The Greatest Job

It’s hard to describe what my job is exposing me to.  In any given moment I am taking in profuse amounts of new information and experiences.  It is the best kind of schooling for me.  Hands-on, experiential, moment by moment--at times it feels like I have to shoot first and ask questions later (to use an unfortunately analogy).  

As the AmeriCorps member, I am thrown into an atmosphere full of people who spent at least four years learning about their jobs before getting into them, and in many cases who have amassed years and years of on-the-job training and research and even added months or years of coursework for a graduate degree.  I have walked into a world of PBIS, ERI, EBIS, ELD, CIT, Easy CBM, OAKS with more and more acronyms piling up constantly.  It’s worse than church.  I walk into meetings and lead tutoring sessions with four and a half years of training in English literature, five years of seminary training, and absolutely no training in public elementary education.  Time after time, day after day I feel like I’m applying what I’m learning and then being taught it.  My job is constantly busy, often overwhelming, very demanding of my mental creativity, and sometimes stressful.

And I love every minute of it.

Under AmeriCorps, I work as a member of Partnerships for Student Achievement.  Twenty of us work in elementary and high schools in four different school districts spread around Washington County (bordering the west end of Portland’s Multnomah County).  While we do generally the same thing, the specifics are catered to each district and each school.  

We all work in Title I schools.  Title I was created in 1965, and because I’m too lazy to try and summarize or paraphrase it, I will simply quote the Title I purpose in its entirety: “The purpose of this title is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments.”  This is followed by a twelve part list of how this is accomplished.  In short, Title I exists in schools with a high percentage of low socio-economic students and under-performing test scores, especially where there is an achievement gap.  The achievement gap, if you don’t know (I didn’t until I started this job) is the performance gap between ethnic groups/races and/or economic levels.  Title I is what gives schools the budget to do free and reduced-price lunches and to do special academic interventions.  Many Title I schools have full-time certified Title I teachers.

These days I am learning how different it is to be poor because my current situation makes it so versus being poor because your family has never been anything other than poor.  At my good friend and mentor’s suggestion, I recently picked up a book called A Framework for Understanding Poverty. The author, Ruby Payne, makes a clear distinction between situational poverty and generational poverty.  Consider a few of these statements from her quiz, “Could you survive in poverty?”  She asks the reader to check off each item we understand how to do:

1. I know which churches and sections of town have the best rummage sales; 2. I know which grocery stores’ garbage bins can be accessed for thrown-away food; 3. I know how to get someone out of jail; 4. I know how to get a gun, even if I have a police record; 5. I know how to live without a checking account; 6. I know how to live without electricity and a phone; 7. I know how to move in half a day.

Now compare this to the middle class quiz: 1. I know how to properly set a table; 3. I know which stores are most likely to carry the clothing brands my family wears; 4. I talk to my children about going to college; 5. I understand the difference among the principal, interest, and escrow statements on my house payment; 6. I know how to get a library card; 7. I repair items in my house almost immediately when they break--or know a repair service and call it.

(She also has a “Could you survive in wealth?” quiz which includes items like, “I fly in my own plane, the company plane, or the Concorde.”  I can’t even comprehend this kind of life.)

At my school, approximately 78% of our students are on free or reduced lunch.  Many of them partake in our free breakfast option every morning.  We have a high number of children who read and do math well below their grade level, and a number of kids on behavioral plans. Starting last year, my school began offering our backpack program.  Parents who qualify for free or reduced lunch can sign their child up to receive a weekend backpack of meals and snacks for their child.  Currently, we have almost 30 students taking backpacks home.  Many of these students fall on the despairing side of the achievement gap.  The connection between poverty and low achievement levels can not be overlooked.  I have very few financial resources, but my other resources are bountiful and gracious.  I have emotional support, spiritual support, mental support, good health, fantastic role models, and what Ruby Payne labels “knowledge of middle-class hidden rules.”  I watch some of our children walk through the school doors every day looking like the weight of the world is on their shoulders.  Many of them have very few, if any, of these supports.  

But these kids are impressive.  Against all odds, they keep coming to school and they keep learning.  They struggle.  And fighting against the never ending machine of poverty coupled with ambitious public school budget cuts can feel crushing on those who work daily with these children.

I had given up on the public school system.  Someday when I had kids, I knew the only reason they would ever be in public school is if I couldn’t afford a good private school.  All I ever heard in the news was about failing test-scores and strikes and impossible budget deficits.  One of the school districts a couple of my fellow PSA members work in cut well over 200 teachers over the summer.  When I heard that number, I just about choked.  It was all over the news.  The problems of the public school system were too vast and too wrapped up in hierarchy, out-of-date tradition, and government red tape for any difference to really be made, so I had washed my hands of it.

And then I got a job working here, and that vast public school system became local and began to have little six-year-old names and seven-year-old smiles and five-year-old stories and started giving me hugs; their faces would light up when they saw me.  The public school system became human.  Giving up on this system became giving up on the 290 little faces I see every day.

These kids make this job amazing.  It’s a taxing job and the end of the week is welcoming, but I always look forward to seeing the kids walk through the door on Monday morning.  

Despite maddening budget shortfalls and nearly unmanageable class sizes, the teachers and other staff at my school take it in stride and are always far more positive than they by all rights should be.  There is not one teacher here whose class I would not want my child in.  They are each unique in their own style of teaching, and they are all fantastic at what they do.  I love to walk into their classrooms and see how their personalities shape their classroom structure and style.  It is teaching me that there is no one ideal way to teach, and I am learning the importance of having a variety of personality types in one place.  They stick together.  They rely on each other and learn from one another.  I hear stories from some of my AmeriCorps co-workers who won’t eat in their staff lunch rooms because the atmosphere is exceptionally negative.  I’ve never once felt discouraged or uncomfortable in our staff lounge.  Every teacher is glad to have me there and they are always willing to answer my questions.

