02 for tonight.  Now, there have got to be some crackers in this house... .

Decades of Thanksgivings

I'm six, and the crinoline petticoats of my aunts whish around me in the kitchen.  Thanksgiving Dinner always takes place in the late afternoon at my great-aunt's home, and she and the younger women gather in the kitchen to pull it all together while the men watch football games in the den.  It's kind of a boring day, if the truth be told.  The women are focused on mashed potatoes and the men on touchdowns.  There's nothing much to do in my aunt's house, and it's too cold to spend much time outside. 

I'm sixteen, and I'm spending the long week-end away from boarding school with my boyfriend's family.  His mother is in the hospital and his father is struggling to oversee a houseful of children whose ages range from 22 to two.  Needless to say, supervision of our activities is minimal.  Thanksgiving Day itself brings a host of relatives I barely know.  We will spend Friday night at the Rolling Stones concert at Boston Gardens, and Saturday in Provincetown, way out on the end of the Cape.  It's the 60s -- need I say more?

I'm 26, and my husband and I are spending Thanskgiving with my family.  We seldom go home anymore, but Thanksgiving is a relatively (no pun intended) stress free holiday.  We're finished with school and have our first real jobs, so we have money and great clothes.  Little do we know that this period of life is a brief one.

I'm 36 and again, we're with my family.  Our children are five, five and two, so the trips have become a bit more difficult and stressful.  My own family of origin is beginning to break down into its isolated components, a process that will be largely complete in a  few more years.  For now, we go to the Turkey Bowl football game that my uncle hosts for dozens of family and friends on Thanksgiving morning.  My little guys love the Turkey Bowl t-shirts they've been given, and they love to participate with the big guys, many of them cousins ands friends who have recently been high school and college athletes and take the Turkey Bowl rather seriously.

I'm 46 and my family is realigning itself.  I don't want to go there anymore, so we head to my in-laws.  The gathering is a low key one, and the kids thoroughly enjoy themselves with after dinner games with cosuns and aunts and uncles.  I am so not a game player.

This year: 51 and off to Chicago.  Last year our son in college there called at the last minute to announce that he had too much work to think about coming home, so this year we are going to him.  A fancy downtown hotel and a restaurant dinner.  Given my stepmother's condition, I would like to be with my family, and not having seen our son in two months, I want and need to be with him, so I guess this is a sandwich generation-pressured week for me. 

$500 or, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

My daughter and I both took the day off Friday so that we could make the four-hour drive down to see my stepmother, who was finishing up her first week of brain radiation.  We stopped on the way down to pick up one of my sons, whom my stepmother is especially fond of, from college, and made it down there in time to wait a bit on her and my father, trapped in traffic coming from the other direction. 

The news from my dad the night before had been all bad -- little sleep and lots of puking -- so we weren't feeling too optimistic about our visit.  However, a new anti-nausea med had kicked in and my stepmother had kept some food down and was feeling practically perky over the thought of two days at home, with nary a doctor nor technician in sight.  We had a nice little visit, and then the kids and I went out to the local restaurant for dinner, before returning to my dad's for another short visit.

At the restaurant, we ran into a couple I had known long ago.  In fact, I had gone on my first real date with their son, so I was able to regale my kids with the story: his parents driving us to a movie (we were 14 and lived far out in the country, so long road trips were a prerequisite to any form of entertainment), and discreetly dropping us off afterward at the end of my family's lengthy drive.  Their discretion was utterly defeated by my father, waiting at the front door with all the house lights ablaze.  That was -- wow! 37 years ago! -- and it was nice to see them again.

As we pulled out of my dad's drive late Friday, and  headed to my brother's for the night, our car began to make the kind of loud and awful noise that you do not ever want to hear -- and most especially not on a Friday night in a rural area 250 miles from home.  Not a thing we could do about it, so we decided to soak in my brother's hot tub and catch up on the news.

