spiritual wheaties

A hard rain's gonna fall

2012-01-26T16:43:00.001-07:00

Oh man. I gotta tell you, this has been a tough January. Let me preface this by saying that I am fine, but I'm changed, and it wasn't an easy, voluntary change like "hey let's try Thai food". It was a change that dragged me through. I was not left unscathed.

How do we deal with all the hard rains that come from out of nowhere and drench us to the core? It isn't like we can prevent these things from happening in the future. I talked to my friend Kara about this last weekend, and she thought it might have something to do with God being in the mess with us, and His gentle reminder to us that we are not alone in the downpour. She wrote about it so beautifully in her blog:

But a mark had been made on me about how a relational God often accomplishes mighty things. Not by lightning bolts and magic spells that zap our troubles into extinction or by giving us brand new unblemished situations, but by being with us in the midst of our troubles. Through this – or, rather, through Him – we find grace to lift our eyes off of our daunting messes and enjoy the friendship of our creator as he makes a way with us and for us. What a beautiful thing to see what will be knit with the strands he so caringly restores!

Maybe more epiphanies will come out of this tough time. Maybe not. But I know I needed a gentle reminder that He is near... and He has an umbrella.

Feeling a little grown-up

2011-11-13T10:29:00.001-07:00

What does it mean to be a grown-up? I've often asked this question as I look around the townhouse I bought almost three years ago, and I come to the same mind-jarring conclusion; I'm responsible for this shit. Being a homeowner means getting calls that workmen accidentally broke your basement window and you may just have to fix that leaky toilet yourself (not hypothetical situations, btw).

Bottom-line, I absolutely love my home and I do like taking care of it. People comment that it is full of my personality and warmth. I agree. There isn't much room for someone else's stuff... which is a whole other post I could get into later. I like making coffee in the morning, opening the blinds and reading the paper. Last week, however, I was bemoaning my sad sofa a bit. I've had three sofas in the last fifteen years; a foam loveseat that weighed about ten pounds (college days); a curved, powder-blue loveseat that I got at a flea market for $25 (first on-my-own apartment), and a pull-out hand-me-down from relatives (somewhere for company to sleep). It was that last one, the battered, cat-clawed, slipcovered sleeper that I kinda lamented. It saw me through some good and bad times, and sometimes that stuff is hard to part with, but it's just part of the larger story. Move along, little sofa, have a nice life in someone else's house. The promise of a nicer, slightly used sofa set was too much to pass up. And I got a lot of furniture for a bargain.

Do I qualify for adulthood now? Maybe, but I still need to make room for someone else. :-)

Nevermind, November

2011-11-05T12:31:00.001-06:00

I like to create titles for each month: Awful August, Snarky September, Obnoxious October. These titles correspond to how I feel about public education. Don't get me wrong, I love teaching. I love my students, (and I don't say that just because they stalk me and found this blog... hiya, 8th block!) they get me up in the morning, they soak up learning, they prank me, they teach me, and they make me laugh. It's the extra crap I loathe.

Senior Prankery last May

I'm so disheartened when people don't support teachers, either financially or emotionally. I'm disheartened when I bust my butt planning and grading and instructing and then 10 other tasks are added to my already full plate. Let's just set the record straight, teachers work hard, and so do counselors, custodians, kitchen staff, paraprofessionals, and yes, even administrators. But in that hard work, we seem disparate and defensive. We seem to be working towards different goals. We end up being REactive instead of PROactive. We do this mostly because we are afraid. I fear for my job, and I fear for the jobs of others who help me do my job. I fear bigger class sizes and higher expectations. Listen, if I have to teach 190 students, how do you expect me to grade papers, give them good feedback and make the learning valid and authentic. I'm not a highly paid babysitter. And the problem with policy and bureaucracy and mandates is that I'm treated like a babysitter, but also expected to raise standardized test scores at the same time. Enough.

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” --Eleanor Roosevelt

My friend Matt was telling me about Stephen R. Covey last night. I looked it up today because it stuck in my head last night. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People makes sense for education. One of the habits, "put first things first" is especially poignant in this discussion. If we spend our time in public education dealing with the policies we have in place instead of new policies we feel will work better, then I think we might be more productive, we might even spend money more efficiently. True, there isn't a panacea for the problems of public education. But the remedies are already here, they just aren't being used.

We'll open a restaurant in Santa Fe...

2011-10-19T20:57:00.000-06:00

I went away to Santa Fe for the weekend. We took off Friday down I-25 in my amazing one-tank-wonder "The Shadow". It has a sunroof, an iPod hookup and cruise control. You pretty much just steer south and you're there in 5 hours 34 minutes. You stop only for M&M's and to pee, and that better be the same stop.

Autumn in Colorado is lovely. But autumn in Santa Fe is heavenly. It's all short-sleeved weather during the day, but at night it gets chilly and the coyotes howl. There is definitely something about the high desert, it beckons and haunts you, but in a good way. I've been to Santa Fe a handful of times, I have all kinds of favorite places, I get new ones every time, and people I like keep moving there... and getting second bedrooms. They are generous and I love them... a lot.

What didn't we do? We laughed a lot. We ate a lot. I visited favorite spots and found some new ones, it was a good ol' time. There's something about the combination of green chile, cheese and beans in a tortilla that just makes sense, but it only works in Santa Fe.

Trust me, you're gonna want to go here.

Then there was Trader Joe's, which feels so much like the cave of wonders. Listen, pumpkin butter is the 8th wonder of the world. It is amazing stirred into steel cut oatmeal. I'm just saying, but I'm not sharing. And autumn adobe kinda looks pumpkiny... way to let your Fall Freak Flag Fly, Santa Fe!

So what do I take away from this weekend getaway, I mean, besides the pumpkin butter? I take away the peace of knowing that my cousin is well, that her husband is awesome, a new bunch of beads (Tesuque flea market...check it), a revived Chaco tan, and some renewed spicyness. Hopefully that will carry me on to Thanksgiving. Sometimes life is medium, but you gotta know that you can handle the hot.

Fall-orado rocky mountain high

2011-10-01T16:25:00.000-06:00

Autumn in Colorado is the perfect antidote to bitterness, writer's block, malaise, and general yuck.

Right? Can't you hear John Denver singing? No? Well skip to the next song on the player above... there you go...

It was a lovely day up in Rocky Mountain National Park. Fortunately, all the tourists were down in town at the Elk Festival wandering the main drag looking for the perfect caramel corn and waiting to hear an elk's mating call. Boat missed? Possibly.

After a lunch of cheddar sandwiches and honeycrisp apples, we started off for a short wander through the woods on the boundary of RMNP. Dad had been there before, (obviously... there are few places within 20 miles of Estes Park that my dad hasn't been... trust me) but we got to see the fall foliage at its finest.

Me and my dad

I knew today was gonna be the day I celebrated fall. I just knew that after this craptastic week, I needed a remedy. I needed to drive up to Estes with my pumpkin latte and my iPod blasting and my sunroof fully open. It worked.

It worked really well. Thank you, Colorado.

What Two Feels Like

2011-09-26T20:29:00.001-06:00

Just a quick post. I still have to iron and grade and somehow it is already 8:06. Wait a sec..... Okay, I got the iron turned on so that it can warm up whilst I write.

The cable was shut off today. Thank goodness, I say. I have things to do and those America's Next Top Model marathons were dragging the life out of me. I panicked for about 10 seconds, but I then I turned on an episode of the Daily Show on my Roku box and ate some chili from yesterday and figured I'd be alllllright. The good news, the show is right where I left it. Oh snap.

And Sweet Sam turned TWO this weekend...

He's the bestest, and we had a lot of fun watching him run around, play, giggle and open presents. Turns out, my gift of the Sesame Street Peek-a-boo House of Fun was his favorite. Sam likes to hit buttons that do things, and that little toy is a goldmine of button pushing fun. I win. Not that it was a competition, but I like to think of myself informally as "Best Auntie Ever".

When I was two, my dad took me to Utah and canyonlands in the old Volkswagen bus. When you're two, you don't really have dream vacations, but I can tell you that Utah wasn't really on my radar back then. I remember bits and pieces of the trip; riding around on the back of my dad's bicycle, eating ramen noodles and cheerios like they were goin out of style, climbing over big trees and stopping for swingsets (I loved a good swingset). Being two is when life is easiest, I think. Your basic needs are met, you run and play and laugh and jump, and you feel like a genius if you learn how to say "more cookies, please".

My terrible twos involved some vandalism.

Happy Birthday, Sammie! I love watching you grow up!

WWAMD: What would Aunt Marti do?

2011-09-18T10:32:00.002-06:00

I've been very productive recently, and maybe this "getting rid of the cable" extravaganza has been the boost to my volition. I think getting back into school has done that too, nothing like a schedule, grading and lesson plans to get you on track. But I've been struggling with the little (and not so little) squirrels that get into my day and chew on power lines and make nests in the attic. Sometimes life is hard, sometimes it is breezy, that is the nature of it. I don't want my life to be all one thing, and I think I have a pretty good balance going on, but I hate when I get to those "unanswerable" questions. Everyone's unanswerable questions are different, mine seem to be like quicksand, sucking me slowly downward into a suffocating paralysis (sheeze... that sounded dramatic, but you know what I mean). My top three big questions: Will I find love? Will I have a baby? Will the Broncos start Tim Tebow? I'm kinda impatient when life gets all nebulous-y and vague. I get all Veruca Salt up in here and demand answers so that I can continue on with my day. It would all be so much easier if I knew what was going to happen so that I could stop worrying about it.


Go that way!

It would be fair to say that in these moments I miss my Aunt Marti a lot. Marti had this way of taking my mind off the scary bits of my own life, usually by reminding me of some much larger problem that was equally as unanswerable and yet infinitely more solvable, like No Child Left Behind. Aunt Marti was not one to sit and ruminate on the big questions and she was never one to feel self-pitying. There was always something else to put her mind to. I wish I was more like that. I wish I wasn't so indulgent of these big-assed questions that seem to stop me like a deer in the headlights. For now, maybe it is enough to just think on Marti and try to think what she would say or do. It isn't an answer, but it helps.

Wait... what?

2011-09-10T18:59:00.000-06:00

I'm going to get rid of my cable. It's time. I can't remember the last time something was reaaaaally on tv that I reaaaaaally needed to watch. Most of what is on is so completely superfluous to the world. Jersey Shore is not changing the world, unless changing the world involves filming the drunken antics of semi-literate morons, which it doesn't. Old episodes of "Friends" are great, but I know all the lines of all the episodes. I could probably start a "Friends" reenactment club, which sounds cool. TV sucks the life out of me. I find myself sitting and mindlessly clicking through a hundred channels as a kind of self-medication. I'm trying to live mindfully this year. That is kind of an Aunt Martha thing. She was a very mindful person. She really didn't do things frivolously or casually. Intentionality and purpose were her hallmarks.

Aunt Marti not watching television, with Keisha the great dog.

I wonder what will occur in place of the cable-coma? My hope is that I will read more... because I have a lot of frickin books to read. I hope I will write more letters and cards to people. I hope I will feel more energy. I hope I start that "Friends" reenactment club. Mostly, I hope I will feel more mindful and content instead of feeling chaotic and scattershot. I'll keep you posted.

Hopeful cats and 72 degrees of sunshine...

2011-09-04T14:54:00.014-06:00

I'm basking a little bit today. It's 72 sweet degrees. All my windows are open. It is Sunday and I don't have to teach tomorrow. The chores are done and I'm going over to some friends' house for dinner. The kitties are happy.

I've just been listening to my friend Elizabeth's sermon podcast from a couple weeks ago. She's like, amazing. She spoke about hope, shoes, and moving forward. It seems to me that's exactly what hope is, moving forward when it seems easy, or difficult, or smooth, or challenging. We are in perpetual motion in a forward direction. Life doesn't stop when we need a break from it all. That means that we can't dwell too long on the past. We've been there and done that. Our memories and stories are precious, but they can also trap us in a strange cycle of doubt and hesitancy. Shoulda, coulda, woulda are not good roommates; they leave shit everywhere and nag you about that thank you card you never wrote to your great-aunt 15 years ago. Past-dwelling can also be a good way to self-medicate. Why think about today when you can be back in the time when things were good? That sure feels good until you realize it's 2011. Then you have guilt and regret that you've wasted time thinking about something you can never get back.

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." --Oscar Wilde

But I've been thinking about this perpetual motion forward and my investment in the forward motion. Today is one of those days when I feel really stinkin good. It has a little to do with the weather, and maybe a little more to do with how full and good my life is right now. I have amazing friends and wonderful family. I have belly-laughed a lot in the last couple weeks. I have food and shelter and two reasonably well-behaved kitties. There is hope in the good days, that they will be our fuel when the days seem difficult. I think hope can be the thing with feathers that perches in our souls and could fly away at any moment (see Emily Dickinson), but mostly I think hope is like the good friend who reminds you that this one wild and precious life is all you get (see Mary Oliver). Hope means looking forward and believing that the next moment will surpass our greatest expectations. I HOPE your expectations are being surpassed right now.

photo courtesy of my friend Jenn who took it at my favorite place, Nye Beach

Four Weddings, a funeral, and a summer....

2011-08-16T19:33:00.012-06:00

May seems so long ago. I suppose that is the mark of a good summer, that it was long and full. It started with graduation, happy parents, good food, and delirious seniors. Yes, I got pranked.

Then summer took a bit of a turn as we said goodbye to my aunt Martha. When our loved ones pass on, we can't figure out how to be. How does the day start again without her? I think I needed the whole summer to figure that out and I'm still kinda struggling, but the days have continued, and the sun has risen many times since. This summer was a good time to be around my family and remember her.

I traveled to the Oregon coast and the high desert of New Mexico. I went boating with my family and took care of my friends' dogs.

And there were books, boats, babes, beads and birdies (okay, not a birdie, but definitely par).

And there were the weddings. I called myself "the wedding bitch". If you have a wedding detail needs doin', I will get her done. Yes, it was very "27 Dresses" of me. I fetched things, I set up chairs and centerpieces. I carted sushi and wax stamped about a billion placecards. Shoot, at one wedding, all I had to do was show up, that was really fun. I loved being able to participate in all the details and processes of each special day, and the actual weddings were really really beautiful. Joy, peace, beauty and love were the winners in every single wedding I attended, but FYI, payback is coming, ya'll.