This week, I begin my after-school programs.  I was originally slated to begin both of them, but I had to push one back another week after failing to consider the time it would take for the letter I’m sending home to first be translated into Spanish.  On Thursday, I will begin a knitting club, and the following Monday, I’ll start a photography club.  I get the joy of putting my ideas into action and developing projects and strategies for these clubs, but unfortunately the stress of having no budget to go along with them.  I am searching heavily for donations, but there is still a lot of work to be done.  But this is how it goes, right?  Some things come easily and other things we have to fight for; these often come wrapped in the same box.  

I don’t know what is going to come of this year.  I don’t know if I’ll stick around for another year, if the school will even want me, or if I’ll end up moving on to new things.  I don’t know if I’ll succeed in finding what I need for the programs I’m running.  And I don’t know if my principal will even be around at the end of the year considering how hard the district runs her into the ground every day with a workload crazier than any I’ve ever seen, and considering who some of my friends are, that is saying a lot.  I don’t know if I will still enjoy this job by the time June rolls around.  But right now, I love it.  My finances are miserably tight and most of my friends still live too far away for me to see, but despite that, I am having the time of my life.  I am so blessed, and I love my job!

Whirlwind

My life has never been so busy.  It’s stressful and overwhelming and I absolutely love it.  Of the twenty schools who have Partnership for Student Achievement AmeriCorps members, mine is one of the best at utilizing my position.  I love it.  I feel both needed and wanted.  I’m always on the move, always working on something.  Right now, I am preparing for my extended day activities to begin.  It is time-consuming, and trying to get donations of supplies is an overwhelming task for me.  

It has left me little time to reflect.  I think everyday about writing on this blog, but the space hasn’t come yet to unpack my life.  I haven’t even finished unpacking all my actual stuff.  

A blog post will come.  One of these days.  Maybe.

Remembering school

My new job is pulling up every memory I have of elementary school, particularly the earlier years.  A few years ago I wrote a poem about the Kindergarten memory I will never forget.  I thought, today, I would post it.  I think I might also write a letter to my first grade teacher.

Something I Remembered Today
October 20, 2009
revised October 28, 2009

We gathered on the carpet every day
to watch her read, or was it twice a week
(for how should I recall such old details?)
and cross-legged we sat enwrapped in awe
of words that painted worlds for little brains.
We whispered of the pictures we’d create
and watercolor with our fingertips.
Except that one day when the wall rang.
And when she picked the phone up off the hook
she wept at what came from the other end.
We sat so still with nothing much to say—
for we were only five.

Turns out you died.
But I don’t recall your name
and I can’t call back your face
and I can see you in our class photo
but can’t point out which boy is you.
Cause what can we remember in the year
when we were five?

Except for this—my Kindergarten memory.

Or not

My part 2 of the previous post was in process, but it got sidelined by a project with a deadline.  And now, heavily into my new job, I'm just not going to get around to finishing it.  Suffice it to say, it was more fantastic than expected to be at yearly meeting and I got to spend really amazing time with some great old friends and even run into people I haven't seen in years.  It was a week I desperately needed, and one I'm so thankful for.

My Quaker Soul part 1

On Tuesday, at 5:28am, I hopped onto my first of four buses that would make up my sunrise journey from Vancouver to Newberg. At 8:30, I stepped off the final bus and wandered on over to the business meeting going on in Bauman Auditorium on the George Fox Campus.

I have not been to yearly meeting in four years. In August of 2008, I packed up my car and drove 2,500 miles to central Kentucky for seminary. With that, I left behind the only kind of church I had ever known and I stumbled into a vast wilderness of baptists, methodists, christians (the restorative movement, not the general religion), baptists (did I say that already? There are SO many different types of baptists!), and countless others. When I finally found a church I decided to settle on, I ended up driving by nine other churches every Sunday before getting to mine. I had certainly landed in the Bible belt.

I loved that church, still do, but I longed for quiet. I longed for room in worship, moments of silence and stillness in transitions, prayers without musical soundtrack, and long spaces of communal silence and centering. Lexington has a local Friends meeting house, and I attended a few times. It was the friendliest group of people I met in Kentucky, and I loved it, but desiring a common denominator of faith in Jesus Christ drew me to the nearby Christian and Missionary Alliance church which I discovered because the pastor's wife was the campus pastor at Asbury. Even as I grew to love that church, I really grieved the lack of a church that understood how to marry distinctive Quaker ideology and disciplines with a Christocentric view of faith and practice.

By a landslide, the United Methodist church is the most represented denomination at Asbury Seminary. Other historically Wesleyan churches make up the next largest representations. As a Wesleyan/Holiness based school in the South it was a foreign world to me culturally and religiously. It turned out to be an impressively painful and incredibly healing and life-giving experience, but one of the things it taught me, or perhaps reiterated for me, was the reality that I am a Quaker in my soul. No matter where I live and what church I may be attending, I will always favor the Friends way of being, and I will always call myself a Quaker when people ask.

Asbury is not officially affiliated with any denomination. It is an institution controlled by a dusty hierarchy which has no real structure of accountability. In 2008, I arrived at a school that was in the midst of administrative turmoil that had reverberated to every sector Asbury touched and had left nothing unscathed. A president had resigned on the day of orientation the year before, and the divisive weeks and months around that event had left a spirit of contention on the campus so clear that I felt it even a year later. Far beyond the time it should have taken, Asbury finally found a new president in the Spring of 2009, and when he and his family began work in July, the school seemed to exhale for the first time in a few of years and was finally able to really heal.

