It's been a big month full of change and adventure! I have lots of catching up to do, and though I posted the photos on Facebook, here's some running commentary:
Top-Five Roadtrip Highlights:
1. Jackson Square and Cafe Du Monde, New Orleans.
After dinner at Maspero's, Meg and I wandered the Old French Quarter and listened to a Jazz band while eating beignets and drinking Chickory coffee.
2. Fort-Worth, TX home stay. We were blessed to rest at the Keeler residence in Argyle Texas, where we found great food, comfortable beds, cheerful encouragement. Meg wanted to stay in Texas and become a Texan. I barely got her out of and we can't wait to go back.
3. Driving through New Mexico's plateaus and Canyons. Between Albuquerque and Phoenix, the rose-colored canyons and plateaus were stunning. I was quite proud of us that we didn't stop to buy any silver and turquoise "Indian" trinkets.
4. Los Angeles Celebrity Morning. We didn't really see any celebrities, but we sure felt like them! We stayed at my uncle's house in Hollywood, and we could see those white letters
from his doorstep. We toured the CNN Los Angeles building with my aunt who is a producer there. We got to watch part of a segment taping and take pictures at Larry King's desk. (I promised on my life and my aunt's job that I wouldn't post them anywhere). It was fascinating to see how stories are produced and how many people contribute to the production. I wish I'd had that kind of insight when teaching my government students about the media. Then we had breakfast at a cafe/coffee roaster in Larchmont, where I met Sal their roaster. He talked me through the precision of the roasting process, and I saw the completion of a French Roast.
5. The 101 California drive up the Pacific Coast. We were so happy to have the Pacific on our left for the first time instead of in front of us. The drive took us through Santa Barbara, Salinas, rolling hills, vineyards (Welch's) and produce fields. We really felt like we got to know California by driving this way.
And here is the view of our arrival in my new city:
Allen met us in The City as we got close at the Starbucks on 19th. He led us on his Harley the rest of the way "home".
I know. I skipped a few letters. I was having trouble with H. Even Jadepark, who inspired my list, had trouble with the Letter H. I am working on something, but there is too much going on to wrestle with that letter anymore. I have a list and I'll complete the 26 letters, but the sing-song order no longer feels like an imperative. So I forsake it.
And T is for truth.
Today, in the span of 30 seconds, I drove past a First Baptist church and a sign advertising a lecture event with Deepak Chopra. (The lecture was not at the church.) I moved to a place that has, what they call, a very inclusive definition of truth. It upholds a disorienting syncretism, attempting to bind together different, even opposing beliefs. A cosmic embrace of all religions is common here.
But as Ravi Zacharais identifies, truth in its nature is exclusive. Briefly explained, denying the exclusive nature of truth is, in itself, a truth claim that excludes its opposite.
This local breakdown in logic, I think, actually betrays an eagerness to answer the defining questions of Origin, Meaning, Morality, and Destiny. But mere "answers" to these questions are not enough.
Truth is needed--truth on a grand scale with the power to eclipse all of the tiny, single, relativistic excuses for it that trap my post-modern neighbors in darkness.
But how does a person find truth when there are so many claims to it?
Be Humble. The truth is more important than anything else, especially your pride. Often, pride masquerades as your pre-conceived notions of the truth. If what you already have is really the truth, it will stay without you having to hold on to it.
Test EVERYTHING. It is important to fully explore for yourself everything that people offer to you as truth, with sincerity and humility. (see #1) Only when you have tested everything and retained what's good in it can you be confident in what you have.
Look closely. Truth has two hallmarks: coherence, consistency.
Coherence is what you seek when you work to thoroughly understand something. Does the idea or claim fully make sense within itself, or are there paralyzing contradictions? Does the truth answer thoroughly all the questions it, itself, poses? If it does not have these things, it will not be a truth you can live with. And I know you. You are not just looking for truth. You are looking for a truth you can live with..
Consistency is your other measuring tool. Does the truth presented to you make "sense" fully to your mind? To your heart? To your life experience? If something is true, it flows with all three things.
It is an idea if it only makes sense in your mind. It is a dangerous deceit if it makes sense in your mind, plumbs the depths of your heart, but does not match any part of your reality.
It is passion if it only rings with your heart and not your mind, and foolishness if it rings with your heart and experience but not your mind.
It is pride if it only matches your personal experience, and cynicism if it only matches your mind and experience but saddens your heart.
