Palm Sunday and Mounds State Park

Today is Palm Sunday. I love Palm Sunday because it means that Lent is almost over. While I love the season of Lent, I love its end as much as, if not more than, its duration. I enjoy thinking about serious things, but I also enjoy the excitement that comes with Easter and realizing that all the suffering and sadness comes to an end with the risen Christ. Though I am not silly enough to think that all of our earthly suffering comes to an end. I know that very real pain exists in this world, and I know that even remembering the resurrection of the Messiah is not enough to assuage some pain.

Palm Sunday is also one of my favorite Sundays because, for many churches, it is one of very few high holy days where children are encouraged to play a part in the service. Too often, I think, churches don’t have children participate in the service (they might totally mess things up, right?) unless it’s a special service, like a Christmas play or something. Children and youth seem to always be an afterthought in the Church, but we’d be well off to listen to their voices and learn from them, like a reciprocal relationship, instead of always putting them off to the side, in Children’s Church or the Nursery or the Alternative Youth Service. I love Palm Sunday, because it almost always involves small children, and any willing youth, waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!”

I remember how special I felt when I was a child and I got to be one of the Christians who proclaimed the coming of the Messiah. I (probably over-zealously) shouted my Hosannahs and waved my palm branch before (possibly not so) delicately laying it on the pile of branches on the altar of the church. I had a little extra spunk when I was younger. After Sunday School we got to go collect a branch apiece to take home with us, and I would always take it home and press some of the individual leaflets in my little white leather-bound KJV bible with Jesus’ words in red letters. That bible was so cool because it was a children’s bible, but it was a real translation (if you can call the KJV a real translation), and it had these strange watercolor type pictures in every book. I remember the one for Genesis was Joseph in his amazing rainbow coat. The Preface to the Christian Scriptures had this picture:

Jesus Knocking at Heart's Door
http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2010/09/24/jesus-in-your-heart-yes/

I remember getting in so much trouble in Sunday School over this exact picture. One of the adults was explaining to us, “See there is no door knob on the door, which means that you have to open the door to let Jesus inside. He can’t just open it himself. You have to let him in.” Then I said, “Um, the side of the door you can see has the hinges. The hinges are never on the same side of the door as the knob. Jesus is standing in front of the knob, so we can’t see it.” Let me just say, it doesn’t pay to be an observant little kid in a conservative evangelical denomination (Nazarene). I am sure my punishment by my Sunday School teacher for this event is one of reasons we ended up becoming Methodist. For all their faults, at least Methodists use their brains! But back to Palm Sunday.

I am not sure that I’ve ever missed a Palm Sunday service before in my life, but today we chose to sleep in and then go for a walk at Mounds State Park. Going to Mounds was a great choice since all the wild flowers were bloomed out and the weather was a little drizzly but perfect for hiking. We walked the opposite direction that we usually do, and it’s the way I like better, because I notice more beauty coming around that way. I’m not sure why I notice more, but I do. And today was no exception. The park was absolutely beautiful. Breathtakingly so. I didn’t wave any palm fronds, and I didn’t shout Hosannah, but I was able to worship in a way I don’t usually worship in a building called Church.

So this week, as I look forward to Easter, I plan to do several things to remind me of what is coming.I am going to play more, run more, and swim more. I am going to fast, eating only one meal (dinner) each day. And, I am going to pray more and be more mindful of the beauty all around me.

Peace.

*

I have found that writing here (nearly) every day during Lent has done wonders for my mental health. Paying attention to the things around me and reflecting in a spiritual way always makes me feel better, more connected to my surroundings. I don’t know why I don’t keep this up. One entry a day isn’t too much to ask, right? Also, I just cut my hair; it’s pretty crazy, but so am I.

Crazy Hair. Woot. Woot.

Lent Day 8: Remember Your Baptism and Be Grateful

Each day, I try to read at least a chapter from each of several books in which I am immersing myself at the moment. One of the books I am reading right now is Reluctant Pilgrim by Enuma Okoro. Okoro’s voice reminds me a bit of the writerly voice I strive for: honest, quirky, humorous, serious when necessary, and compassionately smart. She achieves this voice in a way that I hope one day I will. In tonight’s reading, her thoughts about baptism reminded me of my own:

It is fascinating to me as a writer that the portal into the life of God is through water and word. Somehow the Holy Ghost shacks up in our souls with a verbal lease-to-buy agreement (depending on your tradition), and we are sealed to God for eternal life. I’m not going to pretend I get all that. But I do find the thought of it absolutely beautiful. Whenever I hear the words “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever” during a baptismal service at church, I clutch my heart and gush as though I’ve just seen a baby panda rescued by a fleet of tiny forest nymph-like fairy angels.