For the first time in my life I was able to place my experiences with George Fox University, where I had received my undergraduate degree and begun my seminary degree, and with the Northwest Yearly Meeting, where I was born and raised, in a larger context. We college students liked to complain about Fox, and there are certainly things to complain about, but after moving, I saw what the accountability of George Fox with the yearly meeting meant and why it mattered. I thought about who that accountability really was to--not to the paid administrative powers that be in the yearly meeting, but to every member of the yearly meeting, because Quakers believe all have a voice that matters. I imagined the uproar in the July yearly meeting business meetings, where everyone is encouraged to attend, every voice is given the chance to be heard, and no decision is made until common ground and consensus is reached, if this had happened at George Fox. I began to understand in a deep way the spiritual wisdom of the Quaker way of business and why it's necessary, and I discovered the sandy foundation of power without accountability.

Despite these issues, Asbury is full of broken people whose greatest desire is to seek out the truth and freedom of Jesus Christ. I do not regret my time there, and made some of my best friendships at Asbury. Though it took my stubborn and willful soul three years to finally be comfortable with it, I find myself reflecting warmly on the high church liturgy in chapel and wondering at the tangible vulnerability of receiving communion from my peers and mentors (I'm so thankful it wasn't the sterile disposable-plastic-cup-and-single-wafer-wam-bam-thank-you-ma'am way of communion). But there were countless times when I wanted to sit there in silence in my Quaker practice of communion, a communion where we all partake in the quiet together and invite in the presence and voice of the holy spirit in community. At the very least, I wanted them to turn off the music. Imagine the heightened awareness of vulnerability if communion were given and received in silence. I still would like to see that happen.

Being at Asbury taught me just how foreign my common Quaker understandings and practices are to the greater protestant world. Seminary was the first time I saw discernment discussed as an individual practice. I couldn't understand the idea of healthy personal discernment without a stronger value on community discernment. I still don't believe it's possible. And the idea of having a rich faith without practicing bread and wine/juice communion was absolutely incomprehensible to some. My world was as strange to many there as their's was to me.

Learning about the different facets of Christianity was eye opening for me. Attending a capital "H" Holiness school while coming from a background that pre-dated it exposed me to what it must be like when outsiders come into the Friends church which is full of practices, structure, and language that is unknown to people outside of the Friends world. In the end, I found myself simply wanting to teach everyone the value of Quaker theology (because its Biblical basis makes it really more than just an ideology), and I admit I delighted in telling people that Richard Foster was a Quaker and had, in fact, pastored my church at one time, albeit before I was born.

I left Oregon with no plans of coming back. The only reason I did was because I ran out of money after graduation. I came back kicking and screaming, really. On my return, I wanted to try to plug into a new church, make my own new start. I found a place in Portland, but after a few months I discovered no matter where I tried, I craved my Quaker worship. I ended up getting a job that worked me on most Sundays, but on my first Sunday off, I gave into my need for some good Quaker silence and fellowship and made quite the nutty trek via bicycle and bus to one of the Northwest Yearly Meeting churches in Portland. Even though I had never been there before, it was like finally coming home. My soul really rested for perhaps the first time in nearly four years. I love my Methodist friends, my Catholic family members, my second home CMA folks, among others, and I find great value in their traditions, but my heart will always be with my yearly meeting Friends.

This past week, walking up River Street heading to my first business meeting since 2008 was a homecoming I hadn't realized I had longed so much for.

Sunday, June 17

Today:

Rodney King died at age 47.
Unofficial tallies declared the muslim brotherhood presidential candidate the winner in Egypt.
Portlanders marched for equality and gay pride while many others watched.
At least 21 people died in church bombings and countless wounded in Nigeria.
It's Father's Day.
A man was rescued this morning after clinging to a cliff all night after a kayaking accident.
Justin Bieber won a Canadian music award.
Madagascar 3 was the top selling movie.

Do you ever wonder what is happening all around the world at the same exact second?  You're drinking coffee.  Someone else is hiking up Mt. McKinley.  A child is sleeping after a long day walking miles to gather water.  A young woman is in between "customers," working the line in the red-light district in east India. Countless families are sitting down at the table for dinner.  Countless others are scrounging on their own.  A baby was born, a child just died, an elderly woman has just passed away after a full life.

We can't even begin to fathom the vastness of our world, even if we are aware of it.  The world is so big and so small all at the same time.  It is immensely connected and astonishingly disconnected.

And here we are.

As we wait. May 11

Today, I read David's pleading words to God, "Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror, while you, O Lord--how long?

For much of my childhood I would hear in great abundance about the number of psalms that praise God for his glory and righteousness and grace. That's what I knew the psalms to be. But one particularly difficult summer in college I turned to the psalms for solace and discovered, to my surprise, that many of the psalms beg for God's mercy, plead for protection, and expose fear and frustration.  And they reveal the vulnerability we confront when we come face to face with our inability to see the future.

A number of David's psalms were written in the midst of what, for David, was a great unknown. Wandering in the wilderness, running from Saul, David had no idea how long he would be stuck out there hiding and fighting. Scholars have estimated David drifted around in the mediterranean wilderness for fifteen to twenty years. Anointed by a prophet as a youth, appointed musician to the king, and defeater of Goliath and the Philistines, David was run out of town and spent years without a place to call home. Undoubtedly, it must have felt like it was never-ending. His psalms give us a glimpse into just how hard it must have been to wait without end.

Waiting is a necessity of building maturity, but its clash with human nature makes it frustrating and its entirely foreign relationship with American culture makes it maddening. Whether we're waiting to get better from an illness, waiting for our child or brother or sister to get a clue, waiting for an important phone call, or waiting for our life to start, the process (and it is a constant process) can make us question our very existence.  Waiting is frustrating, though, not primarily because of the delay in getting what you want. It is frustrating precisely because we are always aware of the lingering possibility and fear that we could be waiting forever.

