Both the holiday greetings and many of the conversations we had with people at the Open House affirmed something I’ve been thinking about since the holiday season started and the “family and life update” letters began coming in.  And that is that we are all so much the same.  We mark our years by family milestones, the births of children, the losses of those we love, good health and bad, work struggles and successes, time spent doing what needs to be done.  They all seem to send the same message: we are carrying on.

I’m struck by how hard we are all working at figuring out if we’re doing the right things, living the right ways, making the right choices.  One car or two?  Church or alternative spiritual practice?  Giving material gifts or “experiences”?  Are we doing right by our kids, by ourselves, by the world around us?

In Welcome to the World Baby Girl! A Novel by Fannie Flagg, there is a character named Aunt Elner.  Aunt Elner is old, kooky, curious, and big-hearted.  In one of my most favorite passages, she says, “…[P]oor little old human beings–they’re jerked into this world without having any idea where they came from or what it is they are supposed to do, or how long they have to do it in.  Or where they are gonna wind up after that.  But bless their hearts, most of them wake up every morning and keep on trying to make sense out of it.  Why, you can’t help but love them, can you?  I just wonder why more of them aren’t as crazy as betsy bugs” (Welcome to the World Baby Girl! A Novel, p. 448).

What I love about this passage is its big-picture compassion for what it feels like to be a human being trying to make your way in the world.  The Aunt Elner view is that what makes us worth loving is not our achievements but our efforts, our clunky, cock-eyed, groping around in the dark efforts to figure it all out.  To keep going despite bewilderment.

I think about this passage often, but most especially in the mornings.  Sometimes it makes me smile, often it makes me wish I knew an Aunt Elner, and always it makes something in me relax.

Because I wasn’t able to write anything that came close to describing the year of betsy bug craziness that we had, I didn’t write anything at all, and that meant I was actually lucky enough to just sit back and read holiday letters from friends, study all of the beautiful photo-cards to see how kids have grown, and to just take it all in.  Here’s something I want you all to know:

You’re doing a damn good job; your kids are lucky to have you, you are making a difference with your work, and by being yourself, you are doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.

Aunt Elner’s niece Norma, a chronic worrier asks her, “‘What’s life about, Aunt Elner?  Don’t you ever wonder what the point of the whole thing is?’”  Aunt Elner says, “‘No, not really; it seems to me we only have only one big decision to make in this life, whether to be good or bad.  That’s what I came up with a long time ago.  Of course, I may be wrong, but I’m not going to spend any time worrying over it.  I’m just going to have a good time while I’m here.  Live and let live” (p. 449).  Yes, it’s simplistic, but it’s also a useful touchstone for the times when it feels like we have a thousand decisions to make.  Maybe we really do have only one big important one: to be good or bad.  For me this means to be hopeful or despairing, to be loving or fearful.  And when that’s what it’s all about, it is simple.  Never easy, but simple.

Happy New Year friends!  Be kind to yourselves and one another.

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

Naomi Shihab Nye

But then Gabe said, “Anyway, since I can’t read, I don’t have to open cards before I open presents.  I can just open the presents right away.”  And we moved on.

Still…I love his question, and it reminded me of this quotation by Muriel Rukeyser:  “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”  I am going to do something one should never do, which is to take a line of poetry out of context and turn it into something completely unrelated to who and where it came from.  (It’s just that I don’t really like the poem this line is from–”The Speed of Darkness,” from the 1968 book of the same title–and the line is so cool, so I’m going to use it for my own purposes.  Sorry Muriel Rukeyser).

The universe really is made up of stories, and our ability to create stories from and about our lives is what makes us able to give our lives meaning.  The real miracle, though, is how important listening to other peoples’ stories is, for us and for them.  In fact, whether or not you are truly listened to changes your story.  Your own sense of who you are and whether you matter depends to a very real degree on whether you feel seen and heard.