He told us that my stepmother is receiving few visitors -- her family and friends are finding her situation difficult to deal with and responding by not showing up.  In fact, her two sisters, for whom she has provided endless support as they have faced various difficulties, are in Florida.  My sister-in-law has concluded that they really don't grasp the fact that if they let many weeks slip by, they may no longer be able to engage in the kinds of conversations with her that they would want to.

He also said that my father is dealing with the whole matter by talking, almost nonstop, about medical and technological matters, leaving little room for his wife to get a word in.  We had noticed when we were at their house that as long as my children paid rapt attention to him, she could sit quietly and talk to me.  Not surprisingly, she has little interest in the technology.  She wants to talk about her hopes for survival.  She's not quite ready to talk about the likelihood of death that looms over her.

Each person deals in his or her own way, and it's one thing to have a deadly cancer and another to be the husband or wife.  It seems clear that it's a good idea for visitors to double or triple up, so that both patient and spouse can talk about their issues in their own ways -- to different people.

The next morning brought us a list of phone numbers and, eventually, a local mechanic who spent his entire afternoon in my brother's driveway, replacing our air conditioning compressor.  I now know what a compressor looks like, or at least what a broken and partially melted compressor looks like, and it's been explained to me what such a device does.  Translation: I have absolutely no idea what I just spent $500 on.

I had just received a check for $550 dollars from my employer -- mileage reimbursement for my trip to a seminar in northern Michigan in July.  I had been so excited to have extra cash arrive right before Christmas.

Ha ha ha. 

So while our vehicle was being reconstructed,we did not get to visit my grandmother (another two hour round trip), or see my brother's new house.  But we did get to visit with my family and see my stepmother up and alert for a long period of time on Saturday.  She had slept all night Friday, and her brother and his wife were over to spend some time with her, and share their stories of local politics (he's the town mayor).  All good stuff.  She was asleep by the time our car was repaired, so I left with some hope of another visit in another couple of weeks.

Pacaypalla (Here, There, Everywhere)

Oh aurora desprendida

de la sombra y la luna en el oceano

siempre vuelvo a tu sal abrasadora

siempre es tu soledad la que me incita

y llegado otra vez no se quien soy,

*****

Errante amor, retorno

coneste corazon fresco y cansado

que pertenece al agua y la arena

al territorio seco de la orilla,

a la batalla blanca de la espuma.

*****

Oh dawn, breaking out of

the shadow and the moon in the sea,

I always come back to your burning salt. 

It is your solitude which always moves me

and, back once more, I don't know who I am.

*****

Wandering love, I come back

with this heart both fresh and wearied, belonging to water and sand,

to the dry spaces of the foreshore,

to the white war of the foam.

(Pablo Neruda in On the blue shores of silence (1993)

 

2004, almost over, but here's where I've been to the blue shores:

the Atlantic coast, at St. Augustine Beach

the Pacific Coast, at Cannon Beach

the Lake Michigan shoreline, at Empire MI.

When the Year Grows Old

I cannot but remember
   When the year grows old—
October—November—
   How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows
   Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
   With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves
   Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
   Made a melancholy sound,

She had a look about her
   That I wish I could forget—
The look of a scared thing
   Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall
   The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
   Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,
   And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
   Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember
   When the year grows old —
October — November —
   How she disliked the cold!

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1917)

Yes, I'm Reading!

I'm trying to keep up with my journals.  I enjoy them all so much.  I will try to sprinkle comments around SOON.

My excuses:

Today: work till 6:30 and then race out to daughter's school for the fall athletic dinner, which ended around 9:30, getting us home at 10:00.  Since then I've been working on the canoe trip scrapbook for my stepmother.

Tomorrow: Work till 5:30 and then, God help me, parent conferences from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m.

Thursday:  Work till 5:15 and then my own parent conference at my daughter's school at 6:00.  I think.

Friday: Take the day off and head south to spend the night with my dad and stepmother, picking up one son along the way.

Saturday night: Drive home, stopping to return son to college.

Sunday: What exactly do I have in mind for the 8th graders for the next month?  And what I am going to teach the 9th graders about mosques the week after Thanksgiving?  And, oops -- read 8 or 10 Flannery O'Connor stories.