The piece of the process that makes us (or at least me) want to, at times, rip our hair out is that foggy state of limbo--that blind walk through the wilderness with no map to guide us.  I wonder if David ever questioned his call to be king, if he had moments where he thought maybe he had it wrong. As years continued to pass by and he kept trudging around the untamed land, day after day, week after week, year after year, his vision must have blurred now and then.

But it turns out there is a lot of waiting in the Bible. Paul hoped for years to go to Rome, never knowing if he would finally make it.  Moses kept throwing plagues at Pharaoh and Pharaoh continually denied the Israelites their freedom.  (It turns out plagues only have a ten percent success rate in delivering freedom.) The widow waited for her imminent death before Elijah showed up in her life and brought God with him, or maybe I should say, before God showed up and brought Elijah.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. "...while you, O Lord--how long?"

When circumstances are beyond our control, we simply wait. We wait for our health to come back to us in the midst of sickness.  We wait for our finances to catch up with our bills as we diligently try to control our budget. We wait for a good job to show up in our seemingly endless search. We wait for miracles.

Some time ago I read the quote, "Everything will be all right in the end.  If it's not all right, it's not the end." David's story is great evidence of that.  Of course, David didn't have a fairy tale ending. He slept with another man's wife, killed that man who had been very loyal to him in order to cover his own ass when consequences of his bad choice spiraled out of his control, and his son, Absalom, ran him out of town.  But the story of his wilderness wanderings did come to a close and after years of wondering if Saul was ever going to die, David finally became king.

In our fast-paced, technology driven culture, our theology around waiting is poor at best. For the past year I have been waiting for my life.  I'm waiting to have my independence back, waiting for a job that I'm passionate about and that gives me good experience while paying me enough to live and cover all my bills every month. In the meantime, I work a job I have no passion for, am deferring a number of student loans, and I live with my parents in a very tiny house.  It's less than perfect, to understate it, and I find myself constantly wondering what God is doing and where God is.  As I think about that I realize just how fickle my faith is. God is great when I love my life but when the fog roles in and I can't see where I'm going, I think maybe I don't really understand God at all.  And then I see the inconsistency and wonder just what do I base my faith on, anyway?  I want to have that blind faith that fully trusts no matter what my circumstances are.

But then I read the psalms and I see David ask the same questions I want to ask. If David, who is described as a man after God's own heart, can ask those questions, maybe I can, too. Maybe wondering what is going on is part of faith and part of growing.  What I learn from David is this is not where faith ends.  David's pleas always seem to be followed by a note of recognition of God's faithfulness and holiness.  Psalm ten begins with, "Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" But in verse fourteen, a shift comes with, 'But you see! Indeed you note trouble and grief.'

Waiting is trying to our patience, to our spirit, to our faith.  For those of us who desire that heart of God, we tend to believe even in endless waiting we will ideally never question what is going on with God.  But what if that's wrong? Maybe for me, for us all, the object in faith is not reaching a point where we have no more confusion and questions.  Maybe it's having the questions but making sure we don't stop in the middle.  Maybe the mission is simply to follow the questions through to the other end of the psalm.

Wonder, 4/28

On the MAX today, in downtown on my way out of Portland, twin eight year old girls got on the train with their mother and their mother's friend. Their eyes were lit up like they had just walked into a candy store, and energy was bursting from them as if they were about to explode the moment the train would actually start to move. They chose the sideways facing bench and sat up on their knees, their feet hanging off the seats, their hands and faces glued to the window, mesmerized with wonder and newness at the strange morphing scenery from downtown to the railway station and all the way up through north Portland, which offers a big park, old houses, abandoned graffitied buildings, and an array of particularly sketch hotels with flashy neon signs, all along the way dotted with bars and restaurants and at least one organic grocery store (they're not just for rich people in Portland). Right next to their seats was the junction of the train car, and with the slightest turn one would call to the other as the accordion walls would crunch together on one side and stretch apart on the other and the ribbed lines on the floor would deviate all at once in a semi-circle. Oos and awes followed and then right back to the window. Numerous times in their wonder their mother had to tell them to settle down. They were clearly wired with excitement.

With straight nearly-black hair and thin-framed glasses, they reminded me of me at that age (except I had the stylish glasses of turn-of-the-decade 1990), when everything was grand and new and sparkled with the adventure and anticipation of the unknown. Whatever was around the corner was clearly going to be amazing. How could it not?! I have never forgotten that wonder, what it feels like surging through your body. As I sat there, delighting in their excitement, I remembered being that excited on the MAX at their age and I wished I could experience life like that again.

But wonder like that doesn't come around much anymore as an adult. Life gets heavy and full of responsibilities, both personal and community. The sadness of the world's depths of darkness weighs on us. Wonder doesn't come in giddy energy. Instead, I think as we get older and busier and more full of things to know, wonders come in the small moments, in the whispers, in the split seconds, in the every day, little spaces of goodness and beauty.  Sometimes we have to look for them. Sometimes they look for us. But now and then they just show up on the train with their own wonder to share and remind us why it's good to always know children and to once in a while be a little giddy. When we see the world through their eyes, we remember it is spectacular.  

As I was getting off that train I wanted to turn and say to them, never lose that spirit! But I didn't. I just walked on by and stepped off the train. I hope they had a fun day.  And I hope, by some chance, that I may see them again on the MAX.  Hours later, I am still marveling, and it is still making me smile.