Here is a story that illustrates this.  I taught a creativity class this semester, and we did an exercise on “deep listening” that I learned from a workshop I’d once attended.  The activity goes like this: 2 people, both seated, face each other, making eye contact, and one person is the speaker, the other is the listener.  The speaker is asked to tell a story about something important to them–it doesn’t matter what it is.  After two minutes, the listener is told to turn their eyes to the floor so that they are no longer making eye contact.  The speaker keeps talking.  After two more minutes, the listener is told to hold a blank piece of paper between their face and the speaker’s.  The speaker keeps talking until told to stop.

You can imagine how this unfolds.  Both people feel awkward.  The listener feels that they are no longer doing the right thing–making eye contact, nodding, showing that they are there and present.  The speaker feels an increasing sense of futility, or an urge to speak louder, be more engaging.  Often speakers report that their stories feel less and less important when the listeners turn away.

Now this is really sort of a mini miracle and here’s why: the listeners have nothing to do with the speakers’ stories.  The stories are completely separate experiences, with their own meaning to the speakers.  But that meaning starts to change, and in this experiment diminish, when they feel they are not being heard.  Who you are becomes more or less real depending on how well you feel heard and seen.  That’s the miracle.

Because it means that we all have so much power to give those around us what every human being is truly longing for: to been seen and heard for who they are.  Of course it also means that we have the power to diminish those around us by not paying attention, not being present, doing in conversations what Fran Lebowitz called either talking or waiting to talk.

I’ll ask you the same question I asked my students: picture one of your most important relationships, and think about how you demonstrate to that person that you are paying attention to them, listening deeply to them.  If I think about Gabe, for example, one very simple thing that I do to let him know I am listening to him is to repeat what he says to me.  Right now he is pretending to be an elf.  I mean, right now, at this very moment.  He’s standing in front of me with a little statue of the Eiffel Tower on his head saying, “I’m an elf.”  And obviously I am not really paying attention to him because I am writing this blog.  But if I don’t stop and say, “You’re an elf?” he will keep talking, louder and louder, and in more annoying ways.  For example, now he’s singing “Jingle Bells,” over and over, because he doesn’t like when he knows I am focused on something other than him.  But as soon as I turn and look at him and say something like, “You really like that song, don’t you?” he says, “Oh yeah, man!” and calms down.

Yesterday I had a “crucial conversation” with someone I work closely with.  We were in the middle of a confusing and potentially really annoying situation, and I had the chance to use a deep listening strategy I learned earlier this year.  I said something like, “I’m hearing that you have a need for certainty and clarity around this issue.  Is there anything I can do or say to respond to that?”  On my side of the table, at least, it felt like this brought calm and trust into the conversation.  I see you, I hear you, and you matter. 

I truly believe that this is what we are all longing for–just to know that we matter.  On Facebook yesterday someone posted the question, “If you could have anything at all that you wanted for Christmas, what would it be?”  Now to be completely honest, my first thought was to lose 15 pounds overnight.  But then I thought about my year, and how every good and bad thing that happened had something to do with whether those involved felt seen, heard.  When we don’t, all the bad stuff–tension, pettiness, distrust, fear–gets amped up.  But when we do, everything calms down and opens up.  Mini miracles.  And ones that we hold in our hands every day.

And if we can remember this, just even some of the time, love wins.

December

my shoes on my desk

The above lyrics from U2′s “Stuck in a Moment” offered me the perfect Monday morning “talking to” today.  When I wake up on Monday mornings, I spend the first 5 minutes thinking through different excuses for how to get out of going to work.  This morning, I was slightly cheered by my plan to wear the most kick-ass shoes I currently own (superficial but true). 

They are pretty comfortable, but I wouldn’t want to walk very far in them.  Not farther than from my parking spot to my office, for example. 