I was baptized when I was somewhere around five years old after “accepting Jesus into my heart” at the ripe old age of four. I had no idea what I was getting into (had I known the many twists and turns my spiritual journey would take, I might have run away) when I asked my mom to pray with me in the living room of our small ranch home. She was sitting in the brown recliner, watching television, and I had been reading my Bible in my room. I remember walking out and asking her about being “saved.” She invited me to climb up into the chair with her, and I think I remember sitting on the foot rest portion of the recliner while she sat in the seat. I think I remember her praying a prayer of forgiveness and confession, and I think I remember praying it, line by line, after her. I know I remember feeling holy when we had finished, like I had done something life altering and important. I remember.

After getting saved, everyone knows the way to seal or bind that salvation is through baptism, so I was the youngest person in the membership class at Hartford City First Church of the Nazarene (we quickly migrated to Methodism). I learned the quick and dirty version of what it meant to be a Christian, and shortly after the class, all of us who had taken it were baptized.

I wore a little white sundress that might have had blue trim and possibly had some fabric applique fruits on the front. The sun shined warm on my summer-tan skin. The slight breeze kept blowing my skirt, as I walked barefooted in the sand on the beach at Taylor Lake. The water was thick and brown with algae covering the surface in spots. The beach was clear as the brightness shimmered off the calm surface. I felt so important. I was making a public profession of my faith in Jesus. I had somehow missed the part about dying to attain life; I just knew I loved Jesus and wanted everyone else to know it, too.

Having waded out until the water was about chest deep, I remember feeling calm, at home, peaceful. The pastor pinched my nose and covered my mouth with his palm. He spoke, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Dunk. “Amen.” I went under the surface, I was lifted back up, and I was a new little girl. I had been born, died, and resurrected in Christ. I was a new creation. The old was gone, and the new had come.

This moment is one of the many reasons why I love swimming and being near water, why it is my lifeblood. Each time I swim, I can remember my baptism and be grateful. Each time I look out the window to see the river across the street, I can remember my baptism and be grateful. When I think about the spiritual formula presented by Okoro, I realize why words are so important in my life as well: water and words are the portal into life with God. Through those two elements, I remember my baptism. Each time I remember my baptism, I renew my faith, and it is absolutely beautiful.

Peace.

Funk. Dissertation. Running. Vegan.

My funk has been clinging to me like the flesh to the pit of a peach for about six months now. I see no way out. I go through every day trying to fake happiness and trying to pretend like everything is okay, but I know some people see through it. It started in June when I was, theoretically, working on my dissertation and it clings on, even through today. I have tried all those things that one tries when prying the peach off the pit. I’ve pulled. I’ve pried. I’ve done everything short of pulling out a knife to scrape it off. It’s stuck here.

(Dont’ worry about me, though, because I am trying to use a combination of vitamins, Christian thought and prayer, Buddhist thought and meditation, and solid nutrition combined with exercise to get back into a good headspace. I will get the funk off if it kills me!)

The funk began when I realized I couldn’t write about my chosen topic for my dissertation, because it was too intensely personal. Who knew I couldn’t just whip off a couple hundred pages about spirituality, sexuality, and wholeness. As if being fragmented for so long would lend itself to writing about wholeness! I began this topic in earnest a year ago, but teaching middle school and high school does not lend itself to writing a dissertation. The students are so needy, and I have such a desire for them to learn well, that I pour my whole self into them and tend to leave nothing for myself.

Many of my professors might say that teaching will take care of itself, and that I would be wise to invest in myself for a change, but would they still say that if their own child sat in my class. Would they want their child’s teacher putting herself before their child? I can say with unwavering certainty, the answer is no. Each parent believes that his or her own precious darling deserves the best from a teacher, and I agree. If I had a child, would I want his or her education coming at the hands of a person who had spent the night before reading Foucault and food theory, rather than reading the chapters I had assigned their students to read, so s/he could lead a decent discussion or plan a thought-provoking activity? Um, no. I would want my child’s teacher to work hard to teach my child. So, needless to say, I don’t get much done in the way of dissertation work during the school year.