But the best part of summer was the big sky. Everywhere I went, the sky seemed to change and transform itself. I felt it's vastness and it's warmth, and it challenged me to stop and be. Yeah, I always have a summer "to-do" list, and for the most part, it got done, but that's beside the point. It was my summer to recharge, to meditate, and to remember. This is a moment, it will pass as soon as it will come, and sometimes that is a relief, and sometimes that is a heartbreak, but the important thing is to be IN it.

Leaps of Faith

2011-08-13T13:31:00.004-06:00

One of my former students started a blog, and her first post was about skydiving. I thought she was being metaphorical, because you know, going to college is kinda scary, a big leap of faith and what have you. No, she meant actually jumping out of an airplane with a cute tandem guide named Bobby and a parachute strapped to her back. I'm always in awe of people who do crazy stuff. I'm not really like that; I'm a "ground" kind of person. But as I watched Lyndsay and her sister Lauren skydiving, I was thinking a lot about leaps of faith.

Lauren and Lyndsay, pre-jump

As we drove out to the landing strip in the back of a generously shaking trailer truck, the tandem skydiving guides and the skydiving "hobbyists" argued that it was no more a leap of faith than going into an elevator. These people are seasoned, jumping up to 10 times a day, and they know that everything works; the parachute is well-packed, there's always a backup chute opener, the guides know what they are doing, yadda yadda yadda. But I argue that stepping out of an airplane at 35,000 feet is not really routine. We HOPE that the parachute is well-packed, we HOPE that we don't have to use the backup opener, we HOPE that the guide is well-trained. We don't know.

Safe landing

I'm going to a wedding today, and I think again about leaps of faith. Getting married is scary to me. I am always in awe of two people who put rings on the other's finger and say, "I will be there for you, and I HOPE you'll be there for me". Fingers crossed, ya'll! I would be just as nervous jumping out of a plane as I would be about getting married. This may account for why I have not done either. But I wonder if I could go through a day without any leap of faith, big or small. The first day of school is ALWAYS a leap of faith. Eating expired yogurt is a leap of faith. Shoot, wearing a sleeveless dress to this wedding tonight will be a big frickin' leap of faith.

I guess my point is that ife isn't always about "ground", sometimes (especially if you want it to be really great) it is about soaring.

Mental Hoarding...

2011-07-05T19:38:00.003-06:00

Okay, so I watch "Hoarders" sometimes. It is really interesting to see how people save old cans of rusted nails instead of a relationship with their sons and daughters. We all know that hoarding is an emotional problem, right? I mean, people don't save 500 empty tubes of toothpaste because of a desperate need to recycle. They save this stuff because it allows them a tiny bit of control in their unexpected and scary lives. Life by its nature is unexpected, harsh, and scary aaand unexpected, beautiful, and surprising.

I am in no way a physical hoarder. I watch that show and then I go clean out a desk drawer. I'm pretty good about taking things out if other things come in. There's a lot of space in my house, but that doesn't mean I have to fill it. My mom might disagree with my penchant for filling up spaces or keeping stuff from my past, but just FYI Mom, that Outsiders poster I kept from 1988 is framed and hanging in my rec room. But I digress. I'm not a collector of anything that I couldn't part with. I like stuff, but I like people more. Thinking about this, I thought about these hoarders. People usually hoard after a traumatic loss or event in their lives. For some people, the hoarding itself alleviates the fear and anxiety associated with the trauma. It made me think about my emotions and the stuff I don't want to deal with. Am I an emotional hoarder? Do I collect thoughts, feelings and attitudes and do I hang onto them when facing difficult situations?

It is easy to go to the places we know. I like those places better than the scary unknowns. But if I don't go to the scary, unknown places, how often will I miss the unexpected surprises? My emotional hoarding has sometimes kept me from the challenge and surprise of the unexpected life. And isn't that what life is?

I'm not really here...

2011-06-28T12:48:00.001-06:00

The thing about grief is that it comes up when you least expect it to.

I am at a conference in New Mexico, away from my bed and my bathroom towels. I hate it. When I first got down here, I called my uncle to wish him happy birthday and when the machine picked up, my dead aunt's voice came over the phone. Hello, not prepared for that shit. It really knocked the wind out of me. Then I got a couple emails from my uncle on Tuesday as I was getting all this information from my conference. It was the perfect storm, and I had a bit of a breakdown.

I feel better now, but I can't wait to get home tomorrow.

The thing about grief is that you have no rules. If you need to sit in a dark room watching America's Next Top Model, do it. If you need to eat chocolate covered pizza, do it. If you need to plunge back into the work you've been doing and plow forward, do it. But no one... NO ONE can tell you the rules for grieving.

I'm here at the conference, but I'm not really here. And that's okay.

Summer so far...

2011-06-22T20:16:00.003-06:00

It is no secret, summer makes me happy. Swinging in my sky chair, getting pedicures, staying up late with a book, watching The Price is Right and getting really jazzed when they pull out Plinko; they are simple pleasures, but they'll do. Our agrarian school year really makes me feel guilty that I'm not out tending to my soybean crops, but only if I've spent a particularly lazy day. For the most part, summer is about recharging the batteries, training for new classes, and planning for the next year.

The summer has also had its challenges. Aunt Marti's death has really stymied me and I have to figure out my "new normal" without her. That takes time... and a lot of selfishness on my part. I've been a little turtle-like lately. I don't want to meet new people, I don't want to think about school, I don't want to be obligated to anyone or anything. I imagine that will lessen with time, and my friends have been really gracious with me. Vitamin D, frisbee-lovin dogs and cool drinks give good comfort on days when I don't get out of my pajamas.

Aunt Marti

2011-06-11T09:24:00.003-06:00

My Aunt Marti died last night. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last summer. It was a hard year. My Aunt Marti was a person whose motto was "go" and when she was diagnosed, it was hard for her to reconcile cancer with "go". She stopped talking as much, but she felt very deeply and very closely, you know? I have no idea what it must feel like to stare into your own mortality, to see it come nearer when treatments fail and diagnoses are proclaimed. Marti was strong, brave, and at the end, very peaceful.

I thought about a poem that might help me express Marti best, but all I could find was a poem that expressed my grief. John Hannah reads it in "Four Weddings and a Funeral".

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

--W. H. Auden

What I said at graduation...

2011-05-28T19:28:00.000-06:00

Good morning seniors. What a beautiful day to graduate from high school. I am very honored to be speaking here today at your graduation. And I can kinda guess why you asked me to be your graduation speaker. Exactly 17 years ago I sat where you are sitting, exactly. On May 28^th 1994, I graduated from Niwot High School, I sat on this football field and wore my green and white tassel. It was and is my dad's birthday, happy birthday, dad. And every year it is a memory that I turn back to as for the last 8 years I have come back to this football field for other Niwot students' graduations. Each year I sit here and get a little misty-eyed when the band plays Pomp and Circumstance as everyone walks out onto the field. I get to relive that memory because I teach at the same high school I graduated from. Huh. Well, now I know why you asked me to be the graduation speaker, I have become your cautionary tale. You want to know how you can prevent this fate from happening to you. Yes students, in 17 years you could be the teacher speaker for the Niwot High Senior class of 2027. You'd better start writing your speech.

I remember very few details of my graduation day. It was a little overcast and all kinds of exciting. I don't remember who spoke (which doesn't bode well for me today) but I do remember our class song, “Walk on the Ocean” by Toad the Wet Sprocket. The lyrics of this song are incomprehensible to me. “Walk on the ocean, step on the stone, flesh becomes water, wood becomes bone.” What does that even mean? Is it a message about skin care? Is it about trying to get people to walk more often? Our unofficial song, “Chattahootchie” by Alan Jackson was a little more direct. If you don't know the song, the chorus goes like this, “Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee /Never knew how much that muddy water meant to me/ But I learned how to swim and I learned who I was/ A lot about livin' and a litttle 'bout love”. Yes, Niwot was a bit countrified back in the day. And even though the Chattahoochee river is nowhere near Niwot, Colorado. I like that last part, I learned who I was, a lot about livin and a little bout love.

I asked some friends and family what I should tell you today. My mom said that you should get off the internet and go be with real people. My dad said you should get rid of your cable, it is a huge waste of time. I would say the same about Angry Birds, if you get it, be prepared to watch hours of your life disappear. My friend Jen said that when you're scrounging for quarters for the laundromat, you should call your mother and thank her for washing your socks, folding them and putting them away. My friend Shannon, who is living at the south pole right now for the winter advised that you should always wear underwear.

On a more contemplative note, my aunt Martha said that you should savor the kernels of hope that launch you beyond the banal of everyday life. My friend Kara said that you should decide what a beautiful life means to you and then go out and live it. My friend Amy said that you will always have opportunities to reinvent yourself, just like Lady Gaga, even when you're old like my parents.

I think all of those messages can be simplified into one idea; you have to go out and live. The experiences you will go through will help you clarify who you are, what you want, and how you live. Go out and live, or as the crew of Star Trek would say, “boldly go where no one has gone before”.

Today is a testament to your “book learning”, but what you'll remember most about high school are the moments that only happened once that can't be recreated. You know those moments; that time you laughed so hard your sides hurt, the moment you felt proud of yourself for accomplishing something so difficult, the incident that left you heartbroken, calling your friends for solace. We learn through all our experiences, good and bad. We learn more about communicating when we have disagreements with others, we learn more about our work ethic when we need money to buy something, we learn more about love when we sit and wait for Gerard Butler to call us. We can read about these feelings and character traits in books and of course in Oprah's magazine, but the only way we learn about living is when we go out and live.

I thought a lot today about songs that express this idea of going out and living. There are literally hundreds of popular graduation songs; from the cheesy to the obscure. The song you chose, “Send me on my Way”, by Rusted Root is a great song, it really highlights this idea of going out and living. Despite the fact that it was written in the 90's before you were born, it tells you to get on out of here, you have places to go and people to meet.

The unfortunate part of this weekend is that it will end. The parties will be over, the cake will be eaten, the gift cards will be opened and spent and then it will be Tuesday. Then what? Well, first write those thank you notes, because they don't write themselves. Then face the unexpected with openness, don't be afraid of what the next day may bring. It could be good, it could be heartbreaking, but don't write the story before the day dawns, let tomorrow surpass your greatest expectations. As that famous line from the movie “Castaway” so aptly expresses, you never know what the tide will bring in. This day is just one day in your life, an important day, but truly only the beginning for you. Tuesday may feel kinda depressing, but you'll get through it. Don't let fear dictate your choices, keep looking forward hoping for the best to happen. I can't wait to see how your stories turn out. Congratulations, Class of 2011.

Accepting criticism

2011-05-25T21:04:00.007-06:00

Today was the last day of school. Can I get an AMEN? The year was overall really good; great students, fabulous peers, lots of laughs, but it had some really difficult moments that I feel could have played out a lot better. I'm reflecting a little tonight because I don't have any papers to grade. I might even read a book later.

I guess I don't really want to talk about what was bad about the year because it seems very pointed and critical. It is very pointed and critical and is directed at a handful of very specific people. Now criticism is not always necessary, or nice, and it seems that there are many channels on the cable that use criticism, finger-pointing and general cranky-pantsness to make other people less so the criticizers can be more. I didn't have those motives when I pointed out some easy, fixable problems (read: weaknesses) to certain people (read: not students) but the thing that gets me is that once the criticism/areas of weakness were highlighted in detail (read: v. v. delicately) and data was provided to support my criticism, nothing changed. Absolutely nothing.

I don't like receiving criticism. I'm kinda sensitive about that. If I have spinach in my teeth, I'd rather you keep it to yourself. I guess I don't like the fact that I have to rectify, reform, or amend what I've made wrong. I'm right, dammit. But in my self-righteous huffinpuffing, I have to realize that I'd rather make it right than live in ignorance. My sophomores finished the year reading Oedipus Rex, and I asked them what they thought the lesson was. It isn't reaaaaalllly about a guy who marries his mom, it is more about how this Greek guy lived in his arrested development which prevented him from actually seeing the truth. And once he learns the whole truth, he gouges out his own eyeballs because he has to atone for this blind, arrogant ignorance.

So back to the criticism thing. What I took away from this school year is that it is important to admit when you're wrong, PARTICULARLY if you are a leader, president or guide. It has been my personal experience that when I admit I am wrong, I feel better, people trust me, and mutual respect is established. My classroom benefits from my ownership of the truth that I am not the I Ching of the universe and occasionally (very occasionally) I make mistakes. I enter grades wrong, I forget names, I'm only human. If you think that not owning your shit makes you a better, loftier, more righteous person, then you are delusional. Everybody poops.

He is Risen indeed!

2011-04-24T09:54:00.006-06:00

Here I am this Easter, huddling with tea and toast and a massive head cold. Didn't make it to church this morning and won't be making it over to a friend's for Sunday dinner. I'm a little sad about all that. Today is a holiday, and I will be coughing and hacking at home.

But the birds are still chirping outside my window, and the day is starting with bright morning light instead of the snow of yesterday. Even though I am not celebrating the empty tomb with fellow parishioners or partaking of some ham with my friends, I know that Jesus is here. I know that He is risen, indeed.

Despite all the junk that has been stirred up within me the last couple months, I believe that there do come those waves of hope. Maybe they don't last very long, but my hope is like a surfer, paddling out to the next wave so that I might be carried through the hardships with as much hope as I can catch (Kara will like that metaphor ;-)

I am a cynical person when it comes to the stuff we cannot see. I believe that if I have low expectations, I will not be disappointed, but the problem is that I'm disappointed anyway. Hoping is hard work sometimes. Some people have that hope easily, then you snarl "stupid Pollyanna" behind their back. For me, I know that I can have it if I want it. Here in my pj's on Easter morning, thwarted by this stupid cold, I can have that hope.

To me, Easter has always been more about resolutions than New Year's Eve. So here today, I resolve to paddle like mad for the next wave, and not let the swells defeat my faith. It will be hard work, and my arms will burn, but that hope might see me through to the shore.

April Rain Song (2/2)

2011-04-09T11:46:00.005-06:00

So in this post I will try to be less cranky. I am trying to shift out of the rut that I get stuck in, and I've found that comes with discipline and practice, not just wishing it away.

This is the calendar post for April. It's a pretty nice message to have when I am feeling really crappy. I've been thinking about what I will say at graduation and this seems like it would be a good part of the message.

Also, I made this with my Aunt's old political buttons and other buttons I had... I felt like sharing my craftiness.

