The Waves That Greet Me Each Morning

Tomorrow I begin my last week of teaching this academic year. The following week I and other 9th grade teachers have arranged a "Health Week" where all freshmen will work in teams to create a proposal about a health  issue to present to a panel of judges from the community. It will be a great way to end the year. But this week each of them must focus on finishing their letters advocating about a health issue they researched to persaude their audience with a "call to action." This is project based learning, this is social justice education, and this is amazing for kids from our community to be  engaged in. It is also taxing for teachers to equip them for. In August I began student teaching at this school. Though I finished in April, I came back two weeks ago as a long term sub until the end of the school year. Looking ahead to tomorrow morning, I thought of something I wrote in January, when I had just taken over teaching all the classes and creating my own curriculum for them. A friend asked me how I was doing. I replied, "I feel like I wake up each day trying to stem the tide". She asked me to explain, and I wrote this piece:

          

Stemming the Tide

My dream is interrupted by a foreign sound

that transports me to an ocean

and unleashes the familiar tides of each day’s pressures

They relentlessly rush toward me, over me, through me

They are so overpowering, so loud, so disorienting

I curl up

Into my blankets out of habit for safety

As I am tossed, turned and churned

Not wanting to face them,

Not wanting to be reminded of how futile it feels

to reach out and fight

They taunt me, these waves,

With their chaotic currents of the day’s responsibilities

That push me down with their demands

Leaving me struggling, straining, suffocating

For air, for life

Some days I get the courage to stem the tide

I stretch and bend and twist

to become whoever I need to be

to fulfill the responsibilities, to master the tasks

to break through their wake

long enough to hear my own voice in the midst of their deafening cries

to have some peace before the next set rolls in

Its roar can seem quiet and small from a distance

Yet they become a pounding torrent so quickly

Sometimes I am prepared and in pride feel like I can ride the waves

Because I have worked especially hard to get on top

because some waves are smaller than others

because I am blind to a larger one developing

I grow weary of warping my body back and forth

To ride what does not want to be ridden

But most days I am not prepared and in desperation I cry out to God

Knowing that only he is big enough

To conquer and tame the storms

To silence the roar of the waves,

To subdue the pounding torrents

Only he has the right and power to tell me

Who I am and who I am called to be

I pull back my blanket

The Sun is out and is making me warm

Inviting me to not simply get through the day

But to enjoy it

It is quiet now because there was a voice louder than the noise

That calls me by my name instead of titles

I am safe to stand up,

to stretch and step into another day

The waves are still there yet seem smaller

The waters are too complex for me to know

Yet alone control

He is shaping and guiding each one

To reveal my strengths and weakness and reform them

To unmask my fears and dreams and redirect them

Risks remain of course yet all is not lost when I fail

When I fall I am not alone

I am slowly learning to hear his voice each morning

To call out when I am tempted to even try

To stem the tide that greets me

          

Beyond the pressure of teaching, I feel additional pressures of "shoulds" - things I should be involved in, supporting or helping. I love encouraging people in pursuing their dreams, processing their journey and pointing them to Jesus. I enjoy helping them think through ideas but often don't view that as "help" unless I also physically participate in carrying out those ideas. Though I may not physically be present feeding the homeless, helping neighbors with their yard, cleaning a friend's house as they move or counseling university students, I will invest time and energy mentally and emotionally processing all these things in addition to issues with my faith, family and friends. These "shoulds" become taxing and draining. In the past month I have had a few friends remind me that my support by listening to and engaging in their ideas is a gift in and of itself; that often that kind of caring is more unique and welcome than simply doing tasks. I am learning to remove the distractions of "what if" in order to focus on "right here, right now" Or to recycle a quote I made for myself in college: "Don't let good things prevent better things" Graduate school and teaching has  forced me to say "no" to a lot this past year. It has been hard but also freeing. I know myself better, both my gifts and my joys, which refreshes my soul to both run and rest as the waves of life rise and fall.