So, okay, I'm thinking it isn't going to be a big journal week.

Can I Procrastinate, Or What?

So....the 8th graders' list of topics for their colonial America research papers is finished.  So is the 9th graders' question sheet on the beginnings of Islam.  And so (well, almost) is the grading for a group of pretty terrible papers on the election.  (Oh!  The election!  Remember that?)

But...I also managed to add to my other journal.  I'm gonna get through this story before Advent if it kills me.  For now, I think I'd better go to work... .

 

A Conglomeration

I'm pretty stressed out this morning, and the last thing that I should be doing is playing around in my journal.   In the past week at school we've gotten three or four different messages about what exactly we are supposed to have completed in the ways of student grades and comments for the end of the quarter (last Friday) and parent conferences (tomorrow night), and the computer system has not been accomodating.  I have to meet something like 25 parents tomorrow night, and another 25 next week, and I can't get my comments to print.  And I am SO far behind on my grading that the reports won't be up-to-date anyway. Nevertheless, I'm going to take a little time to record the past 24 hours, just for the sake of doing it:

Yesterday morning, early: What exactly did I do?  I have no recollection whatsoever. 

Yesterday morning, later: I taught a government class about executive branch bureaucracy (!) and a world history class about the decline of the Han and Gupta Empires.  Today: on to the Romans for that class.

Lunch: a long meeting with one of our pastors and the outgoing chair of the adult education committee.  I think that's because it's turning out that I'm the incoming chair.  Maybe someone else will want that role.  I'm great with the ideas but terrible at keeping track of the paper.

Late afternoon:  oversaw three periods of tests.  One of my most talented eighth graders wrote that the early European explorers gave up on America and never came back.  She came to see me later, giddy over her mistake.  I discovered that several of my ninth graders, despite a few days on the end of the Roman Empire, never understood the definition of the words "reform" or "decline."  I'm not clear on why they didn't ask until the middle of the test.

Evening: my own graduate class on Spiritual Autobiography, cut short because the professor is ill.  We are reading Flannery O'Connor now.  Flannery O'Connor is all about understanding that we are all of us the misfits in need of redemption, despite our continual self-righteous assurances to ourselves that we are not.  Incredible stories, but the gruesomeness  never ends.

Used my surprise gift of evening free time to eat dinner, watch a little tv with my daughter, and grade some government papers about the election.  I'm about to finish those off now. 

In the meantime, a look back to the Greeks (in the cemetery where I walk):

The rugs came back from the cleaners yesterday and the dog pooped on the dining room floor this morning.  I'm not so inclined to roll the rugs back out.  Despite my best efforts, we will never approach the elegance of a Doric temple around here.

Catching Up

I added a short entry to my other journal tonight.

Contemporary Theology

We had a terrific speaker for one of our Adult Education classes at church this morning.  She's a professor at a local college and joined us to give an introductory presentation on Contemporary Theology in general and Liberation Theology in particular.  Not topics with which I'm more than vaguely familiar, but I thought I'd share what I learned.  

The overarching theme of contemporary theology is the need to be accountable to human experience, and it breaks down into three general subthemes.  First, in a shift in theological perspective that has taken place over the last century, the primacy of doctrine and church authority take second place to experience.  Second, hermeneutics -- interpretation -- is given a pivotal role, as the Enlightenment idea that there is one normative human experience is being discarded.  And third, history is of vital importance.  The early Christian church was profoundly influenced by Hellenistic ideas of absolutism, but has in the last century begin to respond to the need to accomodate the revolution wrought by Darwinism and by the development of process theology: the idea that God is at once both absolute and in process.  

Contemporary theology can be broken down into several subgroups -- areas like ecological theology and feminist theology -- and seen as part of the spectrum of Christian theology, from neorthodoxy, which attempts to uphold the sources and norms of the Christian tradition, to revisionist theology, which tres to recover the tradition while making peace with contemporary culture, to liberal theology which is anthropomorphic in vision, to radical theology, which tries to transcend the sources and norms of the tradition.  