And April is National Poetry Month, so here is another April poem for you.

April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes

No matter how crappy I feel and how down I get, I know that the shift does come. Sometimes it comes when I least expect it, but I try to surf the wave for as long as I can.

April comes like an idiot... (1/2)

2011-04-09T10:56:00.004-06:00

Well I wish I could tell you that I am like super awesome and jazzed about everything and happy happy happy. The best I can say of today is that the sky chair is up and the weather is warmer and my windows are open and the birds are chirping. But that's outside. Inside there is the rutted track of crappy, harsh self-messages that my brain runs over again and again and again. At least I can say that it is my brain and I'm not really crazy (I hope). But it frightens me how easily I get stuck in the rut. I am the skeptic and the general cranky pants who sits in the corner wondering where it all went wrong.

SPRING

by: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

O what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Snow in April. Which you can barely see, but it's there... lurking.

EF you, Jane Austen.

2011-03-19T15:44:00.005-06:00

(this is a print by Yoshitomo Nara.)

Yeah, so I'm tipping towards the bitter part of springtime. The part where new things grow and birds are chirping and everyone is just so fracking happy. Great for you.

To begin with. It was an EPICALLY CRAPTASTIC week for me. I mean, I don't want to overstate the point, but lets just say I am amazed that it didn't launch me into a week of staying in bed watching the home shopping channel. You know, I have a lot of things that make me happy; my friends, my students, my cats, painted toenails, wearing flip flops in March. Those things definitely get me out of bed. But recently I've had a spate of hard times. I'm easy to cry. I'm up in arms angry a lot. I end the day sitting in my disappearing chair watching "Larkrise to Candleford" and playing Angry Birds. It helps.

In a very grand test of my will, emotional strength and sanity, I joined an online dating site. For more on how I feel about that, see the above photo. I haven't gotten any responses to my profile since I started a week ago. Hmmm. Okay. Maybe I am putting out vibes that I'm really not interested, maybe I listed one too many highbrow interests in my profile, maybe I'm just not cute. Maybe I don't really believe that there is a guy in the world who will ever like me for me. Last night we had our Jane Austa-thon, a bunch of high school girls sit in the library overnight and watch Jane Austen movies and eat scones. Girls who watch Jane Austen movies and read the books are doomed. Men are either Wickhams or Wentworths (rakish players or nearly perfect paragons of aloof but gorgeous charm). Yeah, good luck with that one, guys! But the way Austen writes about love is kinda the way I would write about skydiving; I'd love to do it, and I could watch it all day, but there is hells no way I am jumping out of a plane. You with me?

All I ask of you, dear reader of my blog, is that you send up a prayer for me during the next six months. You don't have to give me advice or tips or tell me how awesome I am. I've heard it. Pray that I would stop beating myself up. Pray that my cynicism would dissipate. Pray that when he emails me, I would not write him off as a goober who smells like soup. Pray that I would have an open heart. Pray that I would stop hibernating when the sky falls in. Thank you.

March Madness

2011-03-05T09:25:00.007-07:00

A couple things. First, spring is coming. Can you feel it? The air is a little more damp and the birds are really loud lately. Spring also means cleaning out stuff. Last night I cleaned out my closet and filled TWO trash bags of things to take to Goodwill. I'm also prone to streamlining now that spring is coming. Gotta make stuff happen and make good use of time. Hibernation is over.

Good things: I am going to present at the Colorado TIE conference this summer. It's at Copper Mountain. I'm excited. I'm also going to New Mexico for IB training and good food eating. I also have some weddings that I'm getting pretty excited about. Time to buy new dresses and cute shoes.

On the flip side of the good things, there are also the really bummer things. I think my spring streamlining has something to do with the fact that other ares of my life are frustrating right now. Education... meh... who wants to talk about that? But it affects me every so often and I get involved to the point of "up in arms" kind of anger. Sometimes I just have to let stuff go. Stoopid education debate, you're RUINING my springtime!!

My Aunt Martha is not doing great. I'm going out there for spring break. What I'd really like is to take her down to New York city where spring is fresh and lovely (ironically) and where we've had a couple of really great trips together. There's more to see in the world with Aunt Marti and I feel angry that I don't get to have more time to do that. Don't misunderstand, I am thankful for the time we have shared and the places we have been together. I suppose that sustains me. But I'm still pissed about it.

Spring craziness is all about the transitions. We transition from winter darkness to early morning sunshine. We feel the new moments more acutely. We get these urges to go and be and do, and we are sometimes limited by our means. Maybe spring is about meeting in the middle. Maybe we have to get off the pole we've been clinging to and embrace the nebulous middle.

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

From "Spring is like a perhaps hand" by E. E. Cummings

Graduation

2011-02-20T15:40:00.005-07:00

(me at NHS graduation, May 18th, 1994)

I am going to speak at graduation this year.

Ever since I started teaching at Niwot High, I have wanted to speak at graduation. I think it is because I went to Niwot and my dad taught at Niwot and my birth was announced over the PA system. I've taught there for 7 years (this year will be 8) and it just seems to get better every year. My students are so funny and interesting and weird and odd and real and human and wonderful. I feed off their energy.

I was so honored to get the "official" invitation from the sweet Student Council reps, I couldn't stop smiling. Then I had to email my people and let them know, and I asked them what they would say. So far, I have received some great responses. I have so many ideas about what to say and how to say it. But the idea of coming around full circle, of stepping out onto the field where I graduated, fills me with a sense of honor. I tell you, if I had won the Nobel Prize this week I wouldn't be happier than I am now.

So what would YOU tell the graduating class? I am compiling ideas and weaving them all together. Hopefully, I will have something better than "Life is like a backpack". :-)

Love is all around

2011-02-08T20:01:00.011-07:00

Valentine's Day is coming up and I decided to send some Valentine love out to people I think are just the Bee's Knees. My valentines are (in no particular order):

Patient, hopeful Kara and her inspired prayers for me
Jen for her humor and friendship (and encyclopedic knowledge of all things Royal)
Sammie, Jen's son who is just... so..... DARLING

Angie who eats lunch with me daily and reminds me to laugh.
Shannon for braving the isolation of the South Pole with a wink and a smile (START YOUR BLOG, SHANNIE!)

Amy for her vivid art and infectious laughter
My momma--knitting stuff for me and sending me care packages
Aunt Marti and her Scrabble game
All the students who make me laugh (AND the ones who don't)
My cats... but then I feel like crazy cat lady who talks to her cats..... ummm...
Gerard Butler now, always, forever

There are many many more....but I wanted to take a sec and give a valentine's shout out to some of the lovely lovely people who make me smile and who remind me on Valentine's Day that while I am not IN love, I do get to LOVE every day.

Judgment January

2011-01-28T20:24:00.009-07:00

For the last month I have had a pervading feeling of, well, bitchiness. I seemed to filter all events through my lens of shrewish crappery. I labeled January "Judgment January" for the simple reason that there was a lot to judge and be bitchy about. Believe me, my gossip filter was off and if someone had business to get me all up in, I was up in there, and I had an opinion about it. I think it began when I started reading a popular book by a popular Christian writer who shall not be named here. I was super annoyed by this writer. Irritated by his writing style (that, considering how many books he has published, should have improved by now) and his message that I feel has already been stated and written about many many times, I wanted to toss the book across the room in annoyance. And to top all this off, I kinda feel like this writer has sold out a bit. I know, super bitch. It just got worse from there. My students annoyed me, my friends annoyed me, even my cats were pushing my buttons.

I was talking about this with dear Kara yesterday and as I told her all that I had been bitchin about, I noticed that my blood pressure was rising and I was getting angry. Really angry... UP-IN-ARMS kind of angry about this laundry list of blargh. But that anger was really about something else. It is easy to stand in judgment over others, period. We do it all the time. It is really easy to turn off my judgy filter when I am scared or conflicted or hurt or fearful. Well, I am scared, conflicted, hurt and fearful. The journey my aunt is on is scary for all of us. Pancreatic cancer is a bully. And knowing my aunt is not herself, is in any kind of pain, is alone is beyond my coping skill set right now. My family is stoic, quiet, and persevering while I am emotionally turbulent, loud, and ready to throw in the towel. I want to go get this done. I want to take care of her. I want to stand up to cancer like Gandalf to the Shadowfax and say "YOU SHALL NOT PASS".

So that was January. Now Tuesday is the first of February, and February is about love and all that shit. Stoopid love. Love comes in and heals what is wounded. Love is intolerant of judgment. Great. I guess then February is going to have to be about Forgiveness.

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them" --Mother Theresa

All I have is this poem

2011-01-20T22:37:00.004-07:00

My aunt is in the hospital with pain related to her pancreatic cancer and I feel so utterly helpless. There isn't anything I can do to make her hurt less. And I am so bloody far away from New York. My hands are raised up and I want answers, dammit! I want to feel some certainty in this day and know that everyone is tucked in bed safe and sound. These spoke-halting moments I can't figure out and I can't get right seem to be a symptom of my inner futility. The only thing I can do is go back to this great Miller Williams poem.

Love Poem With Toast
Miller Williams

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

from Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems, 1999
University of Illinois Press

WTF... Where's the Forgiveness???

2011-01-15T21:25:00.006-07:00

First of all... did you see the Octomom on Oprah? She definitely opened up a new can of crazy in that hour. Oprah was even a little stunned by her obvious anxiety. She said that she had kids because she was addicted to the unconditional love that kids give. Really? Reaaaallly?? Here's the thing, that woman has to live with her addiction FOR-EVER!

Okay, I will get off my hooty-tooty high horse for a minute. What the Octomom couldn't be honest about was why she had a hole in her heart that not even 14 kids could fill. Denial is coursing through her life, and believe me, there are rapids in that river of hers. What I took from that really awkward hour of train-wreck TV (other than a profound appreciation for Suze Orman... LOVE her!) is the painful understanding that we have to be honest enough with ourselves and gracious enough to deal with the honesty.

Topic #2: I went snowshoeing today. It was awesome.

I live in a part of Colorado where it seems that a person is measured by how many miles they run and how many fourteeners they climb. I am the opposite of that. And when I get out in the wild, I try to enjoy it for enjoyment sake, not because I have some crazy bucket list. Summer is harder to hike in. It's crowded and hot and my engine runs into overheat pretty fast. Then I feel like Shrek-ette huffing up a dusty, dirty trail. But in the winter, the crisp, cool, clean air seems to inflate my soul and I fly up a trail. Plus, everyone on the trail is on wobbly snowshoes, a great equalizer. You may have climbed Maroon Bells, Climby McMachoman, but you have crappy balance, ha HA! I don't mean to be so bitter, but sometimes I just wish I lived around non-mountain obsessed people. Like people from Kansas. Bless you, Kansassians!

But all this leads to my main idea, which is that we all need a little forgiveness. When the tragedy in Tucson happened last week, I was reminded about how much forgiveness we need to give ourselves. Don't get me wrong, the shooting was a senseless, horrible crime and I weep to think of the lives lost. But that is a whole other blog post. I guess I wonder if that gunman would've opened fire on a crowd of people if he was able to be really honest and gracious with himself. Let's not wonder about this guy's motives for a sec. Whatever motivated him was secondary to how much he hates himself. Taking that self-hate out on an available target is really cowardly, but really easy. My mom always said that 99% of how someone treats you is about them and not about you. I wonder how much of that guy gunning down innocent people is about his own self-loathing and the inability to deal with that hatred. I wonder how much of Octomom's problem is about how she can't open that big, dark box of painful honesty in her emotional attic. I wonder how much of my antipathy towards Climby McMachoman is really about me.

I beat myself up a lot. I'm a bit of a bully when it comes to picking on my own faults. And then my friends get all up in my face and tell me to stop beating their friend up. We all do it. And each time we beat ourselves up, we build a brick wall of shame, denial, and defensiveness. Listen to that Patty Griffin song, "Forgiveness" and try to hear what she is singing. Times are hard, life is unfair, difficult and painful. We do life because we know there will be moments in the sunshine. But the hard work is to be honest and gracious with ourselves.

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us." --Martin Luther King Jr.

Lessons were learned... I think.

2011-01-10T17:25:00.009-07:00

So I was watching Jenny McCarthy on Oprah. I know, you're thinking to yourself what a cultural bastion I am. I am, don't be jealous. But anyway, she was speaking very candidly about her relationship with Jim Carrey and the lessons she learned from the relationship. Oprah was on a kick about what relationships teach us. She had Terry McMillan on later in the show talking about bitterness and how holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

But I am digressing. I started to think about my relationships. What lessons have I learned from my relationships? And are these lessons sticking with me? Relationships always seem to school me, and sometimes when I exit a relationship I tend to slam the door in anger on any sort of trailing lessons that might follow.

And then I thought about my relationship with God. What lessons am I taking from that relationship every day? I'm not talking about lessons from the Bible, I'm talking about the intimacy with God that allows me to see myself through His eyes. I know God wants to teach me stuff, but I have been very closed to his lessons lately. There is a wall of bitterness and frustration and contempt that goes up when things aren't going my way. I wonder if he is trying to teach me openness and forgiveness, especially of myself. I wonder if He's trying to teach me that I am okay just the way I am. I wonder if He's trying to teach me that when I live in openness, I will feel more love. I know, you're thinking to yourself that I am incredibly perceptive and quick. I am, don't be jealous.

Fearless

2011-01-02T15:38:00.004-07:00

A couple notes on fear since that seems to be the topic banging around in my head as I hesitantly tiptoe... as I tremulously venture... as I inch forward nervously into 2011.

A lot of people like new starts. I don't. The possibilities are never realized and I am left with a whole lot of disappointment and loads of free time to think about it. I am not one to look at free time and say, "whoopie-pie, I get a whole day to myself!" Instead, I am the person who looks at free time as the big, giant chasm of unplanned seconds that will inevitably leave me in tears on the floor of my closet. This is because free time forces me to either a) sit and think or b) self-medicate myself into guilt-ridden paralysis. No good can come of it. And as an extroverted pessimist, the start of a new year just means that I have a new, unfilled calendar. EEEE!

So I was thinking about this fear I have. Well, all the fears I have. They like to have parties and mock me for how chicken I am. It's true, I am a chicken when it comes to tearing down my walls and addressing what really scares me. Aren't we all to some extent?