Lessons from Children

Yesterday as I began traveling to see my sister, brother in-law, and my seven week old nephew in Redding, CA, I thought about why I was so excited to be an uncle. I love kids, not simply because they are fun to be around but because of what they draw out in me. In many ways I grew up too quickly, and being around children has provided a way to “grow young” in rediscovering and pursuing my passions. Here are just a few lessons they have taught me:

1. Express yourself

As we get older, there is an expectation that we should become self-aware, making us more careful and conservative in how we express ourselves. Some kids adopt this norm sooner than others, but I applaud the ones who cherish their freedom “to be a kid” and hesitate to throw in the towel. When I was a counselor of 2^nd and 3^rd graders, several of them were already hesitant to express themselves. Thankfully most of them were content to be kids, evidenced by their the volatile emotions and actions: screams of panic, yells of delight, huge hugs, jumping high-fives, guttural noises of disgust, sudden silence of anticipation, wild flailing arms, tears over a lost toy, creative costumes, and fiery faces fuming with frustration. Subtlety was a foreign word to them. Dancing was one specific avenue I continually encouraged them to feel free to look ridiculous and “let it all out”. Part of this was for them, but part of it was for me too. As I walked to the stereo and selected their favorite sons, I would shed my veneer of “adulthood and maturity.” Each kid had something unique to offer, whether it was Will’s intensity in “Eye of the Tiger,” Sadie’s passionate singing “keep keep bleedin your love,” AP’s breakdancing or Alessandro’s moonwalking tribute to MJ . Dancing, like any other form of expression, was a tangible reminder that we are made to enjoy, not manage, life.

“Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do." - Marrianne Williamson

2. Though simple, curiosity has a beauty and power

Early in life I convinced myself that people did not really want to know the “whole” me. Due to my wide range of interests, I floated between social groups and developed a habit of sharing only the pieces of myself I thought were palpable to others or relative to the conversation. These gave glimpses into who I was. It wasn’t until college that anybody called me out on this. But often kids yearn to know people from the moment they enter a room. The promise and power of a child’s lack of inhibition strikes fear into most adults when they enter a room. Both they and the child poise to interpret reactions, eager to evaluate their expectations, carefully ‘calculating’ like an iphone processing an app. Kids can spot discomfort in seconds from a mile away. An adult’s comical glance or warm smile is often enough to signal acceptance. At this point, the adult should know they have surrendered themselves to a torrent of questions since they are not intimidated by the breadth or depth of anyone’s identity-whether a car salesman or a cultural anthropologist. They ask questions incessantly to know the “whole” you: your job, toothpaste preferences, crazy pranks, amazing adventures, scary moments, epic failures, embarrassing experiences, teenage crushes-they wanted to know it all. This curiosity is beautiful because their questions invite relationship, they reach out to touch us to close the gap of age and experience and confirm that we are the same. They eagerly watch for a reaction, and a smirk, a pause, a blush, or even a twitch ito prove our humanity. This curiosity is powerful in its ability to disarm us and reveal who we really are. Like a contagion, it makes us increasingly sensitive and vulnerable evidenced by how adults often are more explicit and open with kids than each other. The beauty and power of children’s curiosity is fed by an insatiable capacity to wonder, which sadly diminishes as we get older.

“The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder”-Blaise Pascal

3. Recalling out First Steps: Gravitational Principles

Often when I am coaching runners about the importance of form, I remind them of learning to walk for the first time. Half of them line up on a line and the other half watch to see which part of their partner’s body moves first when they begin walking. Besides those who are joking around, they all notice that the chest moved first. Something had to propel the body forward, which in this case meant utilizing gravity. Movement begins by falling. This is what makes our first steps so scary-suspending control and surrendering ourselves to unknown forces. When you see a baby bobble and sway side to side on chubby little feet that are hesitant yet eager to rise in one place and fall in another, there is both hope and fear. Gravity offers its own life principles:

1. Life is full of risks, bumps and bruises are inevitable and pain is a gift. We are designed to learn more from falling than from standing. By not walking you are missing out on life and others miss out on discovering all you were designed to be.

2. Seeing and knowing where you will put your feet helps. Have a sense of direction and purpose with each step, however small.

3. Small steps come before big steps so start with small risks and small goals

4. Learning to walk happens faster when you are not alone. True community provides support when you take risks

5. Walking happens before running so remember that mundane decisions always come before exciting ones, master the basics and you’ll be better prepared for the fun.

6. Walking off a step is more hazardous than walking on a flat surface so remember that context always influences the impact of even identical risks.

7. When you walk downhill you can see further, need less energy but also have less control than when you walk uphill. Simple decisions are easy to make but often have hidden instabilities we are unprepared for. Hard decisions require more effort but we benefit from inherently taking smaller steps that are manageable. If you’ve overextended your step going uphill, anatomically you know you can compensate more easily than when you are going downhill. We are more prepared to react fast to trouble in hard decisions than easy ones.

8. Running is so much more fun than walking, but it is more tiring. We are designed to enjoy life but we have to work to do it well. If all you do is work, you will burn out. If all you do is enjoy life, it becomes static and empty. The more you learn the skill of running by discovering and pursuing your unique interests and passions, the stronger your joy will be in life.