Be Patient. Truth requires time to find. Does the thing maintain its consistency and coherence over time? Is what matches this moment what matches next season? Next year? Next phase in life? next era? Truth--the truth-- withstands time. Truth may not immediately match mind, heart, and experience without time for full revelation.
Only what walks instep with mind, heart, and experience over time is the truth.
Nothing feels more impossible to me, most of the time, than getting started. Some people will start 100 things and never finish them. I much more often finish what I start, but perhaps it’s because I start less.
It doesn’t matter what I’m starting, whether it’s for pleasure or obligation, immediate necessity or prudent preparation. I often just can’t seem to do the things that would greatly improve my quality of life.
I just don’t know where to start. Or how to start.
Annie Dillard describes the dilemma well, especially when it comes to writing: “[One] must be sufficiently excited to rouse himself to the task at hand, and not so excited he cannot sit down to it…[But] how to set yourself spinning? Where is an edge—a dangerous edge—and where is the trail to the edge and the strength to climb it?”
I’m a master at what Madeleine L’Engle describes as “putting off the moment of plunging in”.
But it’s the “plunge” that’s the problem. The whole image of leaping from a high place into an ice-cold pool is horrifying to me. I marvel at people who embrace that trauma for trauma’s sake. No. I much prefer to wade in, taking the next step after I’ve adjusted to the last.
I went to this leadership camp in high school and several of the training challenges were physically demanding. I have always been literally the worst in any group at these, so I’m very shy when presented with them. I look for any way out. The trainer must have sensed that in me, because he insisted I go first. I didn’t fully understand the challenge and I had never seen anything like it before. So he put a safety harness on me (precautionary, I told myself, it is the YMCA after all) and told me to “start climbing that ladder.” It was a set of pegs leading to a platform at the top of a telephone pole.Everyone in the group was watching—all of the student leaders from my high school. Fine. How hard can this be? I didn’t know enough to protest. Another trainer was at the top to give me more instructions. I’m not scared of heights, so the next part didn’t sound so bad. The trainer attached another rope to my harness and told me I was going to “swing” to the next platform on the next telephone pole, and the rope would carry me. How bad can that be? There were ropes everywhere and I seemed to be attached to all of them.
I took a step off the platform with no concept of what came next: A forty- foot plummet. It turns out the ropes securing me were really, really, long.If I had seen anyone do this before me, there is no way in hell I would have made it to the top of the platform. The adrenaline was so powerful, I started bawling. I was never intended to make it to the second tower at all. I was just suspended in the air, swinging back and forth until I slowed enough to be lowered to the ground. (I never decided that was fun in the end, and I never felt accomplished for what I had done. The Y-camp lessons of risk and reward were lost on me there.) Step by step, wading in, I had fallen into the kind of trauma that drives my procrastination.
It’s the threat of trauma or sacrifice that often holds me back—a pathological resistance to discomfort.
But there’s no room for this resistance in the fullness of life.
We must ask: How can our comfort be more important than the task at hand? How can the tiny, temporary comfort be more important than achievement or victory?
This year,I’ve found a few practical things to mitigate my resistance:
1.I do a tiny bit each day. If I want a cleaner house, I have to clean one thing each day—clear one surface, wash one load, do one chore. Otherwise I’ll never do the big weekend clean.
2.I make a methodical approach. If I know I should go running (but even after nine months, I still hate it), I get dressed. I put my shoes on. I fill my water bottle. I find my headphones. I put the leash on George. (which is the point of no return, because once he sees the leash we’re going somewhere, whether I like it or not). I get out the door. I walk, then I pick up the pace, then I figure I can do that for 2 more minutes. Then another two minutes… and so it goes until I’ve finished my workout without realizing it.
3.I start without the conditions being perfect. In theory, I can start writing even if I don’t have the right pen or the right notebook. (This is the hardest for me to do.) Just because I am not cooking for myself with perfectly measured and consciously chosen ingredients, doesn’t mean I can’t make deliberate, healthy food choices. Just because I don’t have time for a shower after a workout, doesn’t mean I can’t do some strength-training to meet my goal of exercising every day.
4.I keep a daily momentum. If I don’t STOP doing something, then I don’t have to worry about starting—or worse, starting over again. (though daily-ness is also a weakness for me)
And if none of this seems to work, I follow Annie Dillard’s example:
“To crank myself up…I drank coffee in titrated doses. It was a tricky business, requiring the finely tuned judgment of an anesthesiologist. There was a tiny range in which coffee was effective. Short of which it was useless, and beyond which, fatal.”
