Reason Breeds Insanity

The Day Before the Day Before Christmas: Spiritual and Physical

Posted on 23 December 2012 | Leave a comment

Spiritual Things Today was the last Sunday in Advent, and I am a bit ashamed to say that I didn’t make it to church one time during my second favorite season in the liturgical calendar. I’ve been using my Sundays to catch up on grading and the like since school started this year, and apparently the impending coming of the Christ child really didn’t make enough of an impact on me for me to change my ways in anticipation. Unwittingly, I’ve become one of those Gen-Xers who just doesn’t have time for a child, even a holy one. Sadly, I think I’m becoming a Gen-Xer who doesn’t have time for anyone; I’m so focused on career-oriented trivialities that it seems as if many of my relationships aren’t what they could be, or should be, or used to be. Maybe my posting of this quote on Facebook was some sort of wake-up call to myself: “There comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address.” Barbara Brown Taylor is hands down my favorite theologian/preacher, and her words remind me that I need to get my spiritual shit together. My spiritual life doesn’t look like anyone else’s, because it is mine. My body, my physicality, my experiences and how they’ve shaped me, like it or not, are my soul’s address. The scars and the decorations are all a part of who I’ve become in Christ. My soul’s address, unfortunately, looks a bit more tattered and torn than some of yours.

Physical Things The newest goal I’ve set for myself is to complete a Half Ironman. There’s a race here in Muncie on July 13, just a week before my 39th birthday. My friend Teresa has already signed up for the race, and I plan to sign up for it in January. That being said, I’ve got a long way to go in seven months to be able to complete it. I’d love to complete it in some sort of respectable time as well. I am pretty sure the running will be the most difficult for me and the swimming will be the easiest. I’m still hoping to finish a trail marathon before I’m 40, but I think this goal takes precedence over the 26.2 mile jog. All of this means I really need to step up the exercise regimen f0r the next seven months, including adding some strength training to the running, biking, and swimming. I really wish the morning swim was an option, but I just can’t deal with the grumpy ancient ones, so I’ll deal instead with the master’s swim team who works out at night. Yay.

Strange, then, with all this thinking about my body and exercise that I can’t seem to kick my addiction to sugar. I feel so much better when I am not eating sugar, but unleash me on some fudge and watch me go! I have devoured nearly a whole recipe of eggnog white chocolate fudge this week: that’s THREE cups of straight-up white sugar in one week, which doesn’t even include all the other candies I’ve eaten. Wow. I’m going to try another round of this Whole 30 business starting on January 7. A friend of mine who’s been quite successful with her Whole 30 adventures is willing, yet again, to have me tag along. I made it 16 days the last round and then ate some ice cream. This time I am going to have plenty of legal fruit on hand for those nights when ice cream seems like the thing that will cure all of my ills. Fruit and water seems like a legitimate replacement for ice cream, right? I just need to keep reassuring myself with the words of Violet Beauregard’s mother from the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: “Eyes on the prize, Violet. Eyes on the prize.” Perhaps if I remind myself in such a way not to eat sugar, it’ll happen. And, hey, I’ve got this pesky 40 pounds I’d like to lose before lugging it around for 70.3 unnecessary miles.

Unnerving Things I have been trying to avoid thinking about the stuff in Connecticut, but in trying to avoid it, I think my mind just keeps returning to it. Sometimes not thinking about something, failing to deal with it, really becomes the means by which the thing haunts you. My God-daughter is 6 and in kindergarten. My grandchildren will one day go to public school. My President broke down in tears. I cannot even imagine the terror in the hearts of the parents whose children attend Sandy Hook. I cannot imagine the giant holes torn in the fabric of the hearts of the parents whose children died in those classrooms. I can, however, imagine the last fleeting thoughts of the teachers in those rooms, because they are the same as the thoughts I’d have in that situation. They are the same thought that any teacher of any type of worth would have: I must help these children. I must save them. I must do something, though I feel as if I can only do nothing. I feel helpless in the face of this.

In a similar vein, I feel helpless in the face of the sadness experienced on a daily basis by so many of the teenagers I work with. I am Facebook friends with many of my students through a teacher-only account I’ve set up for this school year, and I can scroll back through previous posts and just sense this overwhelming sadness. Is it cultural? Is it spiritual? Is it emotional? Who’s to blame? The parents? The teachers? The students? Politics? So many of my students just appear to seem so hopeless. When I was sixteen, I thought I would change the world. Were we more naive then? I just don’t get it. I feel helpless, but not hopeless.

The Real Advent Begins on Sunday . . .