9. Each of us walks differently, no stride is perfectly alike. Whether we walk or run, it doesn’t need to be in the same direction or with the same purpose. “Finding your stride” takes a while.

10. For a step to be a success you only need to have moved somewhere new. Taking risks doesn’t always need to be a show. Normally it isn’t after we’ve had a few steps that we realize how far we’ve come.

This morning my nephew was not walking or talking, but he was expressing himself in any way he could. Rolling his head to the opposite side was a huge victory for him and relief swept across his face after getting a fresh diaper. It is amazing how these simple actions become significant when they are significant to one person. As I hold him, we each are getting comfortable with each other and both of us are learning from each other. Kids, like anything valuable in life, are messy, costly, complex and mysterious but totally worth having. For now I’m happy to just be an uncle.

Character as Clothing

While flipping through channels in a motel room I stopped to watch Project Runway, though I admit that if others were in the room I would have kept flipping channels… A few years ago I had watched some episodes of Project Runway with a friend. My normal disclaimer was “it gives us something to do together and talk about” but honestly I was intrigued. It may sound weird coming from a guy who has clothes that are 10yrs old, who sews on patches and rarely goes shopping but I like fashion. There, I said it.

Why? What is it about fashion that I like? I am one of the first to mock the cyclical repetition of past trends and the eccentric, abstract side of high fashion, the irony of millions buying the same “unique” image, and humor of desiring beat-up, low quality clothing. Yet perhaps those extremes are just lazy ideas of what fashion is…I don’t know. Project Runway is a reality tv show on fashion design and I like that no matter how much the judges encourage bold, radical concepts they also want technical and concrete execution of those concepts to ground the clothing in reality, in something people would actually wear-something marketable. I think what draws me is the artistic side of making an idea come to fruition with the ultimate goal (I assume) to complement to wearer.

There is a balance between highlighting the person and the clothing. They must work together instead of compensating for each other-like when my sister said my good looks compensated for my old, tattered clothes- (I was just happy to find a compliment in that statement). With a person and the clothing, one might stand out before the other but together they draw you in. Aligning the two is not essential but doing so denote honor or shame (a joyful friend in rags becomes stylish compared to a well-dress jerk becomes disheveled). This is why we adorn those we honor and generally agree with the proverb “As a ring of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a beautiful woman with no discretion” (Proverbs 11:22). As character and clothing align, character must lead. But whichever one leads, following requires an investment and sacrifice (either for yourself or for others).

Thus, a good dresser in my view is one who has found a way to bring out their unique features subtly, almost creating an intrigue making others wonder “what is so attractive about them?” Like great art, you are left searching for the significance beyond the sensory, the meaning beyond the medium, pondering the beauty that is not immediately perceived. In this way I hope that good fashion guides us to see people as subjects, not objects, as dynamic instead of static, pulling us into relationship instead of away.

Perhaps the reason we are the only creature to blush is because we realize how our thoughts of a person and their thoughts towards us are an intrusion at worst (base attractions) and acknowledgement at best (compliment of value). In a real sense a blush hints towards an innate code to honor who that person is, to acknowledge something substantial and weighty. We want to know the person because we have glimpsed something glorious and in this sense character becomes the most authentic and durable clothing.

Character is worn daily with or without thought. Ideally integrity becomes your style for without it, you become a chameleon-rebelling against consistency, as if for survival. You adapt to others perceptions of beauty. Your goal to be noticed only makes you invisible for people are not seeing you, only what their ideal “you” would be. Instead what captivates me is someone who knows who they are; they have discovered what in their character is beautiful in and of itself-rooted in a classic style yet creatively expressed beyond it alluding to a universal sense of beauty. Their strengths are the first to be seen and their weaknesses are like accents-perhaps pointing to or outlining a striking feature yet content to stay in the background. The combination becomes their style, their “look” plus attitude… and like any character trait its expression organically responds to the seasons of life.

Each season brings a context to adapt to, each a challenge and opportunity. Did you have enough layers in your clothing, and in your character, to not only survive harsh winters but actually warm others around you? Did the summer heat surprise you? Was its warmth enough to entice you to bare some skin? The sun’s rays will bear witness of your “look’s”, and your character’s, ability to discern the proper limit in shedding those layers. In each season, and I suppose each day, our fashion and our character is revealed. And with both we may or may not feel equipped to face what lies ahead yet risk is the required seed for their expression.