Contemporary theologians view revelation as something both objective and subjective, something that takes place in history and is in process, and something that recognizes that God is mystery and that our experience of God is always a mediated one.  

Essential to contemporary theology is an awareness of its tentativeness, of the need to listen and to be open to other voices -- otherwise we are tempted to make God into what we want God to be (a process otherwise known as idolatry).  

OK,  that was a bit dense  - as I said, the talk was only a brief introduction.  I hope I've done it justice, and I'll add a bit on Liberation Theology later. 

In the meantime, books to read:  

Blessed Rage for Order by David Tracy

Introduction to Contemporary Theology by Neil Ormerod

Modern Theologians by David Ford

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Walked 3 miles.

Late at Night

It's very late -- for me anyway.  I've spent most of the afternoon and evening writing a long paper on Thomas Merton, and I'm still a little wound up.  The cat just came racing through the room, after what I neither know nor want to know.   

Little things that were good today:  

taking my time about getting up  

meeting friends for breakfast  

my daughter curled up in bed with a book for most of the afternoon

blue sky and sunshine  

the neighbor's gorgeously glossy black cat in the kitchen window  

a phone conversation with a much-missed son.  

My stepmother's 12 brain lesions loom large on my mind.  Yesterday I sent her six new hats for when her hair falls out, and today I went to Moto-Photo and picked up stacks of pictures from this year's canoe trip to Canada so that I can make a scrapbook for her.  But I just keep thinking that if she dies, she won't be back.  I have a lot of experience with that concept, but I can't see that it gets any more acceptable.    

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Walked 2 miles.

Saturday Six

Too much intensity and too many phone conversations over the past few days, so I think I'll relax and play the Saturday Six:

1. Who is the last house guest you invited into your home and was it a pleasant visit?

My dad and stepmother were here twice in September, en route to and from their canoe trip in Canada, which they shared with my boys.  We had a great time when they came back, watching my son's digital photos of the trip on the tv and laughing over how completely stranded the guys looked on the couple of days they spent traveling in a part of Algonquin Park unexpectedly devoid of water.

2.  Other than to work or school, where was the last place you drove?

I just got back from my usual Saturday morning at the local coffee shop with a group of friends.  Of the four of us who showed up this morning, three have seniors applying to college, so I'm sure we bored the fourth to pieces.

3. In terms of emergency supplies, how many of the following do you have in your home?  A) Candles  B) Fresh batteries  C) Containers of bottled water

Lots of candles, probably some batteries that we couldn't find anyway, and no bottled water.

4. You're invited to a pot-luck dinner:  what specialty do you offer to bring?  (It has to be something you can cook yourself, not something you bring from a store!)

Salad.  I don't cook.

5. Which of the following do you feel is the most true based on your own life experiences:
A) It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
B) The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
C) To have a friend, you must first be a friend.
D) Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
E) Never judge a book by its cover.
F) The tree of knowledge bears the noblest fruit.

(B) The best laid plans o' mice an' men gang oft straight to hell.  (Robert Burns didn't have it quite right.)

6. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #31 from Cherie:  We have all watched movies and TV shows that have inspired us to want to do what the characters in the show are doing, (doctors, lawyers, politicians, fire fighters, etc).  Has there ever been a program that you watched that made you realize that the occupation of the characters was something you could NEVER become?

I've never had the slightest interest in being a detective, private investigator, police officer, or any other type of forensic specialist -- which eliminates a lot of tv for me.

Different This Time

I don't really feel like writing anything but maybe I will try to keep track of this as it happens.

After weeks of testing that resulted in a diagnosis of lung cancer for my stepmother, and a clear bone scan a couple of days ago that filled them with optimism, she and my dad learned tonight that yesterday's scan revealed multiple spots on her brain.

They are completely devastated.

This lady has been incredibly kind to me and my family.  Shortly after she and my dad were married, we experienced a situation that nearly blew us apart, and she stepped right up to the plate and took over for me for weeks without a word. 