Posted on 29 November 2012 | Leave a comment

and I can’t access the Bible from my school computer, because of our new filter. I can post here, but I can’t read the Bible. This is hilarious, right? I mean there is all that sex and violence in the Bible, so maybe we’re trying to protect the children from that, but I assume the reason we have the filter is pressure from folks who read the Bible and try to live by it. I can’t even get on the ESV bible site, and it’s one of the most conservative translations of the text. But still there is all that sex and violence: Jael and her tent peg, Lamentations in its whole, David and his dirty dealing with Urriah and his lust for Bathsheba, the murder of several prophets (one by crucifixion, one by stoning, and a host of other atrocious ways to die), and then there’s the end times with all those locusts and horsemen. That’s some scary and scarring shit right there. Good thing we’re protecting the people who believe in it, from it.

and last night at Burris, we had our first SafeZone training. I was so moved by the way my colleagues sacrificed their time and really came to the meeting with learning hearts. The training, along with our baby GSA, puts us well on the road to providing a safer environment for our GLBT students, faculty, staff, and families. The training was by far the best one I’ve attended at Ball State. They seemed to really tailor the training to our needs here at Burris. We were even able have some time to discuss issues specific to Burris, as well as thoroughly covering GLBT issues in general. I was so excited by the time we spent learning together, that I couldn’t’ sleep until almost 1 o’clock this morning. I also teared up a bit on the way home as I thought about how my colleagues sacrificed their own private time to come and support me and to learn about the diverse people group to which I belong. Their dedication to equality and safety moved me.

and I still haven’t had a chance to work on my dissertation as much as I would like to work on it. I feel like I have three full-time jobs, and I only have time to do one. I can’t work all day at school, then come home and grade and plan, then get up early and work on my dissertation. AND work in running, piano, cooking, and real life. I really don’t know how people do it.

and I’m not really ready for the anticipation of the coming of our Lord. I know, this year, I am certainly not worthy of the magnanimity of his coming.

My Own Private Advent

Posted on 26 November 2012 | Leave a comment

I know Advent hasn’t technically begun, and won’t technically begin until next Sunday, December 2, but the past few days have felt like days of anticipation.I feel like things are changing for me. I still feel pretty hopeless most every morning, but I know there is an end in sight. While Bec and I were on our Thanksgiving road trip, I realized that I have much to be thankful for and much that I take for granted. I spent five days riding in a truck with a woman I love. We stopped at nice hotels. We ate excellent food. We met friends, new and old. We walked on the beach. We just enjoyed each other’s company. I take things like that for granted, but I know my life could be radically different.

I have quit Facebook and Twitter, and I am pretty sure it’s for good. I waste a lot of time and the posts people make are inane and anger-filled, so I’d just rather not participate. I’ll miss seeing pictures and having people see mine, but I won’t miss the angry posts. I have enough anger of my own; I don’t need to borrow any more from other people. That being said, I plan to celebrate Advent by writing, reading, running, eating clean, not watching TV and not taking my life for granted. If I have time, I’ll add in doing some art. I’m looking forward to doing that again. And, of course and most importantly, I’ll look forward to Christ’s coming.

Fractured. Tenderness. Healing. Peace.

Posted on 11 November 2012 | 2 comments

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Cincinnati, wearing my Bob Marley shirt that says, “Every little thing’s gonna be all right” and hoping for the best, hoping that this weekend is the beginning of a healing process for me. I like to think of myself as a free spirit, but lately I’ve been feeling trapped in a cage like the cats at the zoo, the ones I want to free, but that I know wouldn’t leave their repetitive motions they’re accustomed to. If they did leave, they’d probably make their first stop the Corby drive-thru and eat me. I feel like Sylvia Plath’s overly used and frantically clichéd sentiment from her book: I am in the bell jar.

My job, which I thought was my vocation, brings me no solace, no fulfillment. Most days I would say my students are the joy of the job. The problem is increased expectations for no increased pay and no increased respect. Every week it seems as if we’re asked to do something new, something which seems to be trivial or meaningless. Every week it seems as if a freedom we once had as educators is stripped away, usually unceremoniously through an email or another impersonal means of communication.

Education is not merely filling up a brain and calling it knowledgeable. Education is experiencing joy and learning and critical thinking together with other learners, trying our best to find truths and grace and beauty in the world around us. That sort of teaching (ask Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to name a few well-respected educators) is not measurable by standardized test. To the great standardized tests, I say, “Fuck you!” while rising up in the cafeteria to stab them with my plastic fork.