When it matters, April 25

Being beautiful isn’t about what you wear or about making sure you burn more calories every day than you eat.  Living a life that is floating somewhere in Limbo is teaching me a few things about the depth and meaning of beauty.  Yesterday, in a conversation about this strange land of foggy limbo I’m in, a friend said to me, “This is just a season.”  It is good to be reminded of that, but at the same time I responded, “I would just like to know when this season is going to end.”  Sometimes it is hard for me to see the beauty in life.  I can dress so that I look really good, but I have realized that has no bearing on feeling beautiful--feeling good about myself, yes, but not feeling beautiful.  Perhaps it’s because I am me or perhaps it’s because I’m 30 and not 21 anymore, but in my life beauty has become something that strikes my heart.  Beauty has a depth and a meaning so much better than what the world will have me believe, and it can be seen in little moments, not just epic booms.  Beauty has to be found in little things I see each day.  The days in which I’m most distressed about my life are days in which I have blocked the ability to see beautiful things, or maybe a better way to say that is the ability to see things beautifully.  

Life ceases to be enjoyable when beauty ceases to exist.  Sometimes we have to work at seeing beauty, we have to be intentional.  And, yes, there may be days here and there where we simply can’t see.  

Today, I’m going out to Portland.  I’m going to go to Stumptown where I will enjoy the beauty of getting around when I can’t afford a car (because before this I lived in a place where that was very difficult), and where I will enjoy the beauty of a place that values a prize-winning cup of coffee even more so than mass profit.  They really do make the best mocha I have ever had.  And then I will go meet up with a friend. Sometimes I get bored in Portland, because overall, it is not new for me, and I want a new adventure, but the truth is that Portland is an amazing city.  It is beautiful to look at.  You never know what kind of people you will see on the street and on the bus.  Its unique character shines in the funky local business that can be found everywhere, not the least of which is the most amazing bookstore in the world.  So today, instead of being disappointed that I’m bumming around Portland, I will look for something interesting, something beautiful.  I may still be a little disappointed, but I will not let it rule my day.

April 17

Standing at the transit station today, I watched an airplane take off from the airport, soaring up and up into the sky.  I dreamed to be on it.  I have no idea where it was going, but I didn’t care.  I just wanted to be flying somewhere, anywhere, far away.  Just a little bit earlier, I sat on the MAX as it pulled into a stop and thought, I wish I were in a different city, a new city.  The plane was so inviting.  And then I turned around and saw my bus coming, which would simply take me into the next town.  It was such a let down.

What does it mean to be a woman?

April 9

I do not believe women can only find ultimate worth in getting married and having children.  There are many women in the world, and each of us have our own paths to walk.  Marriage is one path.  Marriage and children is another.  Singleness, widowhood, convent life are yet other ways of being.  My path right now is a path of singleness, a fact which I don’t generally have a problem with.  I love being single.  I love the freedom to go places, do things, travel, move without having to consider a whole other life of dreams and desires independent from mine.  The single, childless life is every way as worthwhile as the life who has birthed a multitude of children.

Every life is valuable.  

And yet, I found myself, today, believing someone else’s life was better than mine based largely on the fact that she is married and has children (really great children).  It was so inherent that I didn’t even think about why I thought her life was better until I took a moment to consider it.  The reason surprised me.  And yet, maybe it didn’t.  My friends who have children of their own, whether the children are six months or thirty years, speak about pregnancy, childbearing, and the emotional and physical ups and downs of parenting in profound ways that leave me in awe and starkly aware of the self-centeredness of my life.  I feel, perhaps strangely, less like an adult, and, not so strangely (unfortunately), less like a woman.  

That I would feel less like a woman is not really a surprise.  The value of womanhood has been defined by numerous cultures, in many cases for thousands of years, by the ability to procreate.  In some cultures in history, a woman who could not or did not have children held no purpose in society.  Such an understanding has been long pervasive in the church, so much so that today it saturates the mind without even being overtly discussed.  It simply permeates the air.  

I don’t know what to do about this disconnect between what my head believes and what my heart feels.  I don’t believe my life is any less valuable than this other person’s life.  But I find, despite my own disapproval, that I do see my life as less worthy, and I’m at a loss with this, because it goes against everything I ever want to teach young women about where their worth comes from.  

I’m not sure how this needs to change, but I know that it does.  Perhaps first we need safe space where we can even begin to talk about it.  There are too few safe spaces for women.  It is worth the consideration.  This whole discussion is.

April 9

I did not get to go to church today.  It’s the first--and, I hope, only--Easter Sunday that has ever happened.  Instead, I worked all day.  But I am so happy to say that after three months of working on Sundays, I will finally get to do some church this week, because the place I had started going to is going to be doing Wednesday evening events here and there.  I hate being unable to go to church.  I’m so relieved have something to participate in again.  

But that’s not to say today was a bust.  Yesterday was a crazy day at work due to Easter brunch being served.  That combined with people going out and going to families’ homes to eat made for a rather light work day today.  And to top it off, it was sunny and in the 60s.  I may not have been able to go out in it much, but it was just nice to have good sunlight streaming through the windows.  Living in the Northwest makes people very thankful for the sun!

picture

my niece turned six months old this month. :)

March 24

The sun has come out today!  Even better, it's supposed to be close to 60 degrees, AND I don't work until four.  I'm looking forward to some good time replenishing some much needed vitamin D.  First, though, I get to skype with a friend who is back in Kentucky.  Really looking forward to that.

March 21, blah

I constantly think about writing on my blog.  I have even started a number of posts only to stop with the intention of getting back to them, but in the end, they are left abandoned.  My life is in a lot of flux, but nothing of meaning to me is happening.  I spent five years learning and working toward something I was passionate for, but while those five years gave me a lot of academic experience, I finished without the on-the-ground, real-world experience to actually get me the kind of job I would enjoy.  Instead, I ended up back on the other side of the country camping out at my parents' house indefinitely.  These days I'm living in the netherworld.  I don't know how long I'll be here.  I don't know what it will take to get out.  It's foggy and I can't really see what's going on or what's ahead. I'm working a job my heart is not in and that is really hard for me.  I want so badly to do something I love.