Two things happened over Christmas break. First, I saw "The King's Speech" which is fabulous. It is about how we all have fears and to what extent we allow those fears reign in our lives when we don't want to face them. Second, I bought Marianne Williamson's new book "A Course in Weight Loss". Now I am not one to go out there and say, "Hey, I am a hefty girl," which is kinda like saying, "Hey, I have a nose in the middle of my face." Go on and state the obvious, I'm sure people will be surprised every time. But I haven't given myself permission to state the obvious very often. And as a consequence, I recently saw some photos of myself and just about wanted to die of shame and horror.

What I'm saying is this... we have to give ourselves permission to hang out in the scary place for a second or two more than is comfortable. Otherwise, we will just soothe our pain away. And whatever caused the pain is still waiting on the other side of self-medication. That bastard. I think of my fears as a tunnel that I am trying to crawl through. And just like the line in "Finding Nemo", you have to just keep swimming if you want to get through it.

For me, 2011 is about being uncomfortable. Wait until my fingers get pruny. Let the awkward silence go on a moment too long. It is only by giving myself permission to be in the fear that I can get through the fear. I could hire a personal chef to make my meals and a personal trainer to stand behind me on the elliptical with a whip, but if I don't address WHY I am fat, then I will never be okay being thin. Fears are like gravity, they pull us in and we struggle to fly off and be free of them. The more we struggle to be free of them, the more they weigh us down.

I'll end with this great quote from Marianne Williamson. Cut out this quote and put it on your bulletin board if you haven't already.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. 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. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Be good to yourself today.

I want to go to there...

2010-12-18T22:46:00.007-07:00

So I found my dream cottage.

Let me back up. I sometimes experience what people call "stress". This "stress" causes me to stare endlessly at walls, eat food without tasting it, and fall sound asleep before I've pulled the covers up. It also forces me into a very decadent past time; looking at real estate I will never be able to afford.

Let's get this straight. I love my house. It is super cute and anyone who has visited it knows that it is quaint, tidy, and very girly. Case in point...

But sometimes, I get the urge to live somewhere else. In particular, I would like to have a cottage in the English countryside, preferably with a view of the hills or the sea or the filming of a Jane Austen novel. Maybe I want to live in a Jane Austen novel. Well, I would do it in an instant if I could also have indoor plumbing, modern feminine protection, and a job.

But this cottage is a real dream. And I can't get it out of my head. I'm obsessed.

I can picture myself sitting in front of the fire, reading a good book, sipping a cup of tea, waiting for the rain to stop so I can go pick some cucumbers from the gaahden. It is harmless (mostly) and indulgent, and I like it, okay? I look at the pile of work next to my computer, I look at the house... and just like Calgon, I'm transported to another world. A world where students don't email me while I'm on my vacation to ask whether or not I've put the extra credit in the gradebook that would inevitably bump their B plus to an A minus.... for example.

If you want to find your own English cottage then go to a site like this one.

I hope this Christmas you find peace and love and joy and happiness. Here's a tip... it doesn't come in a cottage in the English countryside.

The good wolf

2010-12-10T15:02:00.008-07:00

I recently realized that when I am sharp and brusque to people, it means I need to take care of myself. I need to do things that are good for me. This isn't always easy in the age of
self-medication. I'd rather zone out playing angry birds or watch endless episodes of The Vicar of Dibley than workout, cook a good meal, read a good book. See, in my mind, I have always equated those things with "taking care of myself" but in reality, they are about
absenting myself so I don't have to deal with the blargh.

Recently, I read this story on one of my favorite blogs, Enjoying the Small Things

There is an ancient Native American story about an old Cherokee who told his grandson about the battle that goes on within us. "My son," he told him, "Inside every one of us dwells two wolves, one evil, one good. The evil one is angry and jealous, full of regret and arrogance, greed and sorrow, guilt and self-pity. The other is good. He is kind and loving, full of hope and peace, joy and compassion."

The young boy thought about it for a moment. "Which wolf wins?" he asked his
grandfather.

The old Cherokee smiled and simply replied, "...the one you feed."

I know my evil wolf relishes that self-medication because it allows him to grow more fierce and snappish. But in this time of year (especially this crazy, busy, sweepingly fast-paced time of year) I want to be engaged and present. I want to be healthy and focused, not vegetative and lazy. I have a feeling I might come back from break feeling refreshed if I take the time to really recharge the batteries. My good wolf likes reading good books, dancing to Lady GaGa, painting my toenails blood red, singing out loud in the car, talking with friends, and stretching my arms wide. My good wolf isn't afraid to take 20 minutes to do something good. This Christmas season, which wolf will you feed?

Whistle while you WORK, dammit!

2010-11-20T10:00:00.009-07:00

You know, I think there is a big push in our culture to suppress ingenuity, imagination and intelligence. We end up with this massive "to do" list that consumes so much of our time that actual thinking and reflection is sacrificed for work, work, work.

I think about my students, particularly my IB students. They have a very big to do list. Between Extended Essays, Internal Assessments, External Assessments, classroom requirements, and college applications, it is a wonder that they have time for any extra-curricular activities (which of course they need in order to have sterling college applications that show their dedication to being well-rounded... whew). Then there is the life they live, which is very complicated because they are very complicated beings, emotionally turbulent, hormonally variable, tired, growing, and sensorily overloaded. It makes my head spin to think about it.

And then I think about myself. I teach, and yet so much of my job is ostensibly NOT about teaching. I have to analyze data, assess school-wide problems, determine solutions for said problems, participate in professional development, participate in surveys, individually coach failing students, promote programs, write recommendation letters, advise extra-curricular clubs, contact parents, and meet with colleagues. All of those are important, and necessary parts of a functioning school, but I wonder how much they add to my teaching practice. As a teacher, I find that in order to be a better teacher, I must reflect on my practice daily. That may involve sitting and staring at a wall. And perhaps this sitting and staring at a wall has been mistaken for "free time" by the powers that be. Henceforth, my obligatory "to do" list grows.

I tried something different with my seniors this last week. They had to visually represent a scene from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and explain how it used the perspective of Via Positiva, which we had been talking about that day. They wowed me completely with these creative, thoughtful, funny, and ingenious ideas. And they came up with these ideas in 10 minutes! Their imagination is intact. Their ingenuity is right under the surface waiting to be unleashed!

When did reflection and thinking and considering become so suppressed? My personal belief is that this idea came about from the Puritans. We are a nation founded on a very strong work ethic. Those people had to work in order to live here. This work ethic founded America, gosh-darnit, and was amplified during the depression when my grandparents grew up. My grandfather was a hard-worker who put in an honest day's work as a metal worker. Later, in the 60's, my grandparents couldn't understand my uncle's job as a scientific researcher. They couldn't understand how someone could be paid to think about salamanders.

Where would we be without creativity and thinking and reflection. We wouldn't have the computer without creativity. We wouldn't have life-saving surgical devices without reflection. We wouldn't have the unbelievebly useless devices advertised at Bed Bath and Beyond, products like "The Mangroomer" (really? reaaaaaaallly?). Okay, I guess that isn't the best argument for my point today.

What I do think is that reflection and thinking are critical (if somewhat pooh-poohed) aspects of any professional practice. I wonder if we can allow ourselves the time to sit and think. The time to reflect on what we do well and what we can do better. The time to stop and make decisions that aren't based on panic, time, or desperation.

My challenge to you today is that you stop and think for 20 minutes. Stare out a window, listen to yourself, think about what you do and how you do it. Your practices will not suffer from your pausing.

The mirror

2010-11-07T12:52:00.005-07:00

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
1 Corinthians 13:11-13

I have a hard time sitting still and just being. I feel almost as though my constant movement and activity signifies that I am industrious. My industriousness signifies my contribution to the earth which signifies my awesomeness as a human being. But I've noticed that while I am a mean multi-tasker, the quality of my work is less than hoped for, and the constant running of my engine means that I burn out faster, and for long periods of time I am in
the shop, useless and in disrepair.

Intentionality and mindfulness are the key words of the blog today. I am teaching the great Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. As we dug into the book the first week, I realized that this book is about everything we don't like talking about. I mean, the book is ostensibly about Dillard's observations of nature, but the book is really about what we see reflected back at us when we look at nature. SCARY! Who likes to look in a mirror, especially one that seems distorted and funhouse-esque.

But here's the thing about the mirror. We need to have some kind of self-awareness in order to fuel the engines. I think I multi-task because I am afraid of what happens when I stop. I don't want to sit and think because I'm afraid of what I will think of. Thinking means that I have to be accountable for stuff. That mirror reflects all the blargy-blarg; the blemishes, the chin(s) the cellulite. But the mirror also reflects God; beauty, kindness, contentment and love....if we are able to see it. Being intentional means stopping to smell the roses. Being mindful means tuning out the noise. Intentionality and mindfulness allow us to really see the reflection of who we are, what is going on with us.

My challenge is that you stop what you are doing to look at what is being reflected back to you. Is it rough? Only for a few minutes. Then you notice that you really like your bangs that way and you really don't look like Jack Black (no matter how many times your students tell you this). But mostly, I hope you are able to really see the amazing creation you are. Let that be your fuel.

Roses on Wednesday

2010-10-27T18:51:00.004-06:00

SOMEONE got roses today. Okay, I got roses today from my dear friend Heather and her new baby son, Jedidiah whose yawn is only surpassed by his sneeze in cuteness.

Have to share a few things...

1) My friend Kara's Blog. It is fabulous. She is speaking truth and love and wisdom.
2) Am I really supposed to be a teacher?
3) I love teaching Thoreau, but fear that my life is so anti-Thoreau that I am never going to learn the real lessons of simplicity unless I live in a convent in Switzerland. Or Scotland.
4) Jane Fonda is fabulous.
5) I hate grading papers.
6) It is fall...

7) Kelle Hampton's blog made me cry this last weekend. I mean it made me go into the ugly cry. Why is it so hard to be kind to ourselves? What I have learned about life is that the most important relationship I have is with myself. I have to be kinder to myself and that also means letting go of the things I can't control. It's a hard life, why make it harder by beating ourselves up?
8) Laugh at something today. Laughter is the best medicine. Really. Here is something to laugh at.

What I learned from 33 Chilean miners

2010-10-13T19:36:00.003-06:00

The last of the Chilean miners has emerged from half a mile below the surface of the earth. Amazing. I watched the streaming video and I showed the video to some of my students today. Everyone wanted to see this amazing thing again and again. My eyes filled with tears again and again. It was so powerful; no commentary, no ads or banners, just the camera trained on a hole in the ground, and the patience of waiting for something wonderful to happen.

As each of the miners emerged, they were so happy. Their families were so happy. The Chilean president tried to describe how the miners felt when they came out of the darkness and into the light. He said they felt "reborn" and most of all, they felt alive. I am incredibly claustrophobic, I can't imagine how they felt living in the hot, humid darkness for 69 days. Did they wonder if they would ever get out? Did they imagine the worst?

It got me thinking about mindsets. Those men survived because they set their mind to hope, to trust and to live. I sometimes feel like I get stuck in the emotional mine shafts of my life. I head down a dark path hoping to excavate something that needs to come out, and then there is a cave in and I am stuck in a dark, scary, terrifying place. I know how easy it is to resolve myself to never getting out. It would be easier to stay in bed, eat cookies, and shut off the phones. And no matter what my friends say or do, I have to change the mindset myself. Nobody can change it for me. But when I adopt the mindset that these problems are just momentary, that I am not defined by my sadness or by my negativity, wonderful things begin to happen.

"faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Hebrews 11:1

What is your mindset today? Are you saying "yes" to yourself or is it easier to just believe that things will never get better? I have learned to trust that "yes" mindset. I may be disappointed by moments of blargh, but life is not disappointing. Life surpasses our greatest expectations, but only when we ask it to.

It's a hard knock life...

2010-09-28T10:31:00.005-06:00

I am nearing the end of September, thank the good Lord.

It was a bit of a month. There were lots of little turkeys to cross my path; electrical problems, computer woes, vomiting cats. All that stuff can be fixed rather easily, and it was. But then there were some big, frickin gorrillas that came and beat their chests in the midst of my calm. These problems are much larger than I can get into in a blog-like format. I pay someone to help me with those problems, or I make my friends listen to my emotional vomiting and then I buy them a beer.

I guess my point is that I was stuck in this downward spiral. Just when I thought things were coming back around, a little turkey or a big gorilla messed it all up. There is a certain amount of helplessness in circumstances like these. What can I do but hold up my arms and say, "meh"? So that's kind of what I learned this month. There are always turkeys or gorillas and sometimes we have to let go in order to move forward. During September, I filled my journal with a laundry list of these down-turners. Then I realized that I needed to start filling my journal with what I hoped for rather than the things that were bringin me down. It made me feel so much better, and it was so easy to do.

It all comes down to perceptions. If my perception or outlook is to recall and check off this laundry list of horrible things going on in my life, then that is all I will have. But does it benefit me to count my woes? My Gramma Mae always said, "count your blessings." It was a phrase I always rolled my eyes and nodded at. But when the fit hit the shan this month, my blessings were all I wanted to think about. Okay Gramma, I'm trying.

pearls of wisdom

2010-08-08T12:26:00.003-06:00

Here are a few little sayings that I have acquired over the years. Some are from my mom, others are from bumper stickers I've seen in Wyoming.

If there's nothing you can do about it, then it isn't about you right now.
Resenting someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
Be kind, everyone you meet is involved in a difficult struggle.
Success is the best revenge, (murder is a close second).
Don't take the stories that you write in your head for truth.
Everybody poops.
Guilt is not from God.
No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.

What are some of bumper sticker worthy phrases you've heard and remembered?

What my summer has meant to me

2010-08-06T11:13:00.000-06:00

Early in June, summer meant that I would get to catch up on all those projects that I didn't get to do during the school year: knitting that baby blanket (or four), reading the novels that sat idle on my bedside table, making candles, cooking every recipe in my Indian cookbook, writing and producing my first CD of folk ballads, re-landscaping my patio, discovering a new element, mediating world peace.

What did I really do this summer? Well, I caught up with "All My Children", took up golf, discovered indie-hipster music, texted, played some online Scrabble, and set aside time in each day to sit and stare out the window. And here's the thing, I had a remarkable summer.

In all the shoulda, coulda, woulda's that we clog our lives with, there is never the freedom to sit and be and enjoy the moment. A couple things happened this summer to bring me all to willingly into a place where I can sit and be, guilt-free. This is called "rejuventation" and it is a necessary part of life.

So what happened?