…I like this metaphor. I suppose it reminds me of the freedom I am feeling to be known as I am. Yes I admit that in both character and clothing it is easier to be a chameleon, changing to match others’ perceptions of “what I should be.” It takes courage to express your character and be known by it, like discovering your style. In establishing any style it is hard to establish what pieces to build around: do I want to wear this shirt with this tie? What belt? Shoes? Wait…is this clean? Sometimes when I would help one of my sisters think through an entire outfit I’d realize at the end “This isn’t you, let’s start again” Likewise with my character: do I want to be funny right now? With who? Why? When should I ask how they are? Only to realize later “Ben, this isn’t you, honestly answer my question.”

I have shed my borrowed clothing, my chameleon’s skin and am moving into the foreground. I am growing confident in my character as others observe, compliment and encourage me, like friends confirming a new look. Though many say I am thoughtful, caring, and genuine there are others who notice that I am also humorous, joyful, and creative. I believe this is probably the difference between noticing the features and noticing the accents. Like any look, people sees its flaws as well: hyper-analytical, verbose, and nosy. A surprise picture and a spontaneous conversation can often reveal one’s day-to-day character and look, judging their integrity. The surprise picture for me would probably be in is my long sleeve green shirt, knit sweater, dark jeans, and brown shoes/ beige loafers. The look is comfortable, intentional, and distinguishable, combining my creative and rational (thrifty) characteristics. Most of my friends can name this exact outfit because it is my default. Yet the spontaneous conversation would not be so balanced. Odds are that I would go deeper in the conversation than desired. Good friends have noticed the imbalance at times and said I “am thoughtful, sometimes too thoughtful” as if to ask for another look but really wanting a different attitude/character-akin to asking Zoolander for something besides Blue Steel (yet in my case nowhere near as comical or adventurous). I am beginning to believe it is safe to bring out those accents, the eclectic quirks I assumed no one was intrigued by.

I have periodically stopped to smile and laugh at myself even writing this yet as I think of character as clothing I realize it is very human, simple yet profound. If style is character/attitude combined with clothing/”look” and culture is what we make of the world (ideas and stuff) than my style is a slice of culture, so much for being subtle…

Christmas in the cabin

My break had a rough start-due to snow and ice I landed at 1am in Denver, made it my friend's house at 2:30am and found out later in the morning I had dropped my phone in the snow. But thankfully everything improved from there! The phone was found, the skies cleared and soon I was snowshoeing into our family cabin on Casper Mountain to celebrate Christmas. Sadly none of my other siblings could make it-my sisters were with their in-laws and my brother had to work. Nonetheless, my parents and I kept our family traditions-Fondue Christmas Eve dinner, stockings Christmas morning, and Red and Green Breakfast.

Maintaining our traditions requires new efforts when celebrating inside a log cabin lacking the normal amenities of a house.

1-Supplies

whatever you want at the cabin, you need to be willing to carry in for a mile through the snow. Typically we load up a few sleds and pull them behind us while snowshoeing.

2-Water

This requires puring fresh gas into our generator and filling up cartons with ice cold water as fast as possible to keep your hands from freezing. The ground is cold enough that the water that spills gathers at your feet instead of soaking into the earth. We have plumbing inside but the pipes are too cold to pump water through in the winter. This is our water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, etc.

3. Heat

It was 10 degrees outside when we arrived, and 12 degrees inside the cabin. Our wood burning stove was our indoor heating and also used to heat up water occasionally. It was idyllic to curl up on the couch with a good book and warm up after a good hike through the woods. The fire and candles also provided our lighting during our fondue dinner.

4. Bathroom

after we shoveled a clearing into the cabin and packed down a path to the outhouse all you needed were slippers and a warm jacket on your way back and forth

5. Baking

Our family loves bread, preferably homemade. At such a high elevation though rising takes a long time, and a few prayers.

6. Generators

we set up a wind generator and solar panel to power an electric outlet for our light (singular) inside and to charge our phones (otherwise we might have to use flares to communicate)

7. Whipping Cream

It took a while but eventually I made whipping cream from scratch for our crepes. thankfully the other red and green elements of our breakfast were prepared more easily.

Was it worth this extra effort? Yes!

Christmas was wonderful. It has snowed 30in in less than a day on the mountain so we had fun sledding, snowshoeing, and cross country skiing the next few days. I got to sleep in, read books, watch movies, and play games. It was nice to go into "kid" mode around my parents-they helped pay for me to come out, made me meals, asked what I wanted to do, bought me treats (cheesecake), my mom even cut my hair despite doing it outside the cabin in the cold! It was also refreshing to not think about school-studying or teaching-for a few days. I met several of my parents' friends and one couple actually served each of us a roasted hen for one meal. Many of their friends are my age, which i think is there way of compensating for us kids being so far away. Christmas is always full of memories and i am grateful I could add a few more this time around.