Today, I feel utterly miserable.  Just being honest.  While I would chalk part of that up to my current walk through a wilderness I can't figure out how to navigate, I think I can chalk a lot more of it up to the absolutely miserable weather we are having!  In some parts of western Oregon it snowed quite a bit ("quite a bit" being relative) today; in other parts, it dusted.  But here in Portland it was just freezing cold and raining the entire day.  It has been dreary for the last week and a half straight with only a few days of sun preceding that, before which was another long stretch of cold misery, and it's killing my spirit .  If we don't get some good sunshine soon, I'm going to waste away to a listless, soulless nothing.  This kind of weather didn't used to bother me so much.  These days, though, it makes me tired of simply existing.

March 6

The other day, I was watching Adele's Live at Royal Albert Hall.  It is brilliantly entertaining, and near the end, she sings a cover of "To Make You Feel My Love."

Life for me and for some of my communities is in a long and unknown process of flux and transition and a line from that song (a Bob Dylan original, I might add) is a perfect description of life these days.

"The winds of change are blowing wild and free."

I may expound on that later, but I'll leave it here for now.

February 18, friendship

Sitting next to me on my desk is a dark grey stone that has written on it in black marker, "beloved beauty grace sb 2008." My friend, Sarah, gave this to me the morning I left for Kentucky. This stone travelled 2,500 miles with me to Wilmore. It was with me in my car accident and miraculously not thrown through a broken window and lost somewhere between the westbound and eastbound sides of I-64.  It sat on my desk with me during my three emotional, difficult, beautiful, and very definitive years in seminary at Asbury (I think I even brought it with me for my three-month internship in Toronto), and then travelled the 2,500 miles back to Portland with me last summer. I cleaned off my desk today and there it was. It made me smile and made me ever so grateful for Sarah's gracious and beautiful friendship with me.  I love my friends.  They have profoundly changed my life.

February 10

I’ve had a very up and down week.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually get to it.  For now, though, I must sleep.  I have to work at 4am.  But I do get to wear new shoes to work. That makes 4am ever so slightly appealing.  And a little video from when my niece was here earlier this week.

February 7, a commissioning

I was sitting on the bus today waiting for it to leave when a text came through my phone.  A friend of mine was sending me a picture, and to my surprise, it worked.  They usually don’t.  When I opened it, I saw my dear friend and mentor, whom I love more than words can say, kneeling at the altar in Estes at Asbury being commissioned and prayed over in all her academic regalia (her penguin outfit, as she calls it) and blessed on her new journey as Vice President of Community Formation.  The picture made me so happy that it made me cry.  

So Marilyn, a little prayer from me, too.  May God bless you and keep you, and I pray that God gives you strength and a growing heart and the vision to see and discern the Spirit and beauty in your life and work.  

And thank you, Leigh, for being a little rebellious during prayer and sending me that picture. :)  I have really good friends.

January 28

The sun was out today.  Bright and blinding, like it owned the place.  It didn’t feel real, even though I wandered around downtown Portland, bathing in it.  It has rained and poured so much in the last few weeks that when the sun finally came out, no one was really sure what to do.  I think it’s supposed to be dry again tomorrow.  Maybe the sun will show up, too.  After pondering it for a while, I decided to take it as encouragement that a little warmer weather is coming.  May be a few months yet down the road, but it will come.  I generally prefer winter over summer.  I don’t like hot weather.  But as a bus rider, I have to say standing in the freezing cold isn’t the most favorable way to wait for a bus.

As I wandered around Portland, I thought maybe it would be fun to grab some Voodoo Doughnuts and bring them home.  I walked over to discover they only take cash.  When I went to the ATM, I realized I didn’t know my pin, because I haven’t used it yet.  So I called my mom to see if she could find it in my room.  It took a while, but she finally found it.  Or at least she found what I wanted her to find.  

Which I realized after trying three more times was actually the paper my card came with and the number I was punching in was the last four digits of my card number.  In my frustration, I went home to find the paper with my pin on it, which I was surprised to find in a place that made sense.  Then I walked over to my bank, put my card in the ATM machine, attempted to change my pin and the machine told me I had attempted my pin too many times and it decided for my security it would keep the card.  How nice.  It turns out, the bank isn’t going to open that ATM machine back up until Monday morning, wherein I will already be on my way to George Fox Seminary to use the library.  I may or may not be going somewhere on Tuesday that requires me to leave before the bank is open and I have to work at 4am on Wednesday so who knows when I’ll actually make it to the bank.  

So a nice and peaceful day turned out to be comically frustrating.  sigh

At least the sun was out.

January 26

Today, I am re-emerging into general society.  I haven’t been sick.  I haven’t been traveling.  I’ve been reading.  Since living in Kentucky, I’ve had Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons sitting on my book shelf and I brought it back with me when I moved.  I recently picked up Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. For a while, I was really enjoying it, but it began, at first ever so lightly, to weigh on my soul.  Soon enough I was simply trying, almost desperately, to finish it before I picked up another book.  But I’ll be damned if The Fountainhead’s dreariness dragged me down so much that the time I spent with that book at each interval waned a little more every time until I just couldn’t pick it up anymore, as if it had become a bag of bricks (which is all the more figurative because I was actually listening to it on audio).  I do hope at some point to be able to finish it, if for no other reason than to say I have read it.  Maybe only for that reason.