My dad lost my mother when he was 28, and my first stepmother ten years later - both to sudden accidents.  His third marriage was a long one, but ended in a bitter divorce. 

These two people have been so happy together for the last four or five years. 

Would another decade be so much to ask for?

The Polar Express: Dismay

So tonight my darling daughter and I are stretched out for our weekly Gilmore Girls fix and we are blasted with a preview of the Polar Express movie.  What  a travesty!  I am heartbroken.  Such a lovely children's book, elegant in its simplicity and its tremendously beautiful artwork, transformed into a Broadway musical extravaganza.  What is it with our culture?

The Polar Express was one of our Christmas favorites for a long, long time.  I probably read it aloud 20 or 30 times a December for at least ten years.  We loved the gentle story, the muted colors, the wolves deep in the woods, and the crescendo of the elves' excitement.  There was a time in my life when, night after night after night, I was curled up in the center of my bed with three children heaped around me for an hour or two of reading.  The Polar Express was the perfect book for capping off an evening when the house was a bit chilly and snow was falling softly outside.

I have nothing against musicals -- my daughter's been involved with several and they're lots of fun.  But The Polar Express is not Broadway material.  I hate to think of its being ruined for a generation of children whose parents will rush to the movies tomorrow night, unwilling for their little darlings to miss one second of the latest Hollywood gloss on a not-so-old classic. 

I hope they stay away in droves and read the book instead. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Walked 1 mile yesterday and 3 miles tonight.

I Need Another Day

Week-ends are too short.  We have had two glorious days in which autumn is just barely hanging on, and we need a few more.

I was up reading Thomas Merton from 4:00 to 5:00 this morning.  I have given up trying to fall back to sleep when I wake up at 3:00 or 4:00; I just get up and check email and read until I get drowsy again.  I have to get through The Seven Storey Mountain by tomorrow night for my Spiritual Autobiography class, and I guess 4:00 a.m. is as good as any other time.

I had a long telephone conversation with my father and stepmother; they're always up at some ungodly hour.   Her bone scan was yesterday and her brain scan is tomorrow.  My father's out-of-town brother had come for a visit and his in-town brother had suggested that all three couples have dinner together last night.  My father hadn't wanted to go, but his wife pointed out that they hadn't been anywhere except to doctors and hospitals for weeks.  She said they had a wonderful evening.  My father needs her to make those things happen.

Later in the morning, I went to the adult education portion of church, since I had helped plan it and had to introduce the speaker.  We've had a two-week series on money, with three speakers sharing their own life dilemmas.  They've all been interesting, but not as radically challenging as I had hoped.  I had to read Dorothy Day's The Long Loneliness a couple of weeks ago, also for my class, and while I don't feel any personal affection for Dorothy Day, the woman is a definite challenge to middle-class complacency. 

Everyone I talked with at church is reeling in dismay at the election results.

This afternoon I did laundry, graded papers (a  task I truly hate), planned some classes for the upcoming week, and vacuumed everything in sight in the living room.  Some guys are coming to clean the upholstered furniture tomorrow and I don't want them to faint dead away.  Why is it again that we have these animals?

It was a perfect day for long walks.  I just kept going and going. 

This evening I went back to church for my (very small) Lectio Divina Group.  We read a passage from next week's lectionary and pray together.  More election unhappiness.

Who did I run into today?  A friend coming out her front door as I was walking by, on her way to a state meeting for local school board members.  Another friend dropped by to drop off the purse my daughter had left at her house Halloween night.  My next door neighbor was taking out the garbage as I came in later tonight and told me they've bought a new house and are moving next spring or summer. 

My daughter and I watched a very sad American Dreams tonight.  My sons and all their friends are twenty years old.  My students and former students range from thirteen to twenty.  At least one of them is already in the Israeli army.  What in the world does the future hold for our beloved young people?

Walked 4 miles.  Week total: 21!

Hmmm.........

My lovely daughter did, in fact, complete almost all of her college application materials yesterday.  A big essay, a couple of medium essays, and a few mini-essays.  A bit of editing and they will be out of here!