I started reading lots of books and articles and poems which encouraged me to be present in each moment. It was interesting how it was sort of coming together, this idea of being mindful of each moment. This is the moment to embrace, and I want to be engaged in it.
Some dear friends went through some big changes. In particular, my friend Amy decided to make a career shift into the wild and unpredictable world of self-employment. As I was pretty stable and rather idle this summer, I felt that I could encourage her to take the big leap. Shoot, I wasn't bungee jumping off the bridge, so why not sit back and help my friend take that big leap? But I learned something really valuable about faith in talking to her; first, if you are swinging from trapeze to trapeze, then you have to let go of the first bar before you can catch the second. That is the scary part. But the reward of letting go of the first bar isn't the bar you are swinging to, the reward is faith, trust, and the relief that you made it safely. The bar is just the means. My faith in God increases not when He blesses me, but because He is blessing me.
My aunt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Big sigh. My Aunt Marti is 60 years old and is fresh and passionate about life. This diagnosis has come with a lot of tears, a lot of searching and a lot of processing. As I have talked to her, as I have played scrabble with her and longed to be in New York just to hang out with her, I have learned even more so that this moment is the one. We can't worry or be anxious about the future, especially when we don't know what the future will bring. Being present means being in this moment.

I hope that I am ready for the next school year. There are always "shoulda, coulda, wouldas" there too. But I know that what has been going through my mind this summer has prepared me for whatever moments come up this next school year. My job is just to show up for them.

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on" --Robert Frost

Spring Cleaning

2010-06-07T15:29:00.004-06:00

Now that school is out (YAY!) I have had a chance to clean out my house. I am not a messy person by any means, but sometimes when something lands in a place it isn't supposed to be, it stays there until I decide to move it to the right place. And moving something to the right place often involves cleaning out the right place so it can fit there. Kind of a chain reaction. It doesn't help that I watched a marathon of "Hoarders" on A&E the other day. If you find yourself facing a mountain of chores, errands and projects, watch some "Hoarders" and suddenly that honey-do list looks paltry and you should go sit yourself by a pool with an umbrella drink, cause you are doing ALL right.

No, I don't have a hoarding problem. I do have a great number of Dansko shoes and Clinique samples, but what I really seem to collect is sentimental stuff. Postcards from my best friend in the third grade, wedding invitations from 10 years ago, articles on do-it-yourself pedicures, pictures of boys I used to lurk on, dried corsages from school dances. All these things were in shoe boxes in my closet. I started going through them one night after a particularly energetic closet clean out and I realized that I really didn't remember my associations with some of the things. That scared me a little because 15 years ago I kept the crumpled foil chocolate wrapper for a reason. Some of the stuff I was glad to find; an 18 page letter written by my best friend while she was in Germany, birthday cards that were particularly funny, my Duran Duran pin. Good stuff. But some of those things are just so unnecessary now. I pared down my closet because I want to be able to share it with someone someday. And I pared down my memory boxes because I am ready to make new memories.

My life feels like it is in stasis sometimes. I gear up for big challenges and once I succeed (or fail... very seldom) then I sit myself down with a beer and celebrate my achievement. It feels good to be through the challenge, and I am not one to actively seek out new challenges. So, consequently, I wait for challenge to come to me. But I have realized this year that I have to go after the things I want. I want to share my house with a husband, but I have to go out there and face the challenges, not of finding him, but dealing with the emotional baggage that surfaces when I am "out there". That is the scary part. And maybe my spring cleaning has given me a little respite from some of that stuff. I have saved an awful lot of crap that has nothing to do with who I am becoming, and everything to do with who I was. So goodbye to saved artifacts of a life gone by, hello to space to make new memories.

Should we fear or love our teachers?

2010-04-28T21:04:00.003-06:00

As a teacher, am I more concerned with being feared or loved? And by loved, I don't mean LOOVED, I mean respected and open. Should I be putting the fear of my terrible wrath into them to "get it done, and do it right", or should I allow them some grace? I tend more toward the grace side of things. I really think my students, ALL my students, are hilarious, sharp, gifted, talented and sweet. I like them. I like going into class and seeing what new epiphanies and ideas they will have. To me, "winging it" means opening the class up to them and letting them take the lead. And yet I wonder, am I being too hippy-dippy? Too easy? Maybe at the beginning of the year I should rise up like an ancient dragon-lady and pour forth laser-beam glances and vicious sneers. Maybe I should set more of a strict tone in my classroom, reminding my students who is in charge and just exactly how things will get done.

Call me Cuckoo Mc Crazyton, call me Mary Poppins-ranka, but I think students shouldn't be afraid of me. I don't think students learn better if they live in fear of my judgment upon them. I know it is really tempting to be all-knowing and all-powerful, but in the end, where does it get me? I am not all-knowing or all-powerful, so why should I keep my students at a distance from this finite amount of knowledge? What am I afraid of? If I cultivate an atmosphere of respect, openness, and humor tossed in with some good boundaries, then my students won't be afraid to come seek me out for help. My door is always open, and my lunches and free moments are taken up with students who have good questions. I am happy to answer questions, and no question is too silly to be asked. My favorite teaching moments are when I meet with the student who wants to write a better intro, or the student who wants help dissecting a poem.

I want to be loved. Not LOOOOVED, but I want my students to know that I am an advocate for their learning, not a hindrance to their education.

Suckers!!

2010-03-14T11:04:00.004-06:00

This is the first year I have taught seniors, and they are a nutty, if hysterical bunch of loons. My last block class on Friday decided to play a "prank" on me by simultaneously popping suckers into their mouths. I have an anti-sucker policy in my classroom. I call them "germsicles" and in a season of scary, uber viruses, I think licking suckers is akin to licking someone's used kleenex. My seniors started trading suckers with each other in this afternoon of prankery. I just sat and laughed. They were slightly disappointed that I didn't run screaming from the room, but it takes a little more to get that response. In truth, it was a highlight of my week. The bottom line is that my students listen to me, and they HEAR me. Their joke is proof-positive that they are engaged in my classroom environment.

After reading the New York Times magazine article about building better teachers, and today's Denver Post article on a similar topic, I see education reforms on the horizon, and I am freakin terrified. In the last 20 years, too many education reforms have come and gone without lasting change. In a sense, we look at education reforms in the same way we look at widget-producing. The students become the measures of education's success, but the standards for success are not clearly defined.

In my mind, there are three simple things that could happen tomorrow that would change the face of education reform. Ready??

Administration walk-throughs and more interaction with teachers, classrooms and students. If administrators walked through the building, stopped in classrooms informally, and got to know at least 50 students by name who didn't have prior arrest records, then that visibility would become a powerful tool.
Becoming "proactive" instead of "reactive". If you govern a school by constantly REacting to problems, then the burn-out occurs more swiftly. Disseminate information liberally. There is no power in hoarding information that impacts the school as a whole. Keep the faculty and staff informed and fewer problems will occur. Tell people what they are doing right before you launch into what they are doing wrong. And delegate, often. As I like to say, if your hair is constantly on fire, build a fireproof helmet.
Making your classroom an engaging, creative, (dare I say it) FUN place to be. Whoever said that you shouldn't smile until Thanksgiving was joking. I set clear boundaries in my classroom, and I demand high standards. But I am a benevolent dictator. I listen when students aren't clicking with a particular assignment, reading or task. If I change the lesson or due date or expectations based on valid student input, then the students know I HEAR them. And hearing what your students have to say gives them ownership, which immediately changes the classroom environment. Also, you should joke with them. Never laugh AT them, but laugh with them. If they can laugh in class and if you don't take yourself too seriously, then your classroom is not only a place where THEY want to be, it is a place where YOU want to be. And students are happier and more engaged if YOU want to be in your own classroom. Period.

Education reform should be simple and doable in any classroom from here to Hawaii. It should meet the needs of students, teachers, admins, coaches, secretaries and custodians. I wonder if we, as a nation, could handle that kind of simplicity.

Let my love open the door....

2010-02-15T09:39:00.005-07:00

Valentine's Day has come and gone again, and one of my students wondered if we have one day of love, do we have 364 days of hate. It should be the other way around, right? We should love people every day, give them flowers, eat lots of chocolate, feel loved and treasured... every day. Having the one day just seems to highlight the worst perceptions of love; that those who don't have this certain kind are left out, and heart-broken.

I love that Pete Townsend song, "Let My Love Open the Door". I love the idea of love having healing powers, especially when the heart has been broken by love. I don't know that my heart has been irreparably broken by love. Maybe that is a bad thing, like if my emotional heart were competing in a marathon of love, I'd be stumbling along with a side-cramp. But I am in the game again, I started online dating (oxymorons, anyone?) and this last weekend I had a flurry of responses to my online profile. My online profile says as much about me as my 401k. Vague, ambivalent answers to prescribed questions that will magically help me land a man. I wouldn't say that I am cynical, just multi-faceted. I like meeting people face to face. But in our culture, even that has become a Fear Factor event. But as my friend Eric reminded me the other day, if you wanna catch a fish, you have to put your bait in the water. So now here I am, fishing (for lack of a better analogy) for love. And I suppose that the hope (hopenness) that I have this year will allow me to answer love's knock at the door, and let him in.

When people keep repeating
That you'll never fall in love
When everybody keeps retreating
But you can't seem to get enough
Let my love open the door
Let my love open the door
Let my love open the door
To your heart

Happy Valentine's Day <3

I'd like to thank...

2010-01-19T16:35:00.005-07:00

Well, awards season is upon us. I must admit, I relish the dresses, the presenters, the categories, the host banter... gah, I love it.

And now the crazy part, I have practiced my Academy Awards speech, like a few times. I mean, it could happen, I could write a hilarious and touching screenplay or a song that makes it into a quiet yet powerful movie. My name would be called, I would put a hand on my chest, fan my eyes a bit, kiss my date (Gerard Butler, obviously) and step up to the stage where Matt Damon would hand me the giant man of gold. What would I say? Who would I thank?

I love critiquing the acceptance speeches of the people who win. Meryl Streep is great; so humbly thankful and articulate while also charming with a little joke. Jonathan Demme is awful, goes on and on and on and on while being totally overwhelmed and flustered. There is a certain balance in a good acceptance speech; grateful and surprised while also being poised and articulate. That music is going to play you off, are you going to leave the stage without thanking your husband?? (Hilary Swank... talking to you)

I basically think you have to thank four groups in your speech; the people who gave you the award (der, they voted for you), the people you worked with (because they made you look good, never forget), your parents (they made you who you are), and a spiritual force of your choice (mine is God, because I can do all things through Him who gives me strength).

Until I get that award-winning screenplay or juicy breakthrough role in the next Tarantino film, I will continue to watch and love award shows and practice my own acceptance speech in the shower with a bottle of shampoo.

Being Hopeful and Open....

2009-12-31T14:22:00.003-07:00

The Holidays, love 'em or hate 'em, they come around every year. And each year I look in the subtext for a lesson or thought that I might take with me into the new year. This year I feel like I receved two words; hope and openness. Those were the theme words for my holidays. Everything that came up became another lesson in how to be more hopeful or more open.

Hope to me means openness. The optimism that follows a really good day, the feeling we get when we have accomplished something, those are examples of when I feel most hopeful. But hope to me is a state of mind more than anything. I have to go there, even when I don't feel like it. And I think that at the core of all of us, there is a little bit of hope, even when all seems lost. Even the most hardened pessimist can feel a shred of hope in something good, even if it is just a nice piece of cake.

Openness is a little harder for me. I think I am an open book most of the time, but I don't always allow for the possibilities that COULD be. I tend to live in my safety bubble, hoping that things will turn out for the best, no one will be angry or hurt, no one will be uncomfortable, the doors will be safely locked against the outside world. But as I look at my locked doors, I wonder how many good things I have kept out. I don't want to live with regret, but I also don't want to stay walled up against the scary (yet ultimately rewarding) parts of being a grown-up.

So 2010 to me is about openness and hope... I call it my year of hopenness :-)

Fall goes so fast

2009-11-08T12:08:00.002-07:00

I love looking out the window and watching the seasons change. But it seems like this year is going so fast. And in the midst of all the busy-ness, I have had so many opportunities to do new things, find new finds, and meet new people. Here is a fall recap:

Samuel George Gladfelter was born... to be there and watch Jen and Dave become parents and add to their family was a wonderful, indescribable moment of happiness.
I got to do a book review for a major magazine! More details to come.
Mom had a great visit, she ironed everything I own and made my life really easy!
Brandi Carlile's new album is really great. You should get it.
Ellie is so gown-up and fabulous. All of two; she is the smartest, the keee-uwt-ist little lady. She dressed up as a puppy dog for Halloween. Loved the sudden realization she had when we went trick or treating... wait... they are putting CANDY in my bag??
A fantastic student teacher has been so wonderful. Also, I have a really awesome, funny, smart set of students this year. Good students always make the year go fast.

So what is new with you?

They're writing songs of love, but not for me

2009-10-18T13:19:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I feel like everyone in the world has someone except me. Sometimes I feel like I have so many wonderful single friends and who needs a man anyway. Sometimes I feel like Gerard Butler just needs to meet me so we can fall in love and have a huge Scottish-themed wedding. (kidding) Loneliness is hard. Poets, scholars, theologians, scientists and Beyonce have all examined this topic thoroughly. I always go back to John Donne when I talk to people about loneliness:

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
So we are meant to be in relationship, right? I mean, that is what Donne suggests here. All of us are interconnected, part of a larger... something. And really, who wants to be alone. Tom Hanks couldn't even be alone on a deserted island.

Even though I live alone, I have a large network of people I love and care about who love and care about me. Isn't that enough? I love and desire a relationship with God and he pursues me and loves me, that should be enough. But there is a longing in me that hasn't been fulfilled, yet.

It is that YET that contains the difference between my feeling of isolated, Bridget-Jonesian loneliness or my feeling of content, Gloria-Steinem singlehood. Today there is a yet. Tomorrow there may not be. Hope comes and goes and it is the hardest part of me to pin down. Just like the wind today--whipping the leaves into frenzied circles, my hope shouldn't be so flighty. I am certain of a few things, but I wish I knew with as much certainty that there is someone out there for me. But maybe if I had that same certainty, I wouldn't have faith.

