8.5. Wish
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j8mr-gcgoI&w=560&h=315]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j8mr-gcgoI&w=560&h=315]
He slips out the backdoor of his office and into the movable stacks. Most employees have but one way in and one way out of their offices. His office, in the bowels of Bowen, has a second doorway out and directly into the literature section of the library–into a large room with the highest concentration of books of anywhere on campus.
Were he a poet there might be a metaphor to work here. Sometimes he likes to shut the main door to his office and crack open the door into the library to let in its cooler air. Perhaps in a magical realist story, more than just cool air would work its way into his modest, windowless office when he opens this door to another world.
Libraries have always enchanted him. He walks past a stack of books a hundred times without noticing, then the hundred and first time some book title captures his eye, and if he is not careful (and why should he be?), he finds himself standing for a half hour cracking open a book cover, inhaling its cooler air, transported to another world.
One day the library will likely claim the faculty offices in the northeast corner of its building, and the English department will be relocated elsewhere. This will be a sad day for him–the day he loses his windowless office with its secret passageway into a world of worlds.
| TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, | |
| And sorry I could not travel both | |
| And be one traveler, long I stood | |
| And looked down one as far as I could | |
| To where it bent in the undergrowth; | |
| Then took the other, as just as fair, | |
| And having perhaps the better claim, | |
| Because it was grassy and wanted wear; | |
| Though as for that the passing there | |
| Had worn them really about the same, | |
| And both that morning equally lay | |
| In leaves no step had trodden black. | |
| Oh, I kept the first for another day! | |
| Yet knowing how way leads on to way, | |
| I doubted if I should ever come back. | |
| I shall be telling this with a sigh | |
| Somewhere ages and ages hence: | |
| Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— | |
| I took the one less traveled by, | |
| And that has made all the difference. | |
Or not so much on cars in general, “On My Car.” Or, “On My 1999 Blue Ford Escort.” The one that is just about ready for the graveyard, I think. It’s served me well. I don’t drive it all that much–back and forth to work, in the summer to softball tournaments and games, occasionally to the store. It hasn’t even made it to a hundred thousand miles yet, but it runs like it’s a lot older. The kind of miles I put on it all these years are the hardest kind of miles on a car. A mile or two here, eight or nine miles there. Hardly gives the poor thing a chance to warm up.
I hate the very thought of buying a new car. And I vowed after I bought a new care ten years ago that I would never buy another “new” car. That’s not what I mean. I hate the thought of buying any car. I don’t trust people who sell cars, I don’t trust myself to not get ripped off when I buy a car, and I don’t like spending money in such large sums. Leaves me depressed for days. And cars–a car is just something that takes you from one place to the next without your having to sweat or breathe heavy.
If there were decent bike lanes or even if I could trust the rest of the idiots who drive cars all over the place, I’d bike to work most days and maybe find a way to eliminate my reliance on the car. But there are no decent bike lanes from where I live to where I work, and experience biking that route has given me no reason to place my trust in idiots.
I could buy a house somewhere closer to where I work, a thought I entertain nearly every day driving home. But remember what I said about big purchases leaving me depressed?
So, I will buy a car. Or maybe, J. will buy us a car. She actually seems energized by the wheeling and dealing and excitement of car buying.
[youtube www.youtube.com/watch
She makes things. She makes things all day long.
I consume things. I consume things all day long.
I read books.
We read books together, too, but then she surrounds herself for an hour or two with a million markers and crayons and paper and glue and staples and scissors, and she makes her own book, which she gives away to someone as a gift.
She delights in making the cheesy scrambled eggs and toast…
that I will eat, while I channel surf.
I plug my new headphones into the computer and listen to my favorite station on Pandora or Last.Fm,
while she sits down at her keyboard and hammers out another song she’s taught herself to play.
In the beginning, God created…
And all day long, so does Syd, bearing His image with gladness.
Life is a journey.
All journeys quests.
Every quest has the same purpose–that purpose is to deepen the self-knowledge of the quester.
Self-knowledge is never merely additive; it is always transformative.
Maybe?