I have decided that I need to find a job that uses my body and a different part of my brain for awhile. I’m struggling again to keep up with teaching and writing my dissertation. I’m still not entirely sure I can finish this dissertation, but I will be so disappointed with myself if I let this moment, this opportunity (blessing) slip through my fingers. And, I’ve already seen some pretty sweet post-doc fellowships and opportunities for when I finish. Maybe this is my two-fold problem with teaching: I don’t think all good learning (or most good learning) comes in a classroom, and I love to learn. I need my body, my mind, and my soul to function and learn as one unit. My self hungers for cohesion instead of fragmentation. I feel broken. I feel lost. I feel overwhelmed.

This brings me to this weekend. I took two days off of school to come to a conference and to catch up on my grading. But what I have gotten is the reaffirmation that I need a change. I need to move from education to something else. I needed healing form the abuse that educators receive. I am apparently too tenderhearted to persevere through it, or perhaps as one of my seminary professors said to me, “You will never make it in an institution. You’re too cynical. Too idealistic. Too hopeful that people will do the right thing. That’s not bad, but it makes hard to turn a blind eye to institutional injustice.” Thanks, Tim Dwyer, why didn’t I just listen to you in the first place?

I know I seem like a baby, because there are so many greater injustices than anything I experience, but I find I can’t even care about those or think about those, because I am so busy just being (stuck) in my job that puts my roof over my head. I don’t seem like a fighter or an activist, because I am too busy whining about and feeling trapped in my own situation that I can’t even tell you the last time I tried to help someone else. I didn’t even know my own partner was sick because I was self-absorbed. This is not me. I am not this person. I don’t want to be self-absorbed, but right now I feel so fragmented and broken, I can’t see outside my bell jar. The sides of the jar have been painted with an opaque silver paint that only reflects back my own fractured image to me. See? More self-absorption, but at least today I can write about it. I am sure this is, in part, because of the concert I went to last night.

Usually I don’t really like a choir concert. In fact, I made fun of my friend Amy, asking her to show me her jazz hands on the way to the show last night. She’s in a choir called MUSE here in Cincinnati. Let’s just say I was very skeptical about what I might experience at her show. I’ve been to many choir concerts, and most of them have been pretty superficial and more than slightly performative. As I watched MUSE warm up, I began to feel a small spot of my hardened heart become more tender. Mind you I didn’t open up to this warming all the way, nor did I open myself fully to it. I just sort of tried to ignore the fact that what I had prayed and hoped for was happening. I was being blessed. I was being shown peace, hope, grace, beauty, and love, and the concert hadn’t even begun.

By the end of the concert, I was radiating with love. Maybe it was the rousing rendition of “This Little Light of Mine,” sung as a spiritual. Maybe it was the Gullah stick pounding and hand clapping bringing freedom to the sanctuary. Maybe it was the guest director giving us permission to claim spirituals as our own. She said to the congregation, “Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt alone. Abandoned? Misunderstood? Disenfranchised? Spirituals move us because they speak to the human condition, not just the African American condition. We share a history. Spirituals are our story, the human story. Spirituals are for you.” And then I felt the healing really begin. The healing wasn’t magic. It wasn’t instant. It still isn’t complete. In fact, it’ll be a long time coming, but at least I am on my way.

As I drove home today I had a renewed sense of peace. The peace wasn’t perfection. I don’t feel like a changed woman from four days of friend therapy and singing a few spirituals. I still feel like I am at the bottom of a dark, dark hole. But at least today, I could see the bucket swinging from its rope up there at the top of the well shaft. I think I felt like the main character of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and Pendulum” when he gets the idea to let the rats gnaw the straps off of him so he can escape the guillotine, like there is an end in sight, but that it’ll be kind of gross getting there. Frantic, but hopeful; trapped, but nearly free.

I spent about an hour or more with Bec simply sitting on the porch tonight. I felt somewhat at peace and somewhat connected. Given the past two weeks, I am not sure I can ask for more, but I can have hope that things will continue to get better.

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Posted in Writing

Eight Beautiful Things in Life: A List

Posted on 15 October 2012 | 2 comments

I’ve been sitting here trying to think about what to write, and though my ideas are pouring out of me, they aren’t really cooperating and being coherent. I’ve been having the same problem for a while now. I can think of all sorts of ideas and concepts I want to discuss, but I can’t get them to come out in a logical fashion. My thoughts have been coming out in images: So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens, right? Short snippets of songs: mystic crystal revelations, Aquarius. Short bursts of my favorite artistic visions:

Paris Street Rainy Day

As much as I try to gather my thoughts and put them in some sort of order, they just shoot out of me like children throw those little pop-its on the Fourth of July. Random. Loud. And extra-annoying. So, I’ve decided to make a list of eight beautiful things that have happened in my life within the last two weeks.

