"A Change Is Gonna Come" - On Listening to Sam Cooke

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it before, especially from teachers. It’s all a bout change, change the way we structure schools, change the way we teach, change the way we ask out students to learn. Yet, I am not seeing a whole lot of change. I still walk down the hallway in my school and see rows of students, preparing for the next test, listening to teachers say things that they probably said twenty years ago. Are students learning? I think they are, but not at the level they should be. I think teachers first are role models. And the very first thing that we must be modeling is learning. And if learning isn’t change, then I don’t know what change means.

Many have gotten kind of comfortable in schools. Many resist any program, duty, or event that lives outside of the pre-existing notions of one’s worldview. Teacher and student arrive each day to dance a strange little dance, a marathon in which only a few will be standing at the end of this contest. Those will be the ones who will be “successful.” Those are the one’s that we teachers will point to as evidence of our own “success.”

Change. It might be nice to think about what that means, today.

James Baldwin and Me

I do have a special place in my literary pantheon for James Baldwin. I think it is mostly because he was a searcher, and understood the concept of love better than any contemporary literary figure of which I am aware. In his work during the civil rights era of the 50's and 60's he challenged all, letting no one off the hook for a society that was just plain ugly with racism. His solution was pretty simple: Love. This meant acceptance and letting go of ignorance.

He was once asked why there was so much time between his novels and his reply was, "That's the kind of writer that I am."

I find comfort in that response, if others do not. I find it necessary to periodically head for the desert, to listen, to observe the not-so-obvious, what William Least Heat Moon once wrote about in an essay called, "A List of Nothing in Particular." I come back a new man, energized and willing to speak once again.

Perhaps that attitude is not suited to writing a blog. Sorry to those who were wondering while I was wandering. Rest assured we were all thinking the same thing: Where is that guy? In the future, I will alert you of my wanderings before I go. Have a great day!

Pete

No, No... The Inner Me!

The first time I remember it, I was in first grade. Sister James Matthew said something that seemed garbled to me. Before I knew it, students were taking turns announcing something; what, I did not know. It seemed to me as each of my classmates announced things like, “Candy!”, “TV!”, “Dessert!”, that we were announcing our favorite things in the world. When it came to my turn, I proudly said, “Baseball cards!” Then we moved on to another lesson.

At recess, a classmate asked me how I was going to give up baseball cards.

“Why would I give up baseball cards; they’re my favorite thing?”

“You said that you would give them up for Lent,” my friend replied.

My friend explained to me that this is what we had been doing earlier in the day, announcing what we were going to give up for Lent. “No way,” I said. “I’m not giving up baseball cards; I didn’t know that’s what we were doing. What is Lent, anyway?”

“You have to give them up because you said you would. If you go back on what you said, you’re going to Hell.”

And this was my introduction to Lent. I remember years later, my father thought it would be a great idea at dinner one night if each member of the family announced what he or she would be giving up for Lent. Remembering my first-grade terror, I slyly announced something that sounded great but did not require much of an investment in my time or energy.

To this day, my non-Catholic friends will ask me with a chuckle what I plan on giving up for Lent. At least today with these friends I can explain how the concept of fasting and alms giving are connected. I tell them that I give up coffee, calculate how much money I save, and write a check to a charity for that amount. This tends to impress them, but it is still pretty shallow in my book, not much different than the roll calls of my childhood and youth.

I have found that there are many ways to approach fasting, but I do know that I would hate to skip the opportunity to fast during Lent by simply “giving something up for Lent,” even if I am writing a check. The reason to fast for Lent is far more important. I often turn to the example of St. Francis for my own inspiration. And if I need words, I do not need to go much further than St. Paul.

Fasting is not an endurance contest, something I would never win, anyway. It is a turning out to the desert, a wandering even. St. Francis tended to reject much of the surface of this world, and his trust in God was so great, he found great joy in his wanderings, in other words, in his own inner life. What St. Francis teaches me is that fasting, temporarily turning away from the worldly, directs me inward. And looking inward is where the real challenge is.

To be aware of the interior life is not the romantic image of quiet prayer and solitude, nothing of the world entering in. The reality of the Incarnation teaches me that we are both Internal and External. I often only think about the external because it is easy to see. The internal is messy; it is the home of all the things that make me feel uncomfortable. It is so much easier to give into the external and just stay there. But I’m more likely to find God in the internal.

Jesus hung out with the outcasts of society, all of the people who made society messy. Fasting allows me to face that messy part of myself, to dine with all of those parts of myself that make me feel like an outcast. It is there that I spend time with Jesus, man and Savior. When I know that God loves me regardless of the messiness I find inside, I find the outside becomes truer, more honest. And that is what I look for in fasting: balance.

I have found that Lent and fasting give me that balance in my life. It is the internal that needs work to balance with the external. Without balance I am not whole (or holy). St. Paul reminds me of this: “I know how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance. In every circumstance and in all things I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need. I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me” (Phil 4:12-13). God just makes sense of the whole me.

Fasting is a joyful time because I know that Jesus has come to the table to dine with me, in all of my imperfections. Fasting is not only giving something up. It is a time to look at the whole person. It is a time to balance; a time to remember that Jesus was both man and God. Fasting is a gift that brings me closer to Him.

What About Me?