The Spirit intends to investigate our whole life history, layer by layer, throwing out the junk and preserving the values that wer appropriate to each stage of our human development . . . Eventually, the Spirit begins to dig into the bedrock of our earliest emotional life . . . Hence, as we progress toward the center where God is actually waiting for us, we are naturally going to feel that we are getting worse. This warns us that the spiritual journey is not a success story or a career move. It is rather a series of humiliations of the false self. (Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer, 82-84).Which begs the question, of course. If I actually feel good about my progress am I truly making progress? Should progress actually feel like I'm getting worse?
Two dogs—both medium sized mutts of indistinct breed—live in a cage behind the house a couple backyards over. They are too far away for me to read the expressions on their faces when Morgan and I play ball in our spacious fenced backyard, but they sit on the roofs of their homes inside their kennel and stare our direction. Sometimes they bark.
I’ve never seen anyone take them on a walk. I’ve never seen anyone throw them a ball.
I’ve only ever seen them in that kennel.
I don’t understand why anyone would want to keep a dog—never mind two dogs—penned up 24-7 in the far reaches of their backyard. The dogs apparently are not starving, for they have been there well over a year now. But surely they must be depressed. All that open space, so many smells, so many free creatures roaming the woods and trees and yards just outside their pen, yet there they sit.
When all creation is one day redeemed and made new, I have a strong suspicion that those two dogs will be there, too, and that there will be no more cages, and that they will run free, and not grow weary.
My prayer is that I would be as heartbroken for my caged human neighbors, whose lives must be no less tragic.
Considering how many words have been written–especially in recent years–on leadership, it is striking to me how precious few truly wise words have been written on the subject. Apparently there’s a market out there for books on leadership, when most of what you need to know could be learned by reading very old books that don’t have “Leadership” in the title (i.e. The Bible, The Iliad and The Odyssey, etc.). Spend your time with them, and if you have any imagination at all, you’ll learn more about leadership than any hundred modern books. We don’t need “leadership” seminars. We need to read the Great Books.
And, maybe, we need to read Parker Palmer.
Everyone who draws breath "takes the lead" many times a day. We lead with actions that range from a smile to a frown; with words that range from blessing to curse; with decisions that range from faithful to fearful . . . When I resist thinking of myself as a leader, it is neither because of modesty nor a clear-eyed look at the reality of my life . . . I am responsible for my impact on the world whether I acknowledge it or not.
So what does it take to qualify as a leader. Being human and being here. As long as I am here, doing whatever I am doing, I am leading for better or for worse. And, if I may says so, so are you.Common sense tells us that all of us lead and all of us follow. Whether leaders are born or made--and made through reading all the right how-to books on leadership--is not the point at all. The point is that we all must acknowledge ourselves as leaders because are human and are here and accept that, whether we like it or not, we are leaders. We do not choose between leading and not leading. Our choice is between leading well or leading poorly.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INPs-LmKL1A&w=420&h=315]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrpSjXo6ah0&w=560&h=315]
I have always found sunny days in November ominous in their loveliness. Something about long shadows all day connotes a mood of perpetually dying day. And if November’s trend were to continue, might not the sun sink behind the horizon forever and the world slip to eternal darkness?
I love them and and loathe them. I’d like to say they are better than the nostalgic gray cold we had Sunday, but I’m not so prejudiced. I love them both more than I loathe them. Time passes with persistence, and perhaps even a bit of grace. Why worry?
“In the morning I walked to the bank. I went to the automatic teller machine to check my balance. I inserted my card, entered my secret code, tapped out my request. The figure on the screen roughly corresponded to my independent estimate, feebly arrived at after long searches through documents, tormented arithmetic. Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval. the system hardware, the mainframe sittiing in a locked room in some distant city. What a pleasing interaction. I sensed that something of deep personal value, but not money, not that at all, had been authenticated and confirmed. A deranged person was escorted from the bank by two armed guards. The system was invisible, which made it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with. But we were in accord, at least for now. The networks, the circuits, the streams, the harmonies."
-Don DeLillo, White Noise
Today I read the best student paper on the Odyssey I’ve ever read in ten years of teaching the poem. The best thing: it’s a student who took my Written Communication course and who continues to show improvement as a writer. Persistence and practice pays off.
How awesome is this song; how awesome is this band?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6g4t93uuus&w=420&h=315]
5 pullups
10 pushups
15 squats
As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes.