That being said, I am in the process of changing my dissertation topic, so I have to have a new proposal to my director here very shortly. Since I go home from school each night and work three to four more hours on lesson planning and grading, I want to know how it is that I thought I could get this proposal written? What was I thinking? In my head, I see how it works out. The topic is food in ethnic American novels. The chapters have to do with cultural (ethnic) discipline, spiritual discipline, an sexuality/gender discipline as it is evidenced through food and meals. I got the idea when, at my wits end, I received a package in the mail this summer from my friend Rachel. These two books were my birthday present: The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory and From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food. I had already been considering a topic change and this idea had been ruminating for  a while (it had been a small part of the original dissertation topic), so the books seemed like some Divine confirmation of the change. As soon as I get a few minutes to myself, I plan to start writing my new proposal. I’ve been researching and I feel hopeful.

I have been sick for a few days with what I assume can only be allergies. I didn’t write about it because I was otherwise occupied, but over the summer I found out that I am allergic to pretty much everything inside and outside, except cedar trees and mold. I am very allergic to dust, insect stings, and ragweed. Probably the ragweed is my current nemesis, but I digress. The worst part about being sick is that I am training for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon on November 5, which is forty-four days away, and I haven’t been able to run for about a week. The last long run I did was 15 miles, and it went really well as I was able to finish close to my goal time. I am hoping that November 5 will be cold and dry. The colder, the better. Last years race started at 20 degrees, which would be ideal for a big girl like me! I was hoping to run it barefoot, but I am planning, instead, to run in my Vibram Five Fingers. I just want to finish the course this year, and after this one, I plan to try to get faster.

I suppose that running really helps with my level of stress, too, unless I am training for an event. When I have a training plan to follow, I stress about missed runs, I stress about not getting faster, and I stress about what I am eating. Am I getting enough protein? Am I getting enough carbs? Am I running too much or too little? Am I eating too much junk food? Will missing a week of runs make me not finish? Sometimes it seems like just another stressor, but then I go out and run, and I hear that Kshkshksh sound and all seems right with the world. My breathing is good, my legs feel strong, and my feet lightly touch the pavement with each repetition. And, I just feel good. I feel like the funk, the drudgery slip out of my flesh, just like the pit of the freestone peach. I feel freestoned.

I’ve been vegan for a bit over a year now (off-and-on vegetarian/vegan for close to 20 years), and I love it most of the time. I’m not one of those vegans who pretends that now I have some grand moral compass that disallows me to experience cravings for particular foods. I have had a serious pork craving for about three weeks now. I fantasize about chowing down on some big ol’ QL’s pulled pork BBQ sandwich on white bread with some hot sauce. I fantasize about making some ribs on the grill with my own hot orange BBQ sauce. I fantasize about slicing into a huge oven-baked pork chop and dipping it into Heinz 57 on the way up to my mouth for a seriously decadent treat. I say all that to make it sound less horrible when I tell you that I ate 3/4 of a cheese, mushroom, and spinach frozen pizza last night. I followed it up with ice cream. It was my first intentional non-vegan moment (not counting in WI on vacation where there is no food without cheese) in more than a year. And, while my body enjoyed it, my conscience did not. I had dreams about dairy cattle, their babies, and veal farms. I thought about calling up some local dairies and asking if they sell their calves to veal farms, so I could make a conscientious choice to steer clear of the whole nasty dairy farm back-story that no one ever wants to talk about.

Peace, yo.

ISTEP+

Today my students are taking the ISTEP+. I have a really hard time finding value in tests like these. My students have read, understood, interacted with, and reflected on texts that are so much more meaningful than those provided by the state for the purposes of the testing. My only hope is that they don’t get flustered. Every day before we take the test, I remind them what my mom used to tell me. “All I ask is that you do your best. I can’t ask any more of you than your best, and I certainly don’t expect any less.”

I think my problem is that these tests serve one purpose and one purpose only, which is to rank students on an artificial scale. They are, in my opinion, a means to a capitalist end, as are grades. If we rank and file students, then it makes them easier to control as adults. We can begin, at an early age, to sort them into who they will become.We determine through these tests who will succeed and who will fail. Though we claim that they do otherwise, they do not. They do not access how well the students have mastered what they have taught, they simply measure whose parents have shown interest in them throughout the school year, whose home lives are relatively stable, and whose creativity and ability to be intellectually curious has been sucked from them to the highest degree. They don’t want you to be creative. They want you to be drones.