Eight Beautiful Things in No Particular Order

I cut my 5K time by 6 minutes. I went from a PR of 41 minutes to a PR of 35:17. This was beautiful to me, because after five or more years of running, I started to actually feel like a runner. I ran 11-minute miles. Three of them. Consecutively. Not only that, but I got up the next morning and ran a mile, and got up the next morning (this morning) and ran four more. My body felt like it was singing at mile four, and I felt as if I could have kept going for another four miles. Suddenly, running doesn’t feel like a job; running feels like a joy. My new goal for the half marathon is 2:45.00 or less.
My students read and discussed “The Wasteland,” and I think they liked the poem. They were engaged, they were thoughtful, and they seemed to finally get Modernism. Maybe when I teach Modernism next time, I will start with “The Wasteland” to set up the unit. I feel like I have new eyes for this poem, because it was never one I really enjoyed, but my students were really able to relate to the fragmentation of it, and they had so many ideas about why “April is the cruelest month.” The lines that seemed to resonate the most with them were these: “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water.” I wonder if they can relate to this feeling of despair in a way that I can’t, because I swear to you, this poem has never had the meaning for me that it does now.
I can actually recognize the melodies of some songs that I have been playing on the piano. I know sharps and flats, slurs and ties, eighth through whole notes and rests, and how to start on the upbeat. I can play a weird version of “Mary Jane,” “Clementine,” “In the Valley,” “Jolly Good Fellow,” and “When the Saints Go Marching.” I can also play an F, G7, and C chords. Basically, I feel good about this piano thing, and what feels really good about it is that I feel so relaxed when I am muddling through the few songs I know. Having something that doesn’t involve reading or exercise to help relieve my stress is perfect, especially this year.
Fall is the most beautiful season when it’s fall. Spring is the most beautiful . . . Summer is the most beautiful . . . Winter is the beautiful . . . But it’s fall now, and fall is the most beautiful when the trees are fully dressed in their brightest colors and the limbs are shifting and dancing in the wind. Fall is beautiful when the rain falls lightly down creating a haze of the lights reflecting on the river and when the days are shirt-sleeve warm, but the nights need a fireplace warming. When the leaves crunch and the birds take flight, fall is the most beautiful.
After I helped my dad butcher some chickens, I learned that I could sustain myself through farming. We raised quite a bit of produce through three minuscule gardens in our city front and back yards, and we made at least five weeks of food-base (broth and meat) from two chickens. I am pretty sure that given a larger farm and a part-time job, I could grow, process, and store up plenty for our family for the year. We might even be able to cut out the grocery for a good portion of the late summer and early fall. I’d even make sure to grow things we’ve never had to keep our mouths interested in home-grown foods.
My brother and I started our first batch of hard cider yesterday. We are brewing five gallons of honey-cider to try an initial test run. Adding honey theoretically makes the cider more alcoholic because the yeast has more sugar to feed off of. I am hoping it will give it a nice clover-y taste so there will be a uniqueness to our cider. We have to let this sit for two weeks or until it stops bubbling, then one more week to let the yeast sift down. Then we have to add in a bit more sugar, so it will carbonate, before we siphon the cider off into another bucket. Once it’s in the other bucket, we stir it up and bottle it. This cider thing, if it works, will be one of our greatest sibling cooperative efforts.
Through a rigorous paleo diet and running at least a mile every day, I am within 5 pounds of weighing 200 pounds. When I get down to 196.4, I will have lost 60 pounds, and as it is right now, I’ve lost 50-55 pounds, depending on the day. I’m well within range of my goal of 170—I don’t want to lose Athena status for running—and I am so excited. Bec asked me if I wanted to buy some clothes when I reached my goal weight. Yes, I do, but first, I want some new body art! Always with the tattoos!
I got to spend the evening with my friend Lyn, who is an artist. We sat at the Yart Sale here in Muncie while people looked at her art, asked for lots of business cards, and then didn’t really buy much.I’m not so sure that people just buy art right out anymore. I mean, we do, but I think we’re atypical. Most people look, mull it over, look some more, mull it over some more, look again, mull it over again, and then maybe buy it. It’s a little disheartening if you’re an artist, I would think. What the Yart Sale did for me, though, is two things: (1) I got to spend time with one of my dearest friends, and (2) I got to soak up all that artiness, all that beauty, all that truth, and all that grace. That evening made me fall in love again with art, and I would argue that’s what’s making my thoughts come out all discombobulated. Art poisoned my logical mind: “I feel certain that I’m going mad again. [. . .] And I shan’t recover this time” (Virginia Woolf).