They say “A thing begun is half done,” and I’m sure Dillard is on to something with what fuels her beginning.
I've wanted to work in pyrotechnics since high school. My dad blames my high school chem teacher, Mr. Griffiths.
Griff was truly great. I had him only one or two years before he retired. Instead of languishing in the classroom, boring students and biding his time, he chose to blow things up. When I met him, he had no eyebrows because he had blown the windows out of the lab trying to make rocket fuel.
It's hard not to love a teacher whose demonstrations were too epic for even the fume hood. In the dead of Minnesota winter, Griff took us outside for "the important" demonstrations.
I can't even remember the principles he was illustrating with some of his biggest explosions. I think it's only the teacher in me now that extends him benefit of the doubt and assumes he even had some. But I do remember the lab that is the chemical rite of passage--the unknown element with the flame tests. We had copper--that most identifiable of elements that burns a bluish green.
After that, I was hooked. How could my calling be anything other than that of artistic explosions?? Put to music? Every year, on the Fourth of July, I'm inspired. I become convinced I've missed my calling.
Dad has never shared my convictions. When I went to far as to change my major to chemistry and seek an pyrotechnics internship, he threatened to end his support of my academic career. I have all of my fingers and toes to show for his wisdom.
As you watch the displays tonight, enjoy the greatest of flame tests. Say thanks to your chemistry teacher for inspiring and training the pyrotechnicians, and say thanks to all the dads who kept the rest of us from practicing.
And for your chemistry fun, here is a table of elements and colors, courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Chemistry Department:
Also, you can check out the PBS Nova site on the anatomy of fireworks.
Color
Compound
Wavelength (nm)
red
strontium salts, lithium salts lithium carbonate, Li2CO3 = red strontium carbonate, SrCO3 = bright red
During the school year, not unlike my students, I'm consumed by academic material. Teaching 2-3 AP classes and 2-3 classes outside my field (whatever that is) will do that, I guess.
But summer is the season to remedy that. All my media consumption feels like dessert to hearty, nutritious year.
First up: the abandoned magazines. I have several months of Vanity Fair, InStyle, Real Simple, and Relevant to read.
I decided the empty space in my life needed renovating. It caused me a great deal of grief and anxiety, made worse by my poor attempts to fill it with the wrong things.
Slowly, I changed the way I thought about "emptiness".
I read an Annie Dillard piece about changing seasons--how she longed for "the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to a pure slip of bone." She says, "Winter is the real world, not the world gilded and pearled." The emptiness indicates a kind of purity, the completion of "a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off."
"I stand under wiped skies directly, naked, without intercessors. Frost winds have lofted my body's bones with all their restless sprints to an airborne raven's glide. I am buoyed by a calm and effortless longing, an angled pitch of the will..."
I, too, am buoyed by a calm and effortless longing - it's the empty space. Once identified as such, I no longer needed to destroy the empty space by filling it.
Dillard continues, " The death of the self of which the great writers speak is not violent act. It is merely the slow cessation of the will's sprints and the intellect's chatter. It is waiting like a hollow bell with a stilled tongue...The waiting itself is the thing."
The bell can only ring because of the empty space between its tongue and the walls. And ring it will, but at the ordained moment - the waiting itself is the thing.
Maybe the empty space is less like a prison cell and more like a waiting room.
Henri Nouwen speaks of an important conversion for emptiness--that of loneliness to solitude. One of the hallmarks of my empty space had been what Nouwen calls an "essential aloneness which so often breaks into our consciousness as the experience of a desperate sense of loneliness...It drives us to demand more from our fellow human beings than they can give."
He instructs, "Instead of running away from loneliness and trying to forget or deny it, we have to protect it and turn it into solitude. To live a spiritual life, we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle, persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. It is the movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, the outward cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play."
I have become more certain of our innate resistance to empty spaces. My spiritual experience suggests that the more innate my resistance, the more likely my own will is working against my search for peace. The conversion of the dark and empty space to a brilliant garden of solitude is critical. Nouwen points out that "the temptation is indeed very great to take flight into an intimacy and a closeness that does not leave any open space. Much suffering results from this suffocating closeness." Instead of being driven by panic and despair to fill it, I've made a vigilant commitment to always maintain an empty room, with open windows to welcome the bitter, yet purifying North wind.
I read things--more like everything I can get my hands on. And I usually do this while I drink coffee. Actually, there isn't much I do where I am not also drinking coffee. In addition, I think I belong in Britain; I just wish the Cosmic Forces would concur.
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