Living with an open hand

2009-09-20T00:06:00.006-06:00

I went to the David Wilcox concert tonight... it was like a revival for my poor, weary heart. It brought up a lot of epiphanies about stuff going on in my life right now. Most of my epiphany was how good it felt to just chill out and listen. I don't do that very often. Stopping my life to listen to David Wilcox's story-songs seems like a luxury and also a little scary because he might bring some stuff up in his songs that open up some truths in my life. I found myself spontaneously weeping and thinking "Crap, I so don't want to deal with this feeling right now". But there I was, weeping. It wasn't that I felt sad, it was just that I felt home. So in a way it was like a "good" sad, you know?

He played two songs that really met me where I am right now. The first is a song called "Deeper Still" which is about as heartbreaking as a song can get, but also sings of hope. How do we go on when life gets so hard? As David Wilcox sings, "you will always have what you gave to love".

The next song he sang that really touched me was a song called "Open Hand". If you want to live life, live it with an open hand. Receiving something is always better than demanding it, right? I want to be able to receive what God gives to me with an open hand, I know that if I clutch onto anything, my appreciation of the gift decreases by about 10.

i dunno...David Wilcox is just amazing. This posting is just to say that and give you an opportunity to agree with me. :-)

The sea is still the sea...

2009-09-06T12:48:00.004-06:00

How much does anger cost?

I'll admit, I've been frustrated lately. It is easy for that frustration to manifest into anger and then for the anger to manifest into bitterness. And then the bitterness makes us feel more bloated than a hot dog eating contest. The truth is, anger does nothing for us. It is like drinking poison and expecting the object of our anger to die. And yet, we have such a hard time releasing ourselves from it. It is almost addictive. If we could just get a witness or some validation for our anger, then we'd be free of it.

Well, that doesn't solve problems. The truth is that life is sometimes unfair and sometimes we don't agree with people or practices. And instead of accepting that, we get angry-er-er. These are the people at health care reform town hall meetings, these are the people who have talk shows on news networks, these are the people who have escalated to near stroke levels in their inability to process difficult emotions.

I was told this summer that I am in the "in" group where I work. I don't know about that. I tend to deal with difficult situations by problem solving or rationalizing, rather than escalating the situation to epic levels of "THIS-IS-SPARTA!!-push-you-off-a-cliff" madness. I wasn't always this way. I can be pretty emotional and scream-y and blood pressure raisingly grrrrrrr sometimes. But that emotional torment has never aided my cause. I found outlets for my grrrr-ness; yoga, counselling, chips and salsa, and visualizing that stone cottage in Scotland. If nothing else, I have great "shower rants" in which I rant and argue with nonexistent people while I shower.

Yesterday, I read this idea that the sea may ebb and flow, but it is still the sea. What is constant in my life is God. God is. The troubles of my life and the anger that I feel may come and go, and come again, but God is God. He is my anchor when I feel adrift. And honestly, why participate in anger when it produces so few results? Anger doesn't make us healthier, smarter, more popular... it is a moment of torment that we have a hard time casting off.

What does anger cost us?

the leather recliner of emotional enabling...

2009-08-24T17:57:00.004-06:00

Hamlet is spinning around my head. What a mess that kid was. Why couldn't he just confront his mom and say, "Look Mom, I am having a hard time with your new marriage and I am not quite ready to move forward after Dad's death and I think it would be better for everyone if I just went back to school and then maybe I'll backpack around Italy."

BUT NO... Hamlet had to fester and stew and create a revenge fantasy, and then act it out in this huge killing spree. Reading this play as the first thing I do with the seniors has convinced me that I need to be taking care of myself this year.

I created a little triangle of wellness (well, I didn't create it, but I remember it). In order to maintain my well-being I need to maintain my spiritual, physical and emotional health. That means having time to read and journal and pray, making time to exercise and eat well, and using my little emotional help tools to stay emotionally healthy. School is a huge drain on me, and I sometimes wonder if it is like that for everyone who teaches. I find myself going to bed early and relying on diet Pepsi to get me through to 4th block. In the fall I think I tend to adjust poorly to this change. I come home at 3:30 and I sink into the leather recliner I got this summer... and I rock back and forth while staring at Jeopardy and I wonder if it is too late to apply at Starbucks. I can create some negative spirals fairly quickly. Granted, my coping skills are fairly innocuous, but coping just enables poor emotional health, it doesn't heal.

But this is (I hope) a short transition time. I have to take care of the needs I have; spiritually, emotionally and physically, and in turn that will give me more energy to teach and teach well. A dangerous cycle is created when we don't take care of ourselves. I know how it affects my teaching when a part of my well-being is off-kilter. One bad hair day and I go back into the negative cycle. I don't want to sit in that recliner all school year. What kinds of things do you do to keep yourself healthy in times of stress?

Super Girl fights the perceptions of others!

2009-07-25T09:35:00.008-06:00

This has been a strange summer for me. Not like alien-visitation strange, but more "awareness-of-who-I-am" strange. I found some photos that I hadn't seen before, I met new family members, I tried beer from Thailand. It was almost like I was looking at this person I used to be and thought "who was that?" I think people do that in their 30's, reflect a lot on who they are, where they came from and inevitably, they look toward where they are going.

As humans, we tend to compare ourselves to others. And sometimes that comparative analysis can lead us into dangerous waters. The waters where our insecurity and fears become magnified. I have been watching a lot of Mad Men this month and I see it a lot in the 60's. There was this unspoken standard to be "normal" in the 50's and 60's that was ultimately repressive and emotionally shaming. Now (even today) we sometimes compare ourselves to the "norm", the "standard expectations" that seem to satellite around us. But I am finding that those standards don't apply to me, and that feels really freeing.

I have said to many people this summer "99% of how another person treats you is about them and not about you". Well der! But it is one thing to know that and another thing to own it. If we get that negative message in our head and then start a story around it, then all that stuff about it being about them is moot.

So what is my supergirl strength? Well, I vow to fight the stories in my head and be aware of what is definitely NOT about me. Fight the "norm", be YOU and whatever makes you YOU is meant to be.

I've got suitcases full of issues.

2009-07-07T16:31:00.003-06:00

“If I could fully accept the truth that I am forgiven and do not have to live in guilt or shame, I would really be free. My freedom would allow me to forgive others seventy times seven times. By not forgiving, I chain myself to a desire to get even, thereby losing my freedom.” – Henry Nouwen

Last week was pretty hard for me. I struggled with my top three “gah” inducing issues. I am sure we all have at least one of those issues; family, self-image, confidence, success, blah blah blah. Mine are sometimes triggered by well-meaning people and then I am sent to my bed listening to sad FM and drinking Coyote Gold from the bottle with a straw. Well, it wasn't that bad last week, but I did feel some anger, some self-pity and some awesome self-loathing. And this week as I was trying to get myself free of the garbage that hangs on after one of these rockin episodes of crappiness, I found some very wise words and had a real epiphany.

This summer my mantra has been “Let Go”. I love the songs that really underscore the letting go, “Babylon” by David Gray comes to mind, and that Frou Frou song, “Let Go”. I think the theme of these things is to let go of whatever is keeping you down. Be unfettered, be free to go forward. But I think this really hit home for me yesterday as I was reading the above passage by Henry Nouwen. I thought about all the things that have come easily to me, in particular, this wonderful house I bought last year. I really really really wanted this house when I first saw it. It was the one. But I never had a moment of anxiety that I wouldn't get it. I just knew that I would be living in this place and that it would be awesome.

Well, obviously home-ownership is not one of the issues I struggle with. In fact, the issues that I struggle with are the same issues I carry around with me everywhere I go and in everything I do. It is like I have these three giant suitcases full of my neuroses. I pack the suitcases with my wants, my fears, my insecurities and all the issues that trigger them. And whenever these issue suitcases are triggered, they get heavier.

But then there is the promise of faith. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see, right? So if I hope for a resolution to these issue suitcases, I am gonna have to set the suitcases down. Because if God intends to give me good things (as I believe He does) then I can't receive them if I am schlepping suitcases around. Can I get an Amen? I have to let go of my suitcases full of issues. In fact, I have to toss them away, let them fall open, and let all my issues come flying out. I can't get what I want if I am clinging to what I have. Taking control over my own issues and trying to “fix” them just won't work. If I let go, then I can receive what God would have for me.

In order to receive the things I want, I have to let go of the things I carry.

What are you tired of carrying around?

Notes from a technidiot

2009-06-25T10:45:00.004-06:00

Okay, so here I am at the technology in education conference. It is in Copper Mountain which is stinkin pretty. I am sitting outdoors, watching the rock climbers on the climbing tower. There is this little kid starting up. He is a little spider-man, climbing climbing. He stops, shaking, holding onto the rope, saying "I'm done, I wanna come down." But the guides are great, they hear him, they give a tip, "there's a great handhold to your right," and the kid finds the wall again and keeps on climbing.

I feel the same about technology in the classroom. I thought when I played Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand on my dad's old Apple IIe in the 80's (with 5" floppy disks, MENU and RUN GO) I was more technology-savvy than most of my friends at the time. But technology got away from me somehow. I lost my edge. Suddenly there were gadgets, devices and software that I had never heard of. It all is supposed to increase efficiency in the classroom, but how would I know that? We don't even have formal training in my school for the gadgets that we do have. And as a teacher I am not too keen on adding more job descriptors to my title.

Then I remember that great routine by Louis CK. If you haven't seen it, or don't know what I am talking about, you can look at it here. Everything is amazing right now and nobody's happy. Teaching is an amazing place to be right now and I want to embrace the good stuff. I came up with a few plans to implement next year; a wiki for my class, keeping up with my moodle, doing online weekly writing prompts, podcasting students' commentaries. There is a lot to do and I think the best way to tackle it is one step at a time. I want to believe in the amazing, not be embittered by the unfamiliar.

I need a personal assisstant.

2009-06-17T15:00:00.004-06:00

I have learned something about myself in these first three weeks of summer. I need a schedule, but not just any schedule. Anyone can have a "schedule". I can schedule a time for watching People's Court, or doing the jumble, or napping, or watching my cats napping. I think I need an assistant who will plan stuff for me to do, set an agenda for the day, something for me to follow.

Having free time is kinda crappy for one who's sole aim in life is to procrastinate. My problem lies in the transition moments. I can work out every day, but then I hem and haw and stretch and yawn and two hours later I still haven't gotten in the shower. What is up with that? If I had an assistant, let's call her Vera, then I would have someone tell me when is workout time and when is shower time. Otherwise I will work out, find out that Susan Sarandon is on the View in half an hour and gee, I would really like to see what ol Susan has been up to and then I can do 30 extra minutes on the rowing machine and who cares about time anyway because it is summer and where do I have to be later, that big line at the DMV? You see my point? No structure. No rules.

I do get out of the house. Occasionally I will have a date or engagement or thing to do during the day, but the meantime has been filled with unproductive, mindless nonsense. Vera would keep me in line, I think.

California here we come, right back where we started from...

2009-06-10T21:52:00.006-06:00

I haven't blogged in a while. When school was out I went into a hibernation that involved catching up on my netflix, knitting, and trying to build a nap into every day's schedule. And then I went to California for a vacation and discovered a blissed out serenity and contentment that I haven't had since I was 19. Let me share it with you.

I spent two days staring at the ocean in San Clemente. I was detoxing my brain from all the muck and clogs that just didn't get cleared out during the school year. And while I was staring out at the ocean, its constant movement and gentle waves, I felt this very clear peace. It was the kind of contentment that comes with being comfortable with who I am, where I am, what I am doing and what the future holds. It was amazing. How many of us get to feel that... or the better question, how hard is it to get into a place where we can accept that feeling?

It was as though all the stuff I hang onto when I am stressed out... the pulling hair out just to have something to clutch in my hands feeling... was gone. I was able to extend my fingers out and feel free of those clutches. The security blankets I know and love can sometimes keep me from being confident, feeling loved, and experiencing peace. In California I was able to let go. And in that moment, I felt content. The freedom that comes with that is intimidating, because you still have to face the dark corners. But there is such freedom in knowing that you can face the dark corners without your security blanket. I am trying to pursue the moment... each and every one I find this summer.

Solitude

2009-05-05T20:54:00.004-06:00

I just read this last night and it perfectly describes how I am feeling right now... frustrated, angsty, and worst of all... lonely. And it struck me how loneliness is such a trap. It is all perspective. How do we see the cup? Well, I see the empty cup a little too much. I want to practice solitude.

"All human beings are alone. No other person will completely feel like we do, think like we do, act like we do. Each of us is unique, and our aloneness is the other side of our uniqueness. The question is whether we let our aloneness become loneliness or whether we allow it to lead us into solitude. Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community.

Letting our aloneness grow into solitude and not into loneliness is a lifelong struggle. It requires conscious choices about whom to be with, what to study, how to pray, and when to ask for counsel. But wise choices will help us to find the solitude where our hearts can grow in love."
--Henri Nouwen

Sounds like I have homework to do. :-)

Summah summah summah tiiiime

2009-04-27T12:15:00.006-06:00

I am starting to think about what I want to do this summer. The list is growing; trips to the west coast, conferences, prep for a new class, etc. etc. What about the fun things like writing and producing my first album or watching every Katherine Hepburn movie? I think summer should be a balance of play and work. I will have work this summer, that is just a fact, but I think I can also set my mind to more fun goals. My worry, however, is that I won't have the drive and volition to meet these goals if I don't have a daily schedule. I always want to do so much but then end up sitting outside reading a pile of cheesy books.

What are you going to do this summer? What is on your list? How will you make time to get it done? This may be moot for those of you with jobs this summer, and if this blog entry causes you pain, I am so sorry. But I want to know how to make three (actually 2 and a half) months stretch into a summer to remember.

I'm mad as hell... and I'm not gonna take it anymore...

2009-04-22T12:23:00.003-06:00

These are the questions that plague me as I stagger to the end of the year;

A) Why do students feel a sense of entitlement about life?
B) Why is it so hard for students to assume responsibility for things they have done wrong... even when there is overwhelming evidence that they have done something wrong?
C) Why is conflict resolution so difficult for students to master?

I have a theory about this actually. I think that some students are scared for the next step in their journey and they don't feel ready to be adults. That is a bummer. Graduation and all that comes after it is the big adventure. It is hard to embrace that. Sheeeewt, I was gonna go to the University of Oregon until I realized that I would actually have to leave Colorado to do it. I remember being scared, and I think in some ways I still am scared of the next chapter. But these students seem ambivalent to the outcome of their choices. I knew that I would find my way eventually, but what do these students see in their future? Do they see the hope of a job that utilizes their prime talents and skills? Do they see the ability to own a home and have health insurance? Do they see love, family, happiness?