So I finally succumbed to my greater desire to start the Tom Wolfe book.  I’ve been told if I want to understand what life is like on a big state or private secular university campus (important if I ever end up working at one), this book will let me know.  And for the last week, this book absorbed me.  All I wanted to do was read it.  I didn’t want to go out.  I didn’t want to work (I did, of course), and any break or bus ride I had, I was reading it.  I devoured it.  It was crude.  The dialogue was true to college life dialogue, which is to say riddled with likes and bad grammar and heavily peppered with the various uses of the F word.  But it was a look into the undergraduate life of any pick of large universities countrywide.  It is actually a thinly veiled depiction of Duke (complete with a top-notch basketball team), where the author’s daughter went to school.  And it was very intriguing.  

I finished the book last night and now I am coming out of my cocoon, ever so slowly, my eyes slowly adjusting to the light, because, hey, the sun is out in Portland today!  If only I were coming out with beautiful butterfly wings, but it’s not that kind of cocoon. That process of re-emerging after living in a book is always a strange one, and sometimes slower than it seems it should be.  I am remembering what I found important.  I am paying attention to the news again (such as my friend’s friend finally being rescued this week after being held hostage by Somali pirates!).  And I’m thinking about what I want to do tomorrow, because I get paid.

The next book I’m going to pick up is Robert Gilmore’s Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics.  For some reason, I don’t think it will be quite as much of a page turner.  I’m also going to delve into the gospel of John, maybe even with a group of college students.  But not from a big state university.  Not yet, anyway.

And I’m going to keep praying that a job I’ll love shows up as I continue to search for more meaningful work.  Sigh.

January 19

Over the last couple of days, snow fell over the Willamette Valley and surrounding areas intermittently and unevenly.  Yesterday, those of us here in Vancouver finally got some.  It was very wet and didn’t stick around longer than about twelve hours or so, but it was beautiful.  However, temperatures have warmed up, and now it is pouring.  It has been pouring all day.  Low-lying areas of streets are closed, people are getting into ridiculous car crashes, and in the rural and coastal areas, whole towns are flooding.  Some school districts are even closed down because of it.

One may think, but doesn’t it rain all the time there?  Well, sort of.  It does rain, but it doesn’t usually pour here for hours or days without stopping.  It showers and then stops and then showers and then stops.  But a couple times a winter, it does this.  Our streets are far better equipped for this kind of rain than most places around the country, but nonetheless, they don’t handle this much rain well.  The storm drains can only handle so much.  I will be leaving to walk to the bus stop in about thirty minutes.  I am trying to mentally prepare myself for wet feet.  I can not afford new shoes that won’t leak.  I may need to bring an extra pair of socks.  I am at least thankful that I am going to my Vancouver job where I have to take one bus instead of the two buses and two MAX trains (and ample waiting time for each) it takes for me to get to Clackamas.

It’s good to be back home.  

I guess.

January 18

I woke up early this morning to find snow on the ground.  Snow is a curious phenomenon.  That the sky appears abnormally bright in the middle of a snowy night is endlessly fascinating for me and so intriguingly beautiful.  Today I am thankful for a little snow, even though it didn’t hang out very long.  This week I am thankful for the opportunity to go to chapel on the Warner Pacific campus.  How it feeds my soul to be there.  I will go into that more in my next post (the one I was going to write today but got intercepted by Zelda on the Wii--oops).  

I found this the other day on Pinterest.  I absolutely love it.

January 16

It has been an interesting last few days.  This past week I got to hang out with one of my co-workers from Victoria’s Secret who I really enjoy working with.  We wandered around downtown Portland, ate at a Persian restaurant, went to Powell’s, and then went over to an art store where I bought a sketchbook and some pencils.  It has been YEARS since I’ve really wanted to draw.  I have decided I’m going to start drawing what I see (a different form of taking pictures) again.  It has been a long time since I’ve done that.

But something more interesting has happened this past week.  I have discovered something great about getting older.  As we get older, we begin to get wrinkles, we get pains in random places at unexplained times, we can’t stay up really late and still function normally the next day.  But one of the great things, I discovered, about getting older is you can run into people you haven’t seen in years.  A part of me finds it strange that I have lived enough years to be able to go years without seeing or talking to someone I once knew in my adult life, but mostly I just find it fascinating.  I was at Warner Pacific on Thursday and unexpectedly ran into an old friend I had worked at Walgreens with.  She had transferred her credits there and was finishing up school.  We spent the afternoon chatting and beginning to catch up and it was such fun.  And then on Saturday I went to the birthday party of a friend I haven’t seen since I was in high school.  We used to go to church together.  It is fascinating and really enjoyable to see how people change.  I think I like us all better now that we’re thirty.  We’re so much more comfortable with ourselves.  Of course, we still have a lot of life to live and a long way to go.  But I am glad I’m not in my 20’s anymore.

And yesterday I started my new job.  So far, I like it.  Back for more training today.  

January 12

I haven’t written in a couple days.  I worked a ten hour shift that started at 2am the other day and then yesterday they used my on-call, which they almost never do.  That’s okay; I can always use the hours.  There is nothing terribly interesting going on and the job search is stagnant right now.  I’m here bewildered at just how I’m going to get out of this slump.  I don’t see the way out which leaves me with only the ability to trust in God.  These days I am walking through an unlighted tunnel, not even a crack in the stone, so I am feeling my way along the wall and relying on God that I’m moving forward and not walking on active train tracks.  These days seem small and insignificant, so I think I will switch my focus and write what I am thankful for.  