Walked 5 miles and worked out at the gym.

Political Controversy

In the wake of the election, I have discovered a heretofore unreported deep and divisive gap between two groups in the American electorate.  I can hardly believe that our media has failed to uncover this significant wedge issue, one that alienates me from many of my fellow Americans.  I refer, of course, to that terrifying split, the one that can never be healed, between those of us who appreciate winter and those of us who most profoundly and sincerely do not.

The first sign of this devastating situation appeared in Danielle's Den, a birding and nature blog.   This delightful writer had the unmitigated gall to express her joy over the arrival of the first flock of juncos.  In case you haven't noticed them, juncos are cheery little grayish birds with slivers of white running down the sides of their tails. The white edges flash in the sunlight as the birds make their short flights from bush to shrub in search of winter food.  "Sunlight" and "winter" are the operative words here.  There is no sunlight, not after the juncos make their appearance, because juncos are harbingers of winter.  Juncos are the real snowbirds, and they find it most pleasant to winter in the vast middle of our great nation.  They don't care whether their locale is red or blue, as long as it's not as cold as Canada. 

As far as I'm concerned, they should turn right around and head back to Ontario or Manitoba or wherever it is that they came from.  We don't need them here.  I don't know whether they are trying to spead the gospel of far right morality or the gospel of far left social justice and I don't care.  They bring the snow and ice and gray gray gray right behind them, and that's a fate worse than any brought on by provisional ballots.

Next thing I know, Theresa Williams is writing about how happy she is "to see and feel the onset of winter."  Oh, please.  She says that she loves the "gray days and the long, dark nights." Helloooooo....?  I am reluctantly crinkling my eyes open in the morning and begging the merciful God who is neither Republican nor Democrat for the tiniest glint of sunlight through the morning clouds, and she is HAPPY?  It seems that she is productive in winter.  She does a lot of planning and preparation for future writing.  All right, liberal that I am, I am always willing to concede that there may be other valid viewpoints out there, and hers does seem to work for her.  She is an insightful and thoughtful writer and brings a great deal of important work to her journal.  However, is it really necessary to gloat about winter?  Isn't there enough gloating going on right about now?

Does winter think that it has some kind of MANDATE?

Now, seriously:  Aren't sunlight and color a better way to go? 

Walked 3 miles.

What I've Been Up to Today

I started the day with emails to my brother and a good friend, a nun from my Catholic school days (see my other journal), with some news and ideas.  My father's wife received her diagnosis of Stage IIIB lung cancer on Election night.  They live several hours away, so there is little of a practical nature that I can do, but that didn't stop me from waking up at 6:00 a.m. with ideas for OTHER people.

I tinkered with two tests that I was giving later today, read email, and dug around for my Columbia River Gorge pictures for the Thursday Theme, which was focused this week on favorite photos from the past year.  I have lots of favorite pictures of places I've been, but I decided that maybe the CRG was the most powerful of all those places, and the one I am least likely to see again in this lifetime.

I did eventually get to work. My government class is loud and a little out-of-hand.  We have spent a lot of time in the past two months on the election and the kids seem to need to interject the same points over and over.  Highlight of that class as I tried to move on to issues of presidential authority: one young lady saying that she thought it was fine to sequester Japanese Americans in "work camps" post-Pearl Harbor.  Don't ask.

On to my honors world history class, a lunchtime meeting with a parent, and the preparation of (I think) a cool set of assignments for my 8th grade American history classes to get us through early French explorations of this continent.  It seemed to go all right when I tried it out a little later.  Then, finally, my other world history class.  I was going to take my walk then, but a student in the honors class had slept (!) through the morning and missed a big test, so I agreed to stay after school (which meant until 6:00 p.m.) so that she could take it --AFTER I told her she needs to set her alarm in the morning and stop relying on her mommy.

So much for walking.  It was pitch dark and raining when I got home, and I just didn't have the motivation to do my walking a second night in a row at the gym.  SO BORING.