This is a lot of question-y stuff. This has been a tough day and I am just mostly venting and trying to find an answer to something that may not be answerable. But I am really tired of not asking the big questions. I think I have become complacent to the smoldering issues because I am too tired to fight the fire. Let it burn itself out. OR--do I start seeking out ways to make things fireproof?

Gah... big questions that mostly stem from anger... good or bad thing?? :-)

acceptance, validation, and twitter

2009-04-04T12:43:00.004-06:00

So I want to be accepted. I want people to validate me. I have lately seen my fevered pitch for acceptance come to a head on Twitter. Now I think that there are three types of people on the twitter; those who follow, those who are followed, and those who try to do both. It has been interesting to be followed by people I don't know and I get addicted to my little "following". And then there are those I follow, like Jimmy Fallon, Diablo Cody and Eddie Izzard. Secretly, I want Eddie Izzard to follow me, find me hilarious, and then ask me to open for him on his next tour.

Which leads me to what I think everyone wants, no one is satisfied by, and what God kinda busted me out* about last week. I was lamenting that I didn't have more followers and wondering why and kinda feeling all mopey. I heard God's voice very clearly say to me, "why are you seeking acceptance?" and I thought about it and told God that everyone wants to feel validated and loved and accepted. Then I heard the voice again, "when will you finally feel accepted?" and I told God that if people like me then I can be more confident, der. Then I heard the voice again, "You have a hard time believing that I accept you and that I love you and I am God. What could people give you that I haven't already offered?"

I kinda felt like an idiot. I mean, I can barely accept myself sometimes. The validation we receive from others is wonderful, but flawed. It always runs out, it never reaches the deepest parts of our soul's longing and it is asking for acceptance from people who are equally as insecure. I need to remember where my ultimate acceptance and validation comes from... THEN I can accept the love and validation that others offer without wanting them to fulfill some deep need.

Does this make sense? I wanted to get this blog out and into the cosmos. The following verse from Hebrews really stood out to me last week;

So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while, "He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him."But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved. Hebrews 10:35-39.

I hope you have a great week and that you feel validated and accepted and FOLLOWED by the one who loved you first, and I hope that validation fills your soul. Happy Holy Week!

*to "bust one out" is a technical term which means bring to attention or suggest an alternate course of action. :-)

Finishing a good book...

2009-03-20T14:00:00.006-06:00

I just finished Madame Bovary which I am kinda surprised I got through, actually. It is a good book, but not much really happens. It has a lot of description, a lot of emotional complexity and a lot of "thinking person's sex" (i.e. you may read right over the good bits without knowing they were good bits).

What intrigued me about this book was Emma Bovary herself. Here is a woman who is caught up in a marriage she didn't really understand (I can't imagine she was the only woman ever to have gone through that). Anyway, she has two major affairs that leave her devastated and broken, and spends enough money to make Marie Antoinette jealous and meets a rather tragic (and grotesquely drawn out) end. But Flaubert lets the reader decide whether Emma is good or bad. Is she a victim of her circumstances, or a woman without conscience?

Well, it is an interesting book. And it made me think of all the books that I have read and loved at points in my life. Here is a list of the highlights:

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. I read this book in college and loved it. The subject matter didn't initially appeal to me; Colorado history, mining, engineering, yadda yadda. But the way Wallace Stegner writes is so lovely. His descriptions of Leadville and the mining boom were so precise. He makes writing look effortless. There are places in that book that I can still picture in my mind. Excellent.
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept Paolo Cohelo. This book is hard to explain as are most of Cohelo's books. It is about a woman, a river in Spain, a man and taking risks. I read it before I went to Spain and although I did not find this river, Spain feels like this book.
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky. We read this in AP English my senior year of high school. I was captivated by the way Dostoyevsky wrote about moral conflict and the hard, icky questions of life. Again, not a book that would initially appeal, but I will never forget the scene when Raskolnikov kills his landlady. Hard to get into, but you will feel smarter after you read it.
The Time Traveller's Wife Audrey Nifenegger (sp?). Is this a sci-fi book? Is this a romance? I think this is a beautiful love story that addresses not only the complexity of a relationship, but the added complexity of having a partner who time travels without warning. What controls his sudden jumps in time? How does he survive? One scene that stands out is when Claire takes Henry (the time traveler) to a party and he talks about music that he likes. It is one of those banal kind of scenes that actually says a lot. Sadly... tragically... obnoxiously...they are making a movie of it. With Eric Bana. Sigh.
The Book Thief Markus Zusak. This is a book that all the students coming into my class have to read the summer before sophomore year. It another hard story to get into, but you will weep when you unpeel the layers of Liesel's life. It is about World War II and a girl who steals books. Read it with a box of kleenex, you'll need it.
Outlander Diana Gabaldon. Okay, this is not for everyone. Scottish time travel historical romance. You won't skip over the good bits in this one ;-) It has mystery, romance, battles, passion, men in kilts... super cheesy fun. If Crime and Punishment is Grandmama's hearty beef stew, then this is a corndog from the mall.
Persuasion Jane Austen. This is my favorite Jane Austen story. Anne Elliot should be a spinster at 27, but instead she gets a second chance at love and learns in the process of pining about herself and the measure of her own strength. Captain Wentworth's letter to her at the end is particularly compelling.

I think this list could be a lot longer, and I may think of some and add them later. But what about you? What is one book you will never forget?

I can fix everything that is wrong with education... really.

2009-03-16T17:30:00.000-06:00

Okay, I can't fix everything that is wrong with education, but I had an epiphany over the weekend about being a teacher and maybe it can help. Sometimes I feel like a good teacher and sometimes I feel like someone is going to come in and tell me that I am a total fraud. But I have always felt as a teacher that I am purposeful and useful. I know that teaching is my calling (as much as I fought it). When I saw this video on The Rubber Room I became incensed and saddened that teachers are on the front lines of the war on public education. Some teachers need to be replaced, but no teacher deserves to be ignored.

Back to my epiphany... I think we can make it better, we can ALL take part in making education free and fair and challenging for ALL students. Not only do I think we can be a part of this change, I think we MUST be a part of it. Education impacts EVERYONE, not just teachers, students or people who make pencil sharpeners.

Here is my list of ideas (I am a ridiculous idealist... be warned). These ideas seem easy to implement and can build on what is already in place. I would love to hear your thoughts...

Relational teaching--I was a Young Life leader about a million years ago and what I learned from Young Life changed the way I teach. I was in relational ministry in YL. Instead of standing on corners or participating in debates, we as leaders would build relationships with students and share the gospel experientially. This is what makes teaching so valuable for me. I build relationships with my students; I try to come along side them and see where they are specifically. My understanding of where they are allows me to a) assess them more specifially and b) make them feel okay about asking for help.

Communication--I think every time a school board or administration doesn't communicate the whole picture to teachers, parents or kids, it breeds distrust between those entities. I am a grownup, I can handle tough news. There should be open communication between all parties so that people can feel valued. That also involves listening critically and knowing how to be an engaged listener.

Being PROactive instead of REactive--I am shocked at how much of what kills public education is a reaction to something. A big reaction. Like someone's hair is on fire. Once the fire is out, there is no discussion of what started the fire. Why is that? I learned how to teach by backwards planning (plan the assessment, then plan back from that) so why don't we do that for the problems that plague our schools? This might be a loaded question, but I do think schools need to be proactive instead of always reacting to the problems that plague us.

That is the list so far. What do you think will help?

Hope comes with patience

2009-03-08T09:00:00.004-06:00

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions”-- Rainer Marie Rilke

So I was thinking about my last post and about hope and what my problem really is. I have hope in a great number of things; the return of the great Broncos, the fact that I will see Scotland someday, and that someday, somewhere, I will meet Matt Damon. It is easy to hope for those things because they are remote and removed from my deeper, more pressing heart issues.

The things that I hope for more closely seem to have an urgency about them. This sucks. The pain of living by God's timeline in 2009 is the contrary nature of instant gratification and the fact that God just doesn't work that way. We live in an instantaneous society. If we are hungry, we eat something out of our pantry. If we need five facts about Ghandi, we can google it. We live in a society designed for convenience. And in the same way, I think my patience level for the promises of hope has run out. I want it NOW, dammit. (Veruca Salt)

These larger heart issues that I bring to God daily are not easy to hold onto, but neither are they easy to resolve. I believe (sometimes) that God will fulfill the promises he has made me, but I also feel that it requires more from me than just a wish and a prayer. In yearning, in pressing after these longings, I find that God is continually wanting me to be PATIENT. Do I even know how to practice patience? Apparently, (I didn't know this) the word patience in ancient Greek comes from two words meaning literally "far away" and "anger". If I think about impatience as holding onto anger, I don't really want to be impatient. But being patient (like my mom, give her a good book and she could wait for anything) and practicing patience are two different things. I think practicing patience requires us to do a couple things:

Don't give up on what you hope for--don't just set it aside and pretend like you never wanted it just because it hasn't happened the way you wanted it to (yeah, I didn't even want to meet Matt Damon, whatever).
Recognize your perspective--if you are telling tales in your head about why it hasn't happened or why you aren't getting what you want, recognize that you are telling a story, and that you can write really good stories in your head (my friends hate me right now because I said something to offend them and now they think I am Lame-o Mc Loserton).

Especially recognize any stories you tell yourself that involve rejection, jealousy, or fears--these are totally unproductive and just plain mean. Those stories will bring you down like a stone.

Identify the facts--if you are telling stories, then what is the truth? What do you know for sure? What is the word telling you?

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.-- Romans 5:3-5

Wait actively--don't let the waiting consume you. I am really bad at this. I get fixated on something and then like Gollum, I go towards it fiercely. "We wants the new patio chair..." "we needs a new, precious crockpot..." well, you get the idea. Waiting actively requires that you keep the hope in mind, but that you recognize what you already have. As Sheryl Crow sings, "Its not having what you want, but wanting what you've already got".

There may be something so pressing on your heart that you don't think you can wait another minute to possess it. But God is doing work in the waiting. I always have to recognize this when I am at my lowest point as I am usually totally dense about what God is trying to do. I am trying to practice patience today, but I am sure tomorrow I will have to read this again and remember again.

“Let nothing disturb thee; Let nothing dismay thee; All thing pass; God never changes. Patience attains All that it strives for. He who has God Finds he lacks nothing: God alone suffices.” St. Teresa of Avila

The Theological Importance of Castaway

2009-03-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

Castaway is on tonight. I love this movie. The reason I started a blog is just so I can talk about this movie. Am I obsessed? Well... who isn't obsessed with Tom Hanks' natural charm and talent?

Seriously, I believe that God speaks to me through this movie. It has all the big ideas of Christianity; forgiveness, salvation, redemption, freedom, and my favorite... fellowship. How does this movie convey so much? I think part of it is in the silent, lonely meditation that Chuck, the main character, has to go through in order to find himself. It is through the forced loneliness that he discovers his will to survive and live. And also through that loneliness he finds that he cannot live without his Wilson. He creates a relationship and that relationship becomes so important. I always cry when he loses Wilson. I cry when he realizes that Kelly can't love him anymore. I cry when the only sound he hears is waves. There is something so awesome about the drive to keep living when all other hope is lost.

I think no other scene demonstrates this more than the scene when Chuck talks to his friend about why Kelly saved him on the island. He knows that the thought of Kelly kept him alive and that he was meant to live. And even though he couldn't be with Kelly, he knew she saved him. He had to keep breathing, keep living, keep spearing fish. Then one day, this port-a-potty wall came floating up onto the beach and he knew he had a sail and the means to get off the island.

Anne Lamott said two things about hope that I am clinging to right now. They are written on my mirror and etched into my consciousness...

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”

“When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.”

We aren't always forced into deserted island situations, but we often feel like we are on a deserted island. That is when I believe God comes into our lives and reminds us that we keep breathing, we keep living, we keep loving others. This day, this perfect day, is exactly what God means for us right now. There may not be a boat on the horizon and there may not be a rescue near in sight, but the sun continues to rise and set, we continue to breathe and live and love. Who knows what the tide will bring tomorrow.

I AdOregon.

2009-03-03T20:41:00.002-07:00

I just got my latest issue of Oregon Home. It is a magazine I have been addicted to for a long time. As I read it, I sit around drinking Stash tea, eating hazelnuts and dreaming of my own Oregon home. My mom grew up in NE Portland and now has retired to SW Portland which is wonderful because going is like a vacation, but also like going home.

I have been visiting the rose city since I was 6 months old, spending summers at my Gramma Mae's house playing lawn darts with my cousins, picking raspberries for my breakfast, and watching ice skaters at the Lloyd Center. People have asked me what I like about visiting Oregon... I should say people from Colorado wonder why on earth anyone would go hang out in the rain. Well as my mom says, I am a different person when I am in Oregon. Time moves slower, people smile more, and I feel at home. And I think after reading this list, you will consider a trip to Ol' Orygun;

It smells green--ferns, daffodils on the side of the highway, and that smell of wet cedar bark.. it seems like it is always spring in Oregon.

They have Trader Joe's--peanut butter filled, chocolate covered pretzels... nuff said

The Columbia Gorge--I used to love driving past Hood River and watching the windsurfers. Now I like hiking into these grotto-like waterfalls... it is Gorge-ous (ha ha ha, okay I will stop)

Powell's--der, but I like the annex in Beaverton best, it is not as charmingly stuffy (i.e. claustrophobic) as the one downtown. Also the guys who work in Beavo are cute.

The two Asian Gardens--the Japanese garden especially, so wooded and quiet, then you stumble upon the awesome tree-framed view of Portland.

Local Ocean--The best seafood on the coast. Mom and I eat there EVERY night when we are in Newport. Sit at the bar and watch them cook, or have a conversation (as I did) with the local fishermen who stock the place daily. Fish so fresh it'll slap ya.

The architecture in Portland--Drive around a bit, especially in Ladd's Edition--lots of great Craftsman homes and cottages, great walking place, particularly when the roses are in bloom... lovely.

They have IKEA--It actually feels like walking into Sweden. My mom had no idea what it was when it first arrived in PDX, now she goes weekly just to drool at the organized closet systems.

Nye Beach--my mecca, the pilgrimage happens twice a year. Sylvia has always put me up with peace, quiet and love, thank you Sylvia!!

