Destination: Cleveland

Dates: June 14-17 [well, we left at 6am on the 17th in order for me to be back in time to go to a wedding. It was beautiful.]
Purpose: to participate in Marine Week. [We were disappointed after learning that this had nothing whatsoever to do with fish or boats. Ha. No. Actual Purpose: to meet up with FRIENDS, specifically Erin and Rachel]
Mode of Transport: Christine's car
People whose presence we missed by being together: numerous

Description: Christine came on Wednesday to help me focus on the week-long, intensive class I was taking. It actually worked. It turns out I can read and write best when there's a person nearby to whom I can occasionally read a brilliant passage, or who keeps me updated on Facebook and discourages me from doing the same.

We left Thursday after class, arriving by midnight in Cleveland. Instead of recounting every single thing we did (which Christine and I did on the way home, with true narrative genius, I might add), I shall add 34 more items to my list of Favorite Things.

Quoteboards
Erin's laugh
Christine's laugh
Rachel's long-lost laugh
Carolyn's laugh
Laughter
Duct tape [we went to the duct tape festival... It's only impressive if you think of it as a small town's summer carnival + a nod to duct tape]
Cafes
Flawless weddings [we did not all attend one, Erin was the coordinator at one on Saturday]
Lavender soda
Open windows
Ponytails
Thank-you cards
Soft puppies
Powdered color
Sweat bands
No traffic
Little black dresses [Marshall's store: Christine, Rachel, and I tried on dress after dress, many of which we would never dream of actually buying. Though it's always so rewarding when those look good on.]
Bobby pins ["Are you going to bobby pin that hair into submission?"]
Headbands that fit
Background music
Ceiling fans
Invitations to go swing dancing
Friends with apartments
Funny grammar mistakes
Eating 'cause you're too lazy to stare [I have no idea what that means now]
Community naps
Dutch Blitz
Going out
Visiting nursing homes [we did not do that, we just wrote it down]
Sitting on counter tops
Sitting next to a friend in class [not that we went to class all together... I mean, since college]
Watching the old version of "Father of the Bride," (you know, the one with Elizabeth Taylor?) at Erin's house with her family and friends, and eating pizza, and drinking root beer, and all the while a little cat is determined to stay right in the center of your lap, all curled up sleeping. 
Staying up until 4am talking, expressing a devil-may-care attitude toward tomorrow's six hours of driving with an hour-and-a-half of sleep.

Fatherless Days

"Take these pieces thrown away

Put them together from night and day

Washed by the sun, dried by the rain, 

To be my father in the fatherless days."

"Always," Newsboys, 1998

I work in a place where I see many kids without parents actively involved in their lives. For the part of the parents, they believe they have done the best thing a parent could do by sending their children to a boarding school. Here they will, in theory at least, learn to speak English, the language of money, and make connections within the United States, thereby increasing the kids' chance of finding a high-paying job and living a life of ease.

In a meeting yesterday, we talked about what our job is as advisers. How much of the students' lives fall on us to care for? The truth? Well, Latin scholars, you tell me, what does in loco parentis mean to you? And how about in loco parentis omni die? Even if we weren't so outnumbered, we wouldn't be able to care for them with the holistic concern and unconditional love of a parent.

On my good days, I have to fight the urge to pity these students. I constantly remind myself that I, too, grew up with a parent in absentia, and I'm okay, aren't I? Because pity only ever reduced me to a victim, when love could have empowered me.

Regarding these lyrics, then, I have been puzzling over them for the past fourteen years. The sun does not wash. The rain does not dry. Except... if everything is backward and upside-down in this world. What's more, most potters start with soft clay, I've heard. But perhaps broken pieces are the only useful form for God to shape? I mean, he raises the dead! (He has strange past times.) He can begin with all these broken pieces, make them soft, and create a thing beautiful to behold in the final light. 

"Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day" (2 Cor. 4:16). Things begin working backward from the time we enter his kingdom at Jesus' invitation. We are becoming children to enter into the Kingdom. And such a Father we have! (I have recently added to my list of things I know about him that he is playful and exuberant, the very definition of life!)

So, I grew up without a dad much in the picture. And I'm only okay insomuch as that lack has made me seek out the true Father. And as I find him, I have plenty of pieces to offer him. I'm thinking we only ever bring pieces to the Lord. I'm hoping this will inform how I see my students: people in pieces, like me, with a Father waiting to adopt them.

Possibilities for my Anabaptist research paper:

• Prayer practices in Hutterite/Bruderhof communities

• Anabaptist eschatology (beliefs about the end times)

• the Brethren in Christ holiness movement

• Jubilee practices in today's Mennonite/BIC churches

Care to weigh in?

Update: I'm writing about peace-making in Russia. I know, it wasn't quite fair to ignore all the options and go with door #5.
All this is happening because I work at an Anabaptist high school, and needed to take a seminar called Understanding Roots of Community in Anabaptism. It's nice to be on the paper-writing end instead of the grading end. Relaxing, you know?

June

It's beautiful: being overcome
by simple exhaustion at the end of a school year.

[Breathe.]

It's beautiful.

General Education: Bird Watching

From my vantage point in the dorm office, I can see only a sliver of the front porch. Entirely filling that sliver is a square, brick column supporting the porch roof. This column also supports a large bird's nest. So far this spring, two bird families have made their homes there, first building up the tenement, then laying eggs, and incubating them.

I find myself often observing these creatures who seem to subsist so much simpler than I. Most recently was the robin family. What a cure to watch mama bird fly off, leaving the kids in silence, to snuggle and shove each other until she returned, bringing back worms and berries in her expert beak. Her squeaky, squirmy babies arched their necks and got excited. She had to make many trips to scrounge food for her hungry troop. And never did I hear her complain. Every time she returned to the nest, I wanted to applaud, so cheerfully did she extend her prizes for her young to devour. They might have applauded, too, if they were older and wiser and had hands.

Good job, mother robin! Yesterday the birdies flew off: graduation! 

_____________________________________________________________________

I wish I could take a class whose only objectives were the following:

1. careful and reverent observation

2. honest prayer

3. quiet introspection
4. further observation

I believe bird watching (executed slowly and alone) should be a required part of a liberal arts education. Because in order for it to be effective for people like me (whoever we are), it must be forced. My view must be limited to only a sliver of the porch where the bird families are perfectly framed and perfectly close enough for observation.

For other ideas for a liberal arts education, John Updike's "Hoeing" comes to mind. Perhaps all these ideas could be rolled into one required class that I am supremely unqualified to teach. For a few days, we watch birds. Another few days, we hoe a field. Another day, we make mud puddles and play in them. Another day, we learn to beat water as if it were a drum. Another day, we bake pies. It would be called "Explorations in Bio-Purpose."

A Graph, for your Edification

But Who's Counting?

I am. 14 more days of lesson plans.

So I'm relieved that the school year is ending. I have ideas with what I'll do with the intervening three months before another day-in, day-out schedule. Here are some ideas:

visit Cleveland
special week at Black Rock
visit West Virginia
climb
vacation in Baltimore with my family
swim
a few weddings
a part-time job?
kayak
attend church regularly
read books...in the sunshine at the East Lampeter park near the Mill Stream with a cherry limeade from Sonic


Other ideas?