However, when I got to my office this morning, in my shoes, carrying my purse, my lunch bag, and my coffee, I realized that I had forgotten my glasses (I was wearing my prescription sunglasses).  So unless I wanted to spend the day in sunglasses, which a few colleagues suggested that I do, I would have to walk (or rather, mountaineer, given the height of my heels) back to the car, drive home, get my glasses, drive back to work, and walk back to my office.

Fortunately I only live about 10 minutes from work, so I could easily do this, annoying as it was (and disturbing as well, since I had been holding my glasses in my hand three seconds before I walked out the door and couldn’t remember leaving them on the counter).  But I bickered with myself the whole way home and back, feeling sure that this was an indication of how my week was going to go.  But fortunately again, I had “Stuck in a Moment” playing in the car:

“You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a moment
And now you can’t get out of it
Don’t say that later will be better
Now you’re stuck in a moment
And you can’t get out of it.”

I’m trivializing this song by relating it to something as tedious as forgetting my glasses at home.  This song is really about being willing to hear the message: “Get yourself together and live your life because you only get one.  Oh, and stop complaining about the things that don’t really matter.” 

“You are such a fool
To worry like you do.. Oh
I know it’s tough
And you can never get enough
Of what you don’t really need now
My, oh my.”

I love this song because it’s so human.  It recognizes that we get ourselves stuck in moments, we clamor after what we want but don’t really need, and sometimes the moments aren’t just petty, complainy ones.  Sometimes they are terrible, painful, life-altering. 

“I was unconscious, half asleep
The water is warm ’til you discover how deep.
I wasn’t jumping, for me it was a fall
It’s a long way down to nothing at all.”

A student came into my office this morning, stuck in “a moment” of depression and anxiety so overwhelming he could not make eye contact; he could barely stand, let alone speak.

Obviously I could not tell him to “stand up straight, carry your own weight, cause tears are going nowhere, baby.”  However, I had several “moments” about a year ago when I experienced wave after wave of debilitating anxiety, and one of the most helpful encounters I had was with a therapist who said to me, “You are going to have to walk through this.  Living like this is not what you are here for.  You are not here for this.  And you are going to have to walk through it.”  It was sympathy, but with an edge.  And that was something I could give him.

The other human thing I love about this song is that it is obnoxiously brave, and it inspires bravery.  Telling people that they are strong helps them believe they are strong.  This song believes that we are more than the “moments” that bring us down, no matter how far down, how deeply stuck.  More than that, it insists that we are stronger, that we are here for more than being stuck. 

And finally, the thing I love most about this song is that it saves the best message for last:

“And if the night runs over
And if the day won’t last
And if your way should falter
Along this stony pass…

It’s just a moment
This time will pass.”

Bono sings this last part with a gospel choir kind of sound, and it is so huge and gorgeous.  It also softens the edgyness of the rest of song with this timeless message: “This too shall pass.” 

You can watch the video for “Stuck in a Moment” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emFUtuotHL4

And you can read William Blake’s poem “You don’t believe,” below.  An excerpt:  “That is the very thing that Jesus meant/When he said: ‘Only believe.” Believe and try,/Try, try, and never mind the reason why.”

You don’t believe

I believe that my husband would argue that no one can garden for you, take care of your home for you, mow your lawn, fold your laundry.  I believe that he would argue that no one can do anything for you because it is your life, that you are not interchangeable, despite how small or trivial the tasks.  And I get that, but it’s only one way to consider this philosophical question.

During the conversation with my colleague about things no one else can do for you, I said, “You coud just say that no one else can live your life for you.”  His reply: “That’s what you say when you want the conversation to be over, when you want to stop thinking about the topic.”

So here’s my first attempt at a list of things no one else can do for you (me).  I hope you’ll add to it, comment on it, and share, as Cynthia did in her comment about her father-in-law’s death, the perfect example of the truth of this belief that there are things that only you can do.