When my wife and I first took our children to Disney World years ago, I experienced a moment of parental genius. When we arrived at the first park, we all stopped to set the ground rules for the day: no running, stay within eye shot, and this little gem, make sure everyone else has a great time. I was quite pleased with myself, but then the kids simply got caught up in the intensity that is Disney.

I have been very busy lately because a number of the programs that I coordinate at school are overlapping. I am finding over the past few days that I have to deal with a lot of people and am finding that no one seems to be concerned if anyone else is having a good time.

Well, I had an epiphany of sorts this morning. I notice many of our culture’s metaphors are about a big payoff—of course, our economic life is literally about that. Whether it is working hard at family life, at the job, even working at our relationship with God, it’s all about a big payoff for the pains that we must go through now. What if we changed the metaphor, or at least looked at the same metaphor from a different perspective? Let’s just say that this is the payoff. We are living it today. What ever happens today is just such a gift that I am having a great time.

I don’t intend to demean those who are struggling through life, but I suspect we all have our pains—I have yet to meet a single soul who did not experience some hardship in life. But I do intend to ask, why not turn around and look at life from another direction? You’ll get a different point of view about everything. I am going to do that today. And if you want to do it too, I think that would be cool. And if you do choose to do it, that would mean that you would be having a great time. And since we would be having such a great time today, let’s share that. Let’s just say that the main rule for today is to make sure that one other person in our lives has a great time today. You can choose anyone to be the recipient. Good luck, and have a great day!

If This is Progress, Then...

Now I know why old people feel scared. I’m feeling scared. We used to laugh at the old saying, “Just when I learned how to play the game, they changed all the rules.” At some point, however, rules change so drastically, that the new set of rules is really frightening. Now I suspect rules have been changing at the same pace for as long as rules have been changing, but we old guys have seen so many rule changes that we get to the point where we have seen enough.

What are these rules? As best I can tell, rules are based on a society’s values. Those values change and adjust over the years and only those with long memories can think back far enough to realize the drastic changes that have occurred over a lifetime.

I hit one of those points recently as my newspaper editors (I am faculty advisor for our school newspaper, The Harriton Banner) and I have been dealing with the issue of stress in schools and the so-called “study drugs.” Our last issue covered the school reaction to our report that study drugs were being used in our school and our next issue will cover parental reaction to that article. During one of our editorial meetings, we were trying to size up the different kinds of parental reactions that might be identifiable. One of my editors said that she was convinced that stress in school came mainly from parents who look to give their own kids a leg up on other students. When we see a student taking too many classes, being involved in too many programs, and in too many sports, it is likely that the parents are behind such a drive. It does not, then, take a huge logical jump to conclude that parents might be OK (explicitly or implicitly) with their kids taking these study drugs.

The room was silent.

Then The New York Times reported that parents are having their young children genetically tested to find out what sport they might be good at. Yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a group of scientist are concluding that taking study drugs is OK, and it can be a benefit to both individual and society.

As a young man, I might have said, “What the …?” Today I am scared. I am scared of the value being advanced here. I am scared at the hyper-competitive society in which I live. I am scared that this is just too much. Is there any going back?

One Wound; One Place; One LIfe

This morning I was thinking about Thomas and his plight, not so much a failure in faith because he refused to believe in God or Christ. Thomas' plight--and the ultimate source of a powerful conversion--was that he could not, perhaps refused to, look at that empty space within himself. He refused to accept his own holy wound because he could not accept Jesus' holy wound. The break down in faith was that he was unable to see that his wound and Jesus' wound were one and the same. When he finally placed his hands into the wounds of Jesus, he was placing his hands in his own wounds, and they became holy. He accepted them. It is the place where--as Richard Rohr suggests--God resides, where we meet God; and we are one. And the holy wound becomes the place of real life.

Killing in God's Name: Get in Line

Why do we kill in the name of God?

I suppose we have done enough study of history to know how it works, the politics, the mechanics and logistics of killing in the name of God. But the deeper question as to why we do it always remains unanswered. This is, I believe, because we suffer from a heavy dose of blame and denial. “You people did this!” “No, it can’t possible be,” we say and think. “These attackers don’t really represent ____________ (fill in the blank with the name of any religion).”

When the attackers flew planes into the World Trade Center, they were praying. They believed they were doing God’s work. And our well meaning cries of support for our Muslim brothers and sisters, who would never think of doing such a thing, are not so much cries of support as they are a kind of denial. We have isolated the enemy and he is not I. Well, if there is anything that should tie us together it is our belief in God. When one acts in the name of God, we all do. It does not matter which religion; It does not matter if the act is good or bad, we are all involved.

Now it seems that the attacks in Mumbai have similar origins as our 9/11. And the blaming and denials are beginning. Yet we cannot deny a world where we produce people so sure that they know what God wants that they would kill, literally or emotionally, in His name.

Just fill in the name of the religion and the name of the crime; the sentence would be the same. If one kills in the name of God, we all have, and we have to figure out how to stop doing that. We are all people and we are all in this together, so we all need to take responsibility.

I pray to God that I see, especially during Advent, in my own life, how I am intolerant of others. I firmly believe that a world can be changed by attitudes and those attitudes start at home. I further pray that a deeper understanding and Love for my fellow men and women replaces this exposed intolerance.

Maybe that’s a start. Or maybe I’m just a crackpot.