The Minestrone soup at Amalfi's--We used to get family pizza from Amalfi's (canadian bacon and pineapple, cut into squares) and then one day mom and I stopped in there for some soup one afternoon. It was so good we got a pint to take home.

Rain--hello, it rains there and when you are from the high plains of CO, rain looks pretty good every now and again.

The Otis Cafe--Noah, the great pie guy, has left the Otis, but they still have good eats on the way to the beach. (Top secret... Noah used twice the amount of Marionberries in his pies...they weighed 20 pounds :-)

Silver Falls State Park--Go on a hike on a hot day and see 7-10 waterfalls.

Kennedy School--My mom actually went to Kennedy School when it was a school. Now it is a monument to McMennamin's development strategies. Tater Tots, the Brewer's Salad, and a pint of Ruby... the perfect meal

Visiting my family--You may not intentionally go to hang out with my family, but if you go, I will probably direct you towards a member of my family. My mom has been a tour guide for my friends and my aunt and uncle have even put a few up.

Well if you can't go to Oregon soon, then click on all my links and take a virtual tour. Bon Voyage!

High School Newspaper... Obsolete??

2009-02-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

The Rocky Mountain News closed this week and it has made me think about things. Bud (the teacher) posted a very nice farewell video on his blog here. I found that it was nice to live in a two-paper town. There aren't many two paper towns anymore, and since we have every nationally recognized sport has a team in Denver, it seemed only right to have at least two papers to cover them all.

In the same vein I have been thinking a lot about our own high school newspaper, which I have advised for the last three years and which I am quitting next year. It is a thankless job. I end up herding cats and trying to make high school students understand the value of reporting a good story. At the same time I have to teach them layout, selling ads, editing, etc. They are overwhelmed with all my badgering and then they see the fruits of their labor scattered through the hallways and in the trash bins. With each issue they lose a little more of the tenuous "His Girl Friday" gumption they came into newspaper with.

And we just don't get very much support. It is like there is a rule somewhere that schools have to have sports teams, a yearbook, functional bathrooms and a newspaper. No reason why, it just has to have one. But there has never been any standards, any requirements or any mission for the newspaper as it exists. I have asked and pleaded with so many other teachers, not just English teachers to take up the mantle next year. No one wants it which is so disheartening.

I have had many hard talks with Sydney, the one returning senior next year. She looks at me on the verge of tears when I talk to her about what it will be like or what it could be like. She is not an idealist, but she doesn't want newspaper to just disappear. I don't either. But I don't want to see the students compromise good writing for fluff, or see them over-sensationalize news in order to get higher readership. All that said--I am not a layout teacher, I am not technologically savvy enough to put the whole thing online, I am so tired of scraping money together and I am really tired of being the last person to see and send off a newspaper that the students should have total ownership over.

A couple years ago I went to the "seminar" for newspaper advisers. I was new and looking forward to the challenge of taking on a new class. I gained nothing from those three days but how to forget my other classes and other professional obligations and devote all my time and energy and effort to a class that isn't assessed by CSAP. It was like a secret society of teachers who had lost their minds. None of those advisers convinced me that newspaper is valuable or enriching to students. They only managed to convince me that it had to stay alive and young teachers like me were just the people to do it.

Do students need a voice? Yes. Should it be a student-run publication? Yes. WHAT SHOULD THAT LOOK LIKE??? This, my dear friends, is the million-dollar question. In three years I haven't figured it out and now I am done, but that doesn't mean I have stopped caring about it. What do you think? Is print media on its way out? Why should high school students have a newspaper? Who should teach it? How should it be supported?

This American Life...

2009-02-26T10:52:00.004-07:00

I have loved This American Life ever since I heard David Sedaris recite a very strange Christmas story about farm animals. I don't know what it is, but it sucks me in, holds me down, and like a deer in the headlights, I am frozen in time. I have to confess I am a little behind on the podcasts because I haven't had an hour to sit and listen while staring into space.

But last night I was hypnotized by the show. I rented the Tudors, season 2, and after the last episode (Anne Boleyn gets the ax... hope I didn't give anything away) I scanned the special features for good extras. There it was... a preview episode of This American Life, the TV version. I had to peek. I had seen a preview of the first season on another disc, probably the Tudors season 1. After watching that sneak peek, I immediately put it on my Netflix queue. Lately it has been stuck behind Battlestar Galactica and Dexter (priorities, people). The peek was about this man who sets up tableaux of Biblical scenes and then paints them. The guy who played Jesus was awesome, dealing with his own issues around religion, having a girlfriend and maintaining an appropriately long beard. It was funny and weird and just like the radio show, I was hooked in.

The episode I watched last night was even better. It was all about escaping. The story it featured was about this 27 year-old man, Mike Phillips who is confined to a wheelchair and uses a computer to speak and write and maintain an awesome blog. I was so drawn into his story. How he met his girlfriend, why he wants his ceiling painted black and who he would want to be his voice (Johnny Depp, by the way). This kid is far from disabled. He is cogent, aware and fascinatingly real; it just takes him three minutes to communicate one sentence.

The way Ira Glass told his story is just so wonderful. This American Life is all about story; something that may seem mundane or removed suddenly becomes close. Watching that last night made me a) move the first season up to first place in my queue, and b) consider the way I tell a story. I think of that great scene in "Out of Africa" where Meryl Streep's character sits down and tells an epic story after Robert Redford provides the first line. I wish I could do that. Where do I get stuck telling my story? What about you? What is your story and do you feel like you tell it well?

I am a teacher, and I kill reading and writing

2009-02-25T20:38:00.001-07:00

I have been teaching for nine years. That seems like a long time to me. And all the requisite things that prove I am a teacher are in place: I have a masters' degree in education, I own a large quantity of books about teaching, I know who Maria Montano-Harmon is, I have various sizes of sticky notes and many colors of dry erase markers--it seems like I should have this thing down. Right?

Well I thought I had it sorta down... then my friend Eric sent me a link to this book..."Readicide; How Schools are Killing Books and What You Can Do About it" I was discouraged to say the least. Have I been guilty of killing a good book? Well, I think I have only been capable of killing books that should have died long ago. So there.

And then this report from my friend Bud encouraged me; Kathleen Blake Yancey's call to support 21st century writing. It talks about the history and evolution of writing. Why do we write? How do we teach writing to people who by necessity have been writing for years (hint: I think writing teachers have change from teaching to coaching)? It is encouraging to think that education is on the cusp of something new and challenging that includes the technology already in place, allowing students to build on something new.

But as a teacher, am I ready to accept the challenge? I have all this technology, but is it working for the benefit of my students or against it? I think that I operate at about 60% of my capacity as a teacher. Where is that other 40%? And is that 40% the part that includes innovating curriculum by using the technology I have? I have a feeling the 40% is mired down in all the things I have to do. It seems like this year I have fewer students but more hoop-jumping.

Maybe this is all just the February slump and maybe I should just not worry too much about it. But then why would I blog about it?

Don't fear the writing

2009-02-24T20:25:00.005-07:00

My students are scared, no-- mortified of something so heinous and repugnant that they can barely speak its name... their own writing.

I remember when I was a senior in high school. It was Mrs. Mitchell's AP English class and we had to write a paper on Hamlet. She gave a good two weeks to write the essay, but of course I wrote it the night before it was due. It was back in the stone ages, when paper was printed on reams that had the feeder dots on each side. Each time I would print a paper, I had to a) spend ten minutes disconnecting and collating the papers and b) remove these silly dotted ream-feeders that eventually got wrapped around my fingers and became curly-qs. So here is my point, I was tearing off those silly things and I chanced to look at this epic essay written a mere 12 hours earlier. I had five type-os on the first page alone. I got that sinking pit stomach feeling. I realized I couldn't change anything about it. I got the paper back a couple weeks later and the type-os were the least of my problems.

Procrastination and fear are two separate things. I procrastinate lots, its my way. But my students not only procrastinate, they don't revise or self-edit. Is this because they do it at the last minute? They just don't have the time? Maybe, but they do this in timed writings as well. I will give them 30 minutes to write an essay, and they will finish in 15, then they will place the essay on the furthest corner of their desk, put down their heads, and sleep. When did sleeping become more important than self-reflection?

My theory is that none of us WANT to self-reflect. Why is that? Are we afraid to self-reflect? Are we afraid of what we will find?

Te echo de menos España

2009-02-22T14:45:00.004-07:00

It has been 10 years since I lived in Granada. Here are the ten things I miss the most;

Kissing on both cheeks: a very nice greeting when you especially liked the person you were meeting ;-)
Cafe con Leche: coffee was richer in Spain, and velvety. And the milk... you can't be lactose intolerant in Spain... no way.
Walking everywhere: I walked to school, I walked to see friends, you could just get lost in your own walking thoughts.
The gardens of Carmen de los Martires; up by the Alhambra, there were these public gardens. Walking through them, you could always hear water trickling in a fountain somewhere. Nice corners for sitting and staring into space.
My host family: They were the sweetest people ever. I was so vulnerable when I arrived in Granada and they treated me as their own. My host mother called me "hija de mi vida". I haven't kept in touch with them and I am so bummed about that.
Jamon serrano: Giant pig legs hanging in butcher shops seemed off-putting at first, then you had a taste of some when you got tapas. Yah. Best served with bread drizzled with olive oil, and a tomato rubbed on it. I am actually drooling now. You can't be a vegetarian in Spain... no way.
Barcelona: Yes, I lived in Granada, but Barcelona was this giant city that felt like a small town. I can't recommend it enough.
The teterias in Al Albaicin: these Moorish teahouses on a crooked little street in the Albaicin. They smelled like incense and had the sweetest Chai. We sat on cushions on the floor, so great.
Chocolate filled criossants: while walking, you pass by a panaderia and this waft of chocolate and bread assaults you, pins you down and takes your money. Well, they weren't that violent but they were irresistible.
Siesta: hey, it is 2:30, you have just finished an amazing meal, time for a nap!

Lars and the Real Girl

2009-02-20T22:24:00.006-07:00

After watching this movie "Lars and the Real Girl" I am fantastically aware of how hard it is to connect to others. People struggle so much with the feeling that they (we?) are too inadequate to be loved for our authentic selves and yet we want more than anything to feel validated for who we really are.

What I loved about this movie was the idea that this man couldn't deal with the issues in his real life so he manifested a new life with a lifelike doll. I will admit that I have dreamed of falling in love with Matt Damon or being interviewed on Oprah (for my epic novel fyi) and while I don't think I need those things to function, I wonder why they surface. As my friend Eric commented in another posting, wanting big changes may just be a manifestation of something we aren't really dealing with. In the same way, the fantasy life may be a manifestation of something undealt with.

Is it possible that all the addictions and distractions (the fantasy) we maintain in our lives keep us safe, but ultimately out of the danger of being truly happy? I love Kenny Rogers' song "The Gambler" but I think he had it a little wrong. You gotta know when to hold 'em, sure, but I think you also gotta know that you are your own worst enemy sometimes. Sometimes you have to risk it in order to win big. There are no guarantees, sadly. And maybe that isn't so sad. Maybe we should embrace a life of no guarantees and embrace the craziness that life brings us anyway.

You need a little Kenny today?

the flu as metaphor?

2009-02-18T09:50:00.004-07:00

So I am home sick from school today. I keep wondering if it is a metaphor for something. Is getting sick the body's way of rebooting? I have been thinking about some major changes in my life. Specifically looking at changes in the way I operate. I am a character of habit and routine, and once I get into a routine that works, it becomes monotonous.

Today I broke out of my routine. I did small things outside of what I normally do when I am home sick. I read more instead of vegging out. I sat in a different room than I usually sit in. I suppose the hope is that these little things will eventually lead to larger changes. It is hard for me to make the big changes, so will these little changes in routine make a difference?

Big picture; I hope to change my eating habits, my workout routine, my use of free time, and my use of work time. Those are all BIG things, any advice on how to make big changes happen?

procrastinators get it done.... eventually

2009-02-16T11:13:00.001-07:00

So this morning, a few cups of coffee down, yesterday's paper finished (great article about M. Ward in the Times) and a Rock Hudson/ Doris Day movie I had never seen, I now contemplate having a day off and time stretching ruthlessly before me. This inevitably happens on my days off; it is about noon before I get to my actual list which involves a whole load of things I don't want to do.

What inevitably happens is nothing productive or good. I may get my laundry folded, I may work on my lesson plans for the next day, and I may work out. But when one is given the gift of free time, how is it supposed to be spent? I get this feeling that I am supposed to be the Martha Stewart of productivity. I am supposed to make all my meals for the week and expertly freeze them, clean the house top to bottom, lesson plan the rest of the semester, catch up on all my bedside reading, find the answer to world peace, and still have time to host a dinner party for 12.

Instead, this morning I am downloading a bunch of free music picks from Starbucks, playing some online scrabble, and generally waiting for that burst of inspired energy to smack me upside the head.

Teaching is a profession riddled with guilty feelings. I do have some teacher friends who are so very good about maintaining their diligent work ethic. My friend Amy always plans a reward for her work. "If I grade 20 papers, I can go swimming." I practice the reverse; "If I go swimming, I can always grade those last 20 papers when I get back". I call this the Scarlett O'Hara philosophy of life. Tomorrah is (after all) anothah day... (eyes batting hopefully). Why put off today what you can eventually put off tomorrow?

I blame my father mostly for this philosophy. When he was a teacher, he would save all the papers collected during the quarter and then grade them all about two days before grades were due. He would sit at the TV, watching old episodes of Nova and grading each paper with unintelligible comments and symbols that only he could understand.

And even now, as I look at the clock, I see that it is 12:30 and oh, how the guilt bubbles to the surface of my consciousness. I have to do two things; a) have grace for the part of me that wants to surf YouTube all day and b) be really disciplined about limiting the things that suck the most time out of my life.

It all seems to be about motivation. I don't know if I can train myself to be more motivated about the things I don't want to do. Motivation isn't something you can make grow, it has to develop on its own. But maybe I can plant more seeds of motivation in my garden.

the start of something crazy

2009-02-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I am feeling a little crazy for starting a blog, but I think I have things to say. I hope to post my reflections on my teaching practice as well as my reflections on my spiritual growth and renewal. I think that those things are intertwined. It is my life after all, hard to compartmentalize what is all interconnected.

Just a start, I will post more later, but my friend just brought me some killer salsa. It is the perfect blend of spicy and sweetness... oh yeah.

peace out.