• No one else can learn for you
• No one can suffer for you
• No one can grieve for you
• No one can love for you
• No one can be faithful for you
• No one can tell you truth for you
• No one can tell your story for you
• No one can die for you, be born for you, give birth for you, be present exactly as you can be present

David Whyte says that human beings are the only corner of creation that can choose not to show up, not to be themselves.  A crow must always be a crow, but a human being can choose not to be him or herself.  Viewed through this lens of there being things that no one else can do for us, how sad and wasteful it is when we choose not to show up, fully, as ourselves.   We forfeit the truth that everything we do matters.

What have I left out?  What would you like to add to this list?  Let me know!  And have a great weekend!

And I’ll add with a quotation that Ann left as a comment a few day ago:  “To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world” (Brandi Snyder).

photo by Bre Davis

Gabe in the Smokies

And I always go, because every time, I remember what my colleague said.  No one else can kiss your kids goodnight for you.

The idea that there are things in your life that only you can do is really, really fascinating.  The basic premise is that anyone can do things like mow your lawn or fix your car, but no one else can learn for you, grieve for you, love for you. 

I’m going to write more about this in tomorrow’s post, but I wanted to give you a little preview so that you have time to think about it, and how it relates to your life.  Do you agree that there are things no one else can do for you?  Do you believe that there are things other people can do for you?  For example, you could argue that no else can mow your lawn for you–only you can do it in the way you would do it.  And what are the things that only you can do?

I just love this question.  More to come tomorrow!

Everything is Waiting for You

 (After Derek Mahon)

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone.  As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions.  To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings.  Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice.  You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation.  The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last.  All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves.  Everything is waiting for you.

 David Whyte

The speaker at my workshop was earnest and helpful (as they always are), and enthusiastically drew a big pie chart on an easel in the front of the room.  The pie chart was supposed to be “your life” and we each got three areas: love, work and play.  The “activity” was to divide up “your life” into these three areas, and put different aspects of it into whatever area made sense to us.

I hate these kinds of categorization activities, I think because they seem relevant for exactly the length of time that you are doing them.  But when I realized that I was looking down at a pie chart of my life with everything in the “work” slice, it was really depressing.  Not surprising, but depressing.  And overwhelming.  I felt like adding: “Fix entire life” to the work pie slice.

I also hate these activities because they create an artificial sense of boxing things up and separating them from each other when it’s my experience that this is neither realistic nor helpful.  But it still revealed something important to me when I saw everything about my life–my job, my family relationships, my marriage, my home, taking care of myself–in the category of “work.” 

As I wrote above, trying to “fix” this seemed like even more work, which was not the purpose of the workshop, so I tried to just sit with the information and not judge it or feel miserable about it.  Then I was blessed by this awesome thought: “move everything into love.”

Folding laundry, cleaning the house, driving my kids around, making good meals (still not quite there yet), can all be seen through the lens of love–I do all of those things, or rather, all of those things need to be done because I am committed to all aspects of my life and what they require.  Laundry can really be an act of love.   

And when it is an act of love, it feels more like a choice, as if the actions of my life emanate from me, instead of being endless and tedious burdens dragging me down.  This changes everything.

The laundry doesn’t get done faster, the house isn’t very clean, and I am really not doing well with the whole cooking thing.  But the bigger picture is that my life as a whole is motivated by love, is lived in love, is supported by love.  It’s like having access to an endless source of hope and comfort.  For that, I will be forever grateful to the presenter with her pie chart and easel.

Thank you to all who wrote in with their life savers!  As always, I love, love, love hearing your thoughts.

A poem today, which you may recognize, by artist Michael Leunig.  One of my favorites.

Love and Fear

There are only two feelings, Love and fear:
There are only two languages, Love and fear:
There are only two activities, Love and fear:
There are only two motives, two procedures,
two frameworks, two results, Love and fear,
Love and fear.