Many political discussions throughout the day.  I have discovered,to my astonishment after three years in an Orthodox Jewish school, that several of the rabbis are far more politically liberal than I had ever imagined.  Most of the students and, apparently, their parents, were focused solely on Israel as The Issue in the election, but it turns out that at least some of the religious faculty take a broader view.  It's been an interesting couple of days.  One of the other non-Jewish humanities teachers had worked hard on the Kerry campaign and is devastated by the outcome; we talked some about decisions to become more politically active and our bewilderment at seemingly being so far to the left of the American mainstream.

I had dinner with my husband and daughter.  They both have tomorrow off and he says she is going to finish her college applications.  She actually started working on an audition tape this afternoon with her school voice teacher.  She is, however, far more interested in finding some way to become involved in gay rights issues.  I hope her interest lasts -- it's nice to see apathy in a teenager replaced by  a passion for justice.  I also hope she applies to college.

Then she and I veged out and watched The O.C. together, and now I have GOT to finish an assignemnt for tomorrow.  Just another day.

 

 

 

Thursday Theme: Showcase 2004

Columbia River Gorge, August 2004

 

A Great Nation

I am utterly dismayed by the way the election turned out.  Possibly even more devastating to me than the presidential result  (which I expected) is the clean sweep of amendments opposed to gay marriage/civil unions in a number of states, including my own.  (On the positive side, it seems that it may galvanize my 17-year-old daughter into becoming a political activist.)  

But here's something that we can all agree upon, I think, and that is how incredibly fortunate we are to live here where we can disagree via words and votes rather than bombs.  We have this opportunity, much needed right now, to show the world every four years that it is possible for people to disagree vehemently without blowing each other up.  We can put up opposing signs on our lawns, but we don't park car bombs outside each other's houses.  We can register our dismay or delight, and even get in each other's faces with it, without going to the grocery with the intent to complete a suicide bombing mission.  We may be convinced that the country is on the wrong path, but we don't fly planes into buildings as a means of self-expression.  

This country is an extraordinary place, and we get to demonstrate that to ourselves and to the world every time we have an election.  We are truly blessed.  

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Walked 3 miles and worked out at the gym.

Another Entry Elsewhere

I started thinking about why I voted the way I did today, and that got me charged up to write a little more about my early educational years in my other journal.

Hearts and Minds

Religious "centrists" may decide the election

by Jim Wallis of The Sojourners Community

Moderate Catholics and Evangelicals may help decide this election. They are what widely respected University of Akron researcher John Green calls "centrist" Catholic and Evangelical voters who comprise 19% of the electorate and are concentrated in some of the most important swing states.

I just finished a 15-city bus tour in those very states, trying to raise poverty as a "religious issue." After almost two weeks of grassroots dialogue with faith-based community leaders, civic officials, journalists, low-income families, and almost 40 audiences of Christian citizens in 12 days, I am convinced that the election may hang on what those "centrist" religious voters ultimately decide the most important "religious issues" are in this campaign.

Everywhere we went political conservatives said the only religious issues at stake in this election year are gay marriage and abortion. Right-wing Catholic bishops have successfully reduced broad Catholic social teaching - which also contains strong commitments against poverty, capital punishment, and unjust wars - down to just the two hot-button social issues. While those narrowed views are outside the mainstream of Catholic social teaching, the conservative bishops' views captured front-page coverage early in the campaign when they suggested that John Kerry be denied communion for his pro-choice stance. When a different and more prominent Catholic bishop's position was made clear and the Vatican itself spoke to counter such single-issue voting, the clarification was buried in the papers. The damage had been done to Kerry, seemingly with collusion between the conservative right-wing bishops and the Republican Party. These bishops don't point out that President George Bush defied church teachings by prosecuting a war of choice in Iraq, or that the Pope vigorously challenged him on his war policies when the two met at the Vatican. I heard more than one Catholic leader declare that "there is no consistent pro-life candidate running for president."