My score = 24
“Yes, it is the dawn that has come. The titihoya wakes from sleep, and goes about its work of forlorn crying. The sun tips with light the mountains of Ingeli and East Griqualand. The great valley of the Umzimkulu is still in darkness, but the light will come there. Ndotsheni is still in darkness, but the light will come there also. For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret."
She approaches with stealth, quietly as he reads an ancient epic on the recliner. The sun has made its way to the horizon, and he would like nothing more than to rest, reliving glorious feats of gods and men. She whispers. “Papa, we should go outside and play baseball.” How can he resist.
“Guess what, Sydney. I ordered you a present. It’s going to come in the mail in a few days. What do you think it might be?"
He sees that she knows instantly, but she pauses anyhow, pretending to think about.
“Maybe some new wiffleballs?"
She’s right.
They play ball as the last day of summer turns to night. And she hits many homeruns.
When Christianity came into the world, it did not need to call attention (even though it did so) to the fact that it was contrary to human nature and human understanding, for the world discovered that easily enough. But now that we are on intimate terms with Christianity, we must awaken the collision. The possibility of offense must again be preached to life. Only the possibility of offense (the antidote to the apologists’ sleeping potion) is able to waken those who have fallen asleep, is able to break the spell so that Christianity is itself again.
Woe to him, therefore, who preaches Christianity without the possibility of offense. Woe to the person who smoothly, flirtatiously, commendingly, convincingly preaches some soft, sweet something which is supposed to be Christianity! Woe to the person who makes miracles reasonable. Woe to the person who betrays and breaks the mystery of faith, distorts it into public wisdom, because he takes away the possibility of offense! Woe to the person who speaks of the mystery of the Atonement without detecting in it anything of the possibility of offense. Woe again to him who thinks God and Christianity are something for study and discussion. Woe to every unfaithful steward who sits down and writes false proofs, winning friends for themselves and for Christianity by writing off the possibility ofoffense. Oh, the learning and acumen tragically wasted. Oh, the time wasted in this enormous work of making Christianity so reasonable, and in trying to make it so relevant!
Only when Christianity rises up again, powerful in the possibility of offense, only then will it need no artful defenders. The more skillful, the more articulate, the more excellent the defense, however, the more Christianity is disfigured, abolished, exhausted like an emasculated man. Christianity ought not to be defended, at least not on the world’s terms. It is we who should see whether we can justify urselves. It is we who must choose: either to be offended or to accept Christianity. Therefore, take away from Christianity the possibility of offense or take away from the forgiveness of sin the battle of an anguished conscience. Then lock the churches, the sooner the better, or turn them into places of amusement which stand open all day long!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yswz5MtGey0&w=560&h=315]
Christ is the truth in the sense that to be the truth is the only
true explanation of it; the only true way of acquiring it. Truth is
not a sum of statements, not a definition, not a system of concepts,
but a life. Truth is not a property of thought that guarantees
validity to thinking. No, truth in its most essential character
is the reduplication of truth within yourself, within me, within
him. Your life, my life, his life expresses the truth in the striving.
Just as the truth was a life in Christ, so too, for us truth must be
lived.
Therefore, truth is not a matter of knowing this or that but of
being in the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an
infinite difference here, best seen in Christ’s response to Pilate.
Christ did not know the truth but was the truth. Not as if he did
not know what truth is, but when one is the truth and when the
requirement is to be in the truth, to merely “know” the truth is
insufficient – it is an untruth. For knowing the truth is something
that follows as a matter of course from being in the truth,
not the other way around. Nobody knows more of the truth
than what he is of the truth. To properly know the truth is to be
in the truth; it is to have the truth for one’s life. This always costs
a struggle. Any other kind of knowledge is a falsification. In
short, the truth, if it is really there, is a being, a life. The Gospel
says that this is eternal life, to know the only true God and the
one whom he sent, the truth (Jn. 17:3). That is, I only know the
truth when it becomes a life in me.
Couldn’t win a stinking game last week.
10-0 this week.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13aTWulSMPE&w=560&h=315]
Three rounds for time of:
25 Push ups
25 Pull ups
25 Dips
75 Squats
16:36 as rx’d.