Michael Leunig

Busey Woods Winter

In the days following Gabe’s birth, six years ago on November 28th, I listened often to Carrie Newcomer’s CD ”Regulars and Refugees.”  Gabe is our only winter baby, and lying in bed, holding him, with a clear, clean light coming through the big windows, I listened to that CD over and over.  The first song has a character named Gabriel Thomas in it and that is Gabe’s full name.  The music on that CD helped me find a part of myself that I recognized again, which was really welcome after the life-exploding event of giving birth to another human being.

That CD was a life saver for me–not because I was unhappy or in trouble, but just because it was one of those experiences that reminds you of your own center, makes you grateful your heart is still beating, lets you know you’re never alone.

I was having a really crap morning a few weeks ago and I got to work to find a YouTube link to a song from Carrie Newcomer’s new CD: “Everything is Everywhere.“  I watched, listened, laughed, was filled with awe, pleasure and gratitude.  It changed the course of my day.  A life saver.

So I’ve been thinking about the things that feel like life savers for me right now–not in a big huge way, but in a “what are the top 5 things that come to mind without pressure” way.  Here’s what came to mind:

• the CD of incredibly uplifting songs my sister sent me
• Gabe’s eyes (any part of him, really, though that sounds a little creepy)
• knowing, when I am stressed throughout the day, that each night I will be in my own bed with my own assortment of pillows and a book
• the single-decade rosary my mother sent me a few months ago that I carry in my purse
• a sweet and hilarious jar that Noah and his wonderful girlfriend Bre made for me

My gift from Noah & Bre

About the jar:  they took this blue vase I have and filled it with sweet, inspirational notes that I can reach in and grab when I need a little pick me up.  I don’t complain about my job a lot because I really like it and am grateful for so many things about it.  But I’m often pretty worn out at the end of the day, and sometimes I tell Noah and Bre “crazy student stories” from my advising work.  For example:

Student: “I would like to be exempted from taking the campus-wide required composition course.”

Me: “On what basis?”

Student: “I have already written a novel. I know if the Deans read it they would agree that I should not have to take the campus-wide required composition course that every single other freshman on campus has to take, unless they get a high enough ACT score to proficiency out of it (which I did not).”

Me: “Well, I sometimes pay for the person behind me in the drive-thru at Starbucks, and once I helped a man with a walker get out of his car, so I’d like to be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Situations like that.

Or like this one, which made me so angry I almost threw my phone through the window.

Yesterday, after writing the first post for this Advent blog, and thinking about the theme of “Love wins,” I reached into the jar and pulled out this note:

A life saver.

So, since we are all here together for Advent, and we are developing our theme of “Love wins,” please write in and share a few things that are life savers for you!  They can be anything at all, and even just the first one or two things that come to your mind.  Maybe one of yours will help someone else!

Here are the words to Carrie Newcomer’s “Throw Me a Line.”  I wish I could play it for you.  You can watch her video for “Everything is Everywhere” here.  It’s exquisite.

Throw Me a Line

Why do I worry so much, it can’t add a day or year?

It usually comes down to a matter of love or fear.

I really don’t know, and I can’t tell you why

One sparrow falls to the ground, and another one flies.

Could you throw me a line

Could you take me in?

The world’s spinning faster now

Than it ever has been.

And what used to be sure

Up and walked out the door

And the old ways I knew

Just don’t work anymore.

Some days I’m a bird, some days I am a song.

Some days I’m a storm, sometimes I’m just plain wrong.

But there is a still quiet voice and it sounds a little like mine,

Saying, “You’re right where you should be, it’s just going to take time.”

Could you throw me a line

Could you take me in?

The world’s spinning faster now

Than it ever has been.

And what used to be sure

Up and walked out the door

And the old ways I knew

Just don’t work anymore.

When it all breaks down

When they’re nothing to lose

When there’s no more to say and there is nothing to prove

Oh yeah bring it on, all things living in you.

You’re not just what happened, you can be something new.

But what you leave to the shadows, what stays in the dark,

Will grieve you and seize you and cripple your heart.

Could you throw me a line

Could you take me in?