We also discovered that local newspaper ads and bumper stickers asserting that "God is Not a Republican or a Democrat" and challenging "single-issue voting" have sparked real debate at evangelical Christian colleges and churches throughout the Midwest battleground states. As John Green points out, most "centrist" evangelicals are conservative on abortion and family values but don't believe those are the only important moral issues. Compassion for the poor is a growing evangelical concern, as is good stewardship of the environment (especially among a younger generation of evangelicals), as are issues such as HIV/AIDS, and human rights violations and genocide in places such as Darfur in western Sudan.

Iraq is also an issue for many centrist evangelicals, as is America's conduct of the war on terrorism. A group of more than 200 theologians and ethicists from mostly conservative seminaries and Christian colleges has just issued a strong statement called "Confessing Christ in a World of Violence." It asserts that our very affirmation of Christ is being challenged by a "theology of war emanating from the highest circles of American government," by the "language of righteous empire" being employed by those same political leaders, and by the claim of "divine appointment" for a nation and its president in a new war on terrorism that deals much too simplistically with the moral issues of good and evil, and "dangerously confuses the roles of God, church, and nation."

All this could have consequences for the election. If the "religious issues" are successfully narrowed to just abortion and gay marriage, President Bush will carry most of the centrist Evangelicals and Catholics. But if the religious issues are defined more broadly to include poverty, the environment, human rights, the war in Iraq, and the White House's too-easy "good versus evil" theology in the war on terrorism, John Kerry will get serious consideration by those same moderate Christian voters.

Kerry has been playing catch-up on the religion question to Republicans more comfortable with the language and a president who touts his evangelical faith. It may be too little too late, but the more Kerry invokes the parable of the Good Samaritan who helpedhis needy neighbor on the road, while accusing Republicans of "passing by on the other side," the clearer the contrasts on issues such as jobs, health care, and economic fairness will be. And when Kerry quotes the New Testament epistle of James, asserting that "faith without works is dead," he indicts Bush's "compassionate conservatism" that was gutted by tax cuts for the rich while leaving little for poor and working families.

Centrist Catholics outnumber conservative Catholics by 2 to 1. And Green points out that only one third of Evangelicals are solidly in the Religious Right camp. How the moderates in each group decide to vote could clearly decide the election. So what are the religious values in this election? If there are only two, Bush will win enough religious votes to win the election. But if enough of those Evangelical and Catholic centrists decide that their religious and ethical values apply to more than just abortion and gay marriage, Kerry has a real chance to win this election.

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Walked: 3 miles (in the rain!)

Mission Accomplished

Both my boys have voted!  One of them received his ballot on Thursday, three weeks after requesting it, and mailed it Friday morning, so it should make it in time.  The other received his today, and went off with one of his roommates to learn how to overnight something.  ("It cost me $15.00," he muttered.)

I was feeling particularly badly about their inability to vote, not just because the candidates are neck-and-neck in our state, but because of the circumstances under which they registered last spring.  Our community was involved in some stage of a gay-rights issue -- I can't remember exactly which stage, but I think it had to do with our domestic partners' registry -- and two young men came through the neighborhood looking to register new voters.  My sons were extremely proud to complete their registration forms in the context of a meaningful issue.

Then when the President began to promote the Federal Marriage Amendment, one of them looked at the morning paper one day and groaned that he was going to have to be sure to take the trouble to vote and do what he could to evict that man from office.

I'm pretty proud of my children with respect to FMA issue. It seems that the main thing that my daughter got out of her AP American History course last year was a passionate conviction that, not only are the pro-Amendment folks engaged in a discriminatory and mean-spirited effort, but they are doing the Worst of the Worst -- trying to undermine the basic tenets of our Constitution to effect their goal.  Too bad she's not old enough to vote.

Meanwhile, at the very small and very conservative school where I teach, I had the pleasure of running our student mock election today with my government class and watching Mr. Bush win by a landslide.  A mountainslide, actually.  A Grand Canyonesque-slide.

I spent at least part of the day reminding the kids that, regardless of the outcome tomorrow, we will all have to continue to live together the next day.

Walked: 3 miles, and worked out at the gym.