Imagine an educational system in which students’ levels of ability determined what section of each subject they would attend, instead of their ages or grade levels. Imagine if students were encouraged at whatever level they function at, instead of constantly being forced to attain a level beyond their capabilities or below their capabilities, in some respects. Imagine a school in which a student’s age did not determine your curriculum, but his intelligence and interest level did. Imagine graduating student who had for all the years of school been asked to do their best because teachers cannot possibly accept less nor require more. What would this world look like if we leveled the very first playing field, education? There is plenty of time to be sorted out into the haves and have-nots throughout adulthood, but I think if we re-imagined education, we’d eventually close that gap.Of course, it might mean graduating students at the age of thirteen or fourteen if they’re intellecutally capable. Are we ready for that? No.

Because we’d no longer be in such drastic and marked competition with each other, we’d also place equal value on people who work in the service sector, recognizing that their abilities are just as necessary for our culture to function. A custodian who cleans the hospital, a housekeeper who does the laundry, and the nurse who creates the sterile environment, are just as important in a successful surgery as the surgeon who performs the task and gets the glory. Without the hierarchical form of education we now deem necessary, the surgeon may recognize at an early age that his success depends upon the success of his classmates.

There may also be an increase in students who don’t feel the pressure of going to college, who will choose to live a different lifestyle by taking a minimum-wage job and living frugally. Right now education is on a strange teleological path that ends with the heaven of the ivory tower, but what if we taught our students that there is more to life than being financially stable, owning multiple cars, a big house, and a summer cottage? What would happen then? What our students realized they didn’t have to buy into the nonsense that is the US capitalist economy? We just might end up with a few more geniuses.

Merideth’s Cute Kid

Yesterday Merideth texted me a picture of Tillie. She said, “She is huge now, as you can see. She has a drinking problem.” Bwah, hah, hah! I think Mer and I share the same deranged brain! Anyway, here is the kid who says, “I’m so chubby.”

She obviously has a ton of hair, too.

Gauges. Buddhism. Holy Friday. Running.

As I put on my headphones and feel the little puckered holes in my earlobes, I realize I still haven’t put my plugs back into my ears. In a mirror, the holes look like the mouths of hungry children, opening for food. They are rounded, soft, and raw, but almost quiver at the thought of being refilled, as if they’ll burst at too much food. I touch the little mouths again and send up a quick prayer for those same children who have no food, and I think about the large discrepancy between their hunger for food and my comparing my piercings to their pain. It’s a bad metaphor, but I keep it. Then I contemplate how I will manage to get my 1/2″ gauges back through the tight lobes that have returned, over the past three days, to smaller openings. This struggle is waged every other month or so when I take the plugs out of my ears to give them some breathing room. Inevitably, I forget to put them back in, in a timely fashion. Then, when I put them back in, my lobes are sore for a couple of days. As the pain subsides, I forget about the mouths and their hunger. I turn away from thinking about suffering. I move forward, leaving concern behind.

*

Today is Earth Day. Starbucks is giving away free drip coffee if you bring in your own mug. It’s nice.

*

During Lent, I have nearly read four books about spirituality. Along with almost daily readings in the Bible, I have completed The Joy of Living (Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche) and An Altar in the World (Barbara Brown Taylor), and I am halfway through Rebel Buddha (Dzogchen Ponlop) and Love Wins (Rob Bell). Reading these four books together, has made me more of a heretic than I already was before Lent. I’m not a dense person, but I just don’t see how Buddhism and Christianity are incompatible teachings, as so many of my more conservative friends seem to need to persuade me to think. I suppose if you adhere in a fundamentalist fashion to either spirituality, you’d not be able to reconcile them. However, if you look past the literal, the overarching message of the two spiritualities is one of love and compassion, in which the believers, celebrants seek to leave a lasting impact of positivity and non-suffering on our world. I have a hard time seeing how these two do not work together. Prayer bleeds into meditation, daily professions faith bleeds into daily practice of compassion, enlightenment bleeds into sanctification, and the eightfold path bleeds into the Sermon on the Mount and the two most important commandments. I think both religions would agree that you should increase love and compassion, while decreasing worldly attachments. I feel no conviction that they are not compatible, as hard as some of my friends try.