The world’s spinning faster now

Than it ever has been.

And what used to be sure

Up and walked out the door

And the old ways I knew

Just don’t work anymore.

Carrie Newcomer

not the amaryllis in my house

Part of the reason I didn’t think I could/should do an Advent blog was because I did a lot of irresponsible and hurtful things this year, and I sort of stopped trusting that I had anything worthwhile to say.  But I think that’s okay.  David Whyte talks a lot about the need to get really tired of yourself sometimes, and I definitely have.  But I love to blog, and I love all of you who read and share, so I’ve been praying about this whole question of how, why, if to write.

Then a week ago, I had this dream.  I don’t remember all the details, mostly just that it was frightening and filled with a violent conflict.  There was a lot of fighting, accusation and hurt, and a terrifying feeling of vulnerability.  But when I woke up, two statements were completely clear in my mind: “Love means being bigger than judgment,” and, quite simply, “Love wins.”

Last Friday, I attended a memorial service for the brother of one of my dearest friends.  He died far too young and completely unexpectedly.  The minister read from Ecclesiastes, and to be honest, it was hard to feel comforted, even though the loss was not my loss.  It felt like the minister was trying to explain something that there is no way to explain, to suggest that even if we didn’t understand, someone did, which is perhaps helpful; it wasn’t to me.  Then he repeated the well-known words from 1 Corinthians 13, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  And that meant something real.

It meant that love doesn’t mean freedom from pain or heartbreak, but that love is bigger than pain and heartbreak.  That love does not mean you don’t do terrible, hurtful things, but that love is the chance to move into a space where you can be bigger than any of those things.  Love holds us.  Love gives us a fighting chance to endure.  Maya Angelou said, “Love keeps the stars in the firmament,” it is a force that powerful.  I believe that it is also as gentle and present as the very air we breathe.  

So that is the theme of this Advent blog: “Love wins.”  In one of Jan Karon’s Mitford books she writes: “Love is an act of endless forgiveness.”  Let’s be together here for Advent, and hope that we all experience something bigger than pain, more expansive than judgment, more encompassing than anger, and more freeing than fear.

Here is the rest of the poem that the Maya Angelou line is taken from.  I hope you enjoy it.  I’ll see you tomorrow!

“Love builds up the broken wall

and straightens the crooked path.

love keeps the stars in the firmament

and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides

each of us is created of it

and i suspect

each of us was created for it.”

Maya Angelou

My life at the moment is a constellation of activities related to teaching and learning.  I am so lucky to work in an environment dedicated to teaching and learning, which are to me, deeply sacred acts.  From observing my 5-year old son in kindergarten to helping new university faculty become skilled and reflective teaching practitioners, these sacred activities are my heart and soul.  When teaching and learning go well, they are transcendent.  When they go awry, they are tragic.

My first teaching job was as a TA in a remedial English writing program at a very non-elite institution; it was reflective of typical university thinking: put the least experienced teachers with the students who need the most help.  But I loved it.  I loved watching someone who could not write three sentences learn to write the proverbial five-paragraph essay.  I loved conveying my heart-felt belief, certainly at that time with more enthusiasm than skill, that writing is power and discovery and connection.  Learning to write makes you more you.  I loved believing that anyone who was willing to make a good faith effort could succeed.

I still love that and still believe it, despite the myriad complexities it now entails, being at a very competitive and diverse state institution.  Which is why, when the parent of a prospective student called to ask about admissions criteria, and then, based on my explanations about access, and how we calibrate our admissions data to give all applicants an equal chance at admission, launched into a rant so uninformed, so absurd in its scope, and so morally irresponsible, that I literally felt my chest constrict.

The issue was that this parent’s offspring was brilliant, talented, privileged and highly rated, and, after all of his hours of study, all the sacrifices of “fun” activities for “resume building” activities, and all of his innate moral goodness, DID NOT deserve to be compared with “some minority kid from the south side of Chicago,” or a rural student who had “studied something ridiculous like Plato’s ‘Republic.’”  His kid earned his 4.9 GPA; he didn’t get it by being in a “special program” or taking “useless classes like English or philosophy.”  This parent did not want one of those other inferior people graduating from college and going out to build a bridge, or, God forbid, to “operate on him or anyone in his family.” 

Things would have been okay if he had stopped there.  In my job, I’m very used to anxious, aggressive, scarcity-minded students and parents who believe that there is not enough prestige to go around.  And this is not really their fault; that is the nature of prestige and status and any type of grading system: in these systems, there really is only so much success to go around, and if someone is at the top, there sure as hell will be someone at the bottom.

But he didn’t stop there.  Oh no.  No indeed.  He went right on down the ”institutions of higher learning are only for the best and brightest” road (everyone else can go to community college); then he barreled straight into the political arena and blamed Obama (the man who went to Harvard) for the country’s “movement towards mediocrity,” and for ”progressive, socialist labor unions whose kids are getting accepted into schools where they don’t belong.”  He made a short detour through social and cultural mores on creativity with the query: “Do you think Steve Jobs came out of a system like this?” (actually, Steve Jobs and his many co-creators came out of a system exactly like this).  Until finally he landed in the middle of local politics with a few words about Illinois’ financial crisis and state leaders : “And now you have Ramin (sic) Emmanuel there, and that other one with the hair (Blagojevich, I assume).  It’s a joke.”

There was so much I wanted to say.  Two weeks ago I heard an amazing talk by Michael Crow, the visionary president of Arizona State University, in which he made an irrefutable argument for the need of state institutions to refuse to play the “access vs. elitism game.”  

Academically, economically, politically, socially, and morally, institutions of higher learning must be accessible to everyone who meets their criteria, not just to the thin slice of elite students whose parents have taught them how to “play school.”  Capacity to learn is not the same as high ACTs or a list of AP classes, or a 4.9 GPA.   And being a decent citizen, university, state, country and human being means to stop pledging allegiance to a system in which only some special people get the chance to play.  And your kid, sir, yes you, Mr. Obnoxious East Coast parent, is not worth more than any other human being who applies to this particular institution. 

But none of that would have mattered.  Because that parent wasn’t just angry, he was scared.  Scared that he and his kid won’t get their stake in the game.  Worse than that, actually–scared that some less-deserving person will get what was supposed to be theirs.  Scarcity Mentality 101. 

I am the advisor who refuses all requests to drop required courses (I don’t care why you failed your mid-term); if you come into my office saying you were sick and need to take a make-up exam, you can bring me your doctor’s note or leave; inferior efforts in my class are met with poor grades and sometimes, disdain.  Stupid people really get on my nerves.  But I am also the advisor who will sit with you for as long as it takes to figure out how to get help if help is what you need; I will answer the same question five times if that’s what it takes for you to understand it, and I will explain anything that you need to have explained if you are making an earnest effort to do your best.  When students in my class don’t learn, I worry about what I’m not teaching.  The point is that I know it is indeed possible to strive for excellence but still accept confusion, failure, and inadequacy without believing them to be signs of poor moral character or human worth.

I, for one, would be in big trouble if it were otherwise.  I bet you would be too.

The irony of Mr. My Kid Is Better Than Yours’ rant (or, I should say, one of the ironies) was that he went on and on about all of the “community service” his kid has done.  I just love it when people tell me that they do good things because it will make them look better than others.  You can tell they really get the message of what community service is all about.

I love to teach and I love to learn.  Today I got to do both and it sucked, but I know for sure that I will be better for it.  Just for you, my East Coast friend, a Plato’s cave inspired poem by American poet (and current Minnesota poet laureate Joyce Sutphen).  I sure hope you like it.