*

Today is also Holy Friday. I am not going to church. Instead, I am going to watch the youngest pseudo-stepchild perform in the play, King Lear. I am immersed in Shakespeare. First, my students have been reading Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night’s Dream. And now King Leer. This is an excellent way for me to celebrate Holy Friday. I need something to take my mind off of the fact that Jesus is dying today. Sometimes I get so bogged down in the holy mysteries, I can’t see outside them into the beauty of the world. And, I suppose that is how it should go. At this point in the Christian calendar, I should be consumed by grief, and I should be contemplative about the fact that in whatever way, I did this to Jesus. It’s good, though, that we will be taking in a show instead of participating in a Good Friday service. I need the distraction. I need make believe.

*

May 7 is the Indy-Mini. Am I ready? No. Absolutely not. I think I may just run the first six miles and then leisurely walk the last seven. We’ll see.

Lent and Jealousy

Last Wednesday, I went to Ash Wednesday service for the first time in my life. I am not sure why I have never gone before. In fact, my not going makes no sense given the fact that my favorite Christian season is Lent. You would think I had attended every Ash Wednesday service my entire adult life, but until this year, I celebrated my own private death without going to church. That’s what Ash Wednesday is, after all, a celebration of our death to self and our acknowledgment that we are nothing without the power of Christ.

I usually spend Lent contemplative and questioning, but this year I decided to put my questioning on a back burner and to really focus on my relationship with Christ. Not questioning is the hardest part of this, not questioning and merely experiencing. In truth, that last sentence of the first paragraph brings to mind questions, and I had to focus on not entertaining whether people can be something without the power of Christ. Of course they can be, I see people all around me who aren’t Christian who run humanitarian/charitable circles around people I know to be Christian. But, I am trying to put that line of reasoning out of my head, at least for this Lenten season, by focusing on the way Christ is working in my life and the way I see him working in others.

In this way, the way of experience and trying to draw closer to God through the incarnated Christ, I am focusing on a few things for this 40-day period of reflection. So the disciplines I am practicing are focused on the incarnate and not so much on the spirit this time, though I am adding in some reading and meditation.

First, I am fasting in a way that I haven’t fasted since seminary. I am eating a smoothie in the morning, then drinking tea and water for the rest of the day. Before you panic, let me just say that the smoothie contains apple juice, strawberries, blueberries, a banana, aloe, hemp seeds, maple syrup, and wheat germ. In all, it probably contains about 500-700 calories. Certainly, that isn’t enough to live on for an extended period of time, but Lent is only 40 days long. The tea I am drinking is specially formulated to provide well-being while fasting, too. In order to keep up with my running, I may have to add in some more food, but we’ll see how this goes.

Second, I am trying to work on some of my jealousy issues. I have never in my life wanted a baby so badly as I do right now, and it doesn’t seem to help this urge that many people I know are either having or adopting children. I spent spring break in Florida visiting Merideth and her new daughter Tillie. I spent about an hour yesterday with Izzy. I spent a few minutes reading about David and Andrea’s new baby Ezra. I even allowed myself a few moments to look at pictures of the new daughter of one of our students. And I spent quite a bit of time dwelling on my intense jealousy for Abbie’s joy, Merideth’s joy, Andrea’s joy, and even a young mother’s joy. Don’t think for a minute that my jealousy comes at the expense of my recognition of their blessings. Of course, I am thrilled for their blessings, but I also realize that my window for motherhood is quickly dwindling. So, I am focusing on asking for wisdom in navigating both my desire for a child and to find a way to be at peace and to be filled with joy for these friends whose lives are so blessed.

Third, I am praying. Prayer is definitely not a gift of mine. I had friends in seminary who pray a blue streak and every word that came from their mouths was an exquisite utterance of truth and beauty. They could quote scripture while praying, speak hymns while praying, weep and laugh while praying, and weave together poetry with their words while praying. While I am not foolish enough to be envious of their ability to pray, I am foolish enough to believe that I, too, can learn to pray that way. Articulate and artistic.

Fourth, I am reading. I have been working on The Joy of Living and An Altar in the World for spiritual development. Even though they are from two different faith perspectives, the words harmonize so resoundingly with each other that I can feel their timbre resonating within my soul. And it is a beautiful, fulfilling, teaching melody. I have already learned that I need to be less attached to worldly things, but to find the beauty in those things.

Hopefully, the next 40 days will be an exercise in fruitfulness and anticipation for the events of Maundy Thursday, Holy Friday, and Easter Sunday. Come, Lord Jesus, bring your profound and powerful grace.