“From Out of the Cave”

When you have been
at war with yourself
for so many years that
you have forgotten why,
when you have been driving
for hours and only
gradually begin to realize
that you have lost the way,
when you have cut
hastily into the fabric,
when you have signed
papers in distraction,
when it has been centuries
since you watched the sun set
or the rain fall, and the clouds,
drifting overhead, pass as flat
as anything on a postcard;
when, in the midst of these
everyday nightmares, you
understand that you could
wake up,
you could turn
and go back
to the last thing you
remember doing
with your whole heart:
that passionate kiss,
the brilliant drop of love
rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,
then you wake,
you stumble from your cave,
blinking in the sun,
naming every shadow
as it slips.

Joyce Sutphen

I was 25 years old and no one had ever spoken to me about relationships like that before.  Questions like, “Do you really love him?  Are you happy together?  Aren’t you SO excited??” were and are completely common post-engagement questions; they are basically superficial, leading to superficial answers.  They are like sand—soft, comfortable, and not a particularly good growing medium.  

My professor’s question took me by surprise; it also made something in me wake up.  Yes, this was a growth relationship.  Yes, there was room here, richness, a fertile soil, and the firm conviction that by agreeing to marry one another, Martin and I were agreeing to participate in a process of becoming.   

This quotation from Dag Hammarskjold was on the front of our wedding invitation: “For all that has been, thanks.  For all that will be, yes.”  Underneath the poem was a tree, which has become a sort of symbol for our relationship and our family.  Aside from seeing this quotation in the office of the priest who did pre-marriage counseling with us and being drawn to it, I don’t really remember what thought process led to our choosing this for our invitations.  But I thank God that we did because every time I read it (in its frame on the bathroom counter), it strengthens me.  It is a quotation about gratitude and hope, and I can’t think of two more necessary resources for an enduring marriage.

The road to our getting married wasn’t an easy one, nor has the road to staying married been.  Is it ever?  I have no idea.  If asked why some marriages make it and some don’t, I would have the same answer Parker Palmer had to the haunting question of why some people survive depression and some don’t: I don’t know.  I do know that I used to have a fairly childish notion of what one should or could be proud of, e.g. things that “turned out well,” like a lovely piece of writing or a beautifully talented child.  Something “successful” and “good,” something without flaws.  Now I realize how absurd that is, how insulting to the rest of one’s human experiences. 

I am deeply and humbly proud of the 19-year commitment I am living out with a man I would choose again over all others to spend my life with.  I’m proud of our struggles and our tenacity, of our refusal to walk away from difficulty, and of our willingness to live in the state of becoming that a growth relationship demands.  Sometimes I wish we could just get to wherever we are going and relax there, but so far those moments are all the more exquisite and precious for their transience. 

I would say that I’m proud of our family, our home, the life we’ve constructed, but in truth, all of those things are gifts.  I’m intensely grateful for them, but they were given to us as much as if not more than if we had ”worked for them.”  

I am learning the compassion that it takes to be proud of the messiness of my marriage, the flaws, the hurt, the struggles, the work.  I’m grateful for the joy that sometimes falls over us like a blanket of light, pure, tender, reassuring.  But I’m proud that we’ve fought to get to those moments, and that, finally, all it takes is that most sacred, most simple, and most optimistic of answers…Yes.

For all that has been, thanks.  For all that will be, yes.

Below is a poem by the gifted American poet Wendell Berry, whose work always speaks to the sacredness of the natural world.  It is a poem about lovers who have been together a while, who can offer one another both safety and freedom, both home and wilderness, and the assurance that in the arms of another, we can find our truest selves.

To the love of my life (do you think we’ll get 19 more?), this is for you.

A Homecoming

One faith is bondage.  Two
are free.  In the trust
of old love, cultivation shows
a dark graceful wilderness
at its heart.  Wild
in that wilderness, we roam
the distances of our faith,
safe beyond the bounds
of what we know.  O love,
open.  Show me
my country.  Take me home.

Wendell Berry