I am thankful for the ability to knit.  It keeps my hands busy and stimulates my brain.  I love to watch things turn from a strand of yarn into something decorative and wearable.  It reminds me of the process of turning a blank piece of paper into an intricate work of art.  I am thankful to have access to great documentaries on Netflix.  The ability to still learn about new things when I have such limited funds is a blessing.  I am thankful for the Bible because reading it is such a rich experience and I love the picture it gives me into the people of God and of God herself.  The Psalms are beautiful.  I am thankful that far from being a crutch, my religion shows me a much more hopeful and less despairing understanding of humanity and life than the selfish and lifeless picture of human kind in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead which I am reading right now, a particularly interesting sentiment considering the atheistic bent of that book.  Though I have a great desire to move away and will do so as soon as possible, every time I ride the MAX over the Steel Bridge over the Willamette, I am so thankful to be in and from a city through which a river runs.  It is so beautiful, especially when the sun is beginning to set and shines its rich, warm light over the bridges. I am thankful to have spent time with my friend, Amalija, this week and thankful that she has moved into Portland for the next couple months.  I am thankful for the small exchanges of conversation I have sometimes over gmail with my good friend Marilyn.

And I am thankful for the opportunity today to go to chapel at Warner Pacific.  It has been awhile.

January 9

I wandered around Portland today with my great friend, Amalija, which included three cups of Persian tea at a Persian restaurant.  That made me so happy.  I’m not going to say anything more about it right now, though, because I have to get up in three hours so that I can be to work by 2am.  Glad I have two degrees so I can rendezvous at Victoria’s Secret in the wee hours of the morning.

January 8

We had a very tumultuous night in the house last night.  It was bad.  And I didn’t want to write anything.

However, I had today (Sunday) off and it was the first time in five or six weeks that I’ve been able to go to church.  I’ve been excited for the opportunity to go and after last night (which spilled into this morning--it was one of those situations whose residual effects will be felt for days), I was all the more relieved for the opportunity. 

Church has gotten a bad rap, and we young people (yes I’m 30, but I still consider myself young) are rather impressively cynical about church, a cynicism that is equal opportunity between church goers and non church goers.  But I would like to put in a good word for it.

We need church.  We don’t need every church, and we don’t need everything that’s in church.  But we need church.  We need it because we need each other and we need to know that we all know we need Jesus.  I walked into church today feeling distant and sad and beat down.  It took a couple minutes, but soon enough someone who recognized me from the month before came over and smiled and started to chat and then another and then the pastor briefly introduced himself and found out he knew me from a few years ago (seminary connections).  Within moments of the first smile of recognition, my whole body relaxed and then I felt my spirit begin to ease.  Pretty soon I felt, for the first time in a long time, like I was coming back to myself.  

At the church I’ve been attending, they do dinner before the service.  It has convinced me that this is the only way church should be done--immediately preceded or succeeded by a meal. There is little more disarming than eating food together.  It’s hardly glamorous.  True, you can all sit at a table and never talk, but unless you’re in prison, that’s unlikely to be the case.  There are no pretenses in meal conversation.  And in my church, if nothing else, you can always talk about something curious that happened in Portland recently, like the large group of people I saw today in Pioneer Square gathered together in coats and sweatshirts and...their underwear.  Don’t worry; they had shoes and knee socks on, and it was a balmy 45 degrees outside.  The longer you sit at the table the more at ease everyone becomes, and by the end of the meal, it seems only fitting to do some worship.  The transition is strangely almost seamless and the ability to worship along side each other feels natural and unassuming.

Today I needed church.  I needed the people.  I needed the conversation.  I needed the sermon.  I was so glad I went to church today.  Tomorrow I get to have lunch with a great friend.  This week may have started out with a bomb, but I think it’s turning around pretty quickly.

January 6

A great friend of mine moved from Newberg to Portland today.  This translates as her moving from a place I can’t get to, to a place that is easily accessible by bus.  I’ll be heading out to church in Portland on Sunday evening, something I am very excited about because I have not been able to go for over a month.  This friend will be joining me, and then we are getting together for lunch on Monday and hanging out for a while afterward.  I can’t explain how happy I am for this.  I have a lot of friends, friends who are scattered all across the country and the world.  Unfortunately, none of my close friends are near enough for me to see often, or even seldom.  I have not hung out with a friend since my trip into Newberg in September.  

While I don’t feel expressly lonely, it is an isolated existence in some ways.  I spend the majority of my time with people who don’t know me and don’t care about who I am.  They care only about how productive I can be for the company.  It is no wonder I feel so discouraged and frustrated.  It is a discouraging way to live!  While I’m not quitting Victoria’s Secret any time soon, I can say I’ve had enough of working jobs where I’m replaceable, so replaceable that the atmosphere of the place doesn’t change from one worker to the next.  I want to matter in a a job and I want my job to matter to me.  Better yet, I want to love what I do.

I sure do pray that things change for the better soon.  Especially because I have more bills coming due soon to pile onto the ones I already can’t pay.  Dear God, I owe a lot of money because of college and seminary.  All I ask is for paychecks to cover them.  Of course, I’d also like to ask for the finances to pay them all back much sooner than I could dream for.  Specifically in the form of, oh...hmm...Sidney Crosby?

January 5

Today, I feel more hope.  I don’t know why.  I don’t know what drags me into the spiraling abyss of despair or what pulls me out of it.  But today I had the day off and I spent it knitting while listening to The Fountainhead on my iPod or watching the documentary “Buck,” which is fabulous, by the way.  Using my hands and creating something, whether it’s a knit hat from a pattern or a portrait painted from oils (which I haven’t done in years) or a clay sculpture (which I also haven’t done in years and particularly miss) is like food for my soul.  Working at Victoria’s Secret (anything that is driven by profit) slowly and steadily starves my soul and once in a while I remember that creativity I can touch begins to negate that the way exercise counteracts laziness.

Note to self: always be creating. 

I used to wonder at the idea that my fellow artist friends who are Christians would talk about feeling they were worshiping when they were painting or sculpting or whichever, because I never felt a sense of worship when I did art, and then I finally realized it wasn’t any one painting or another, or this bowl or that alabaster carving that was the connection.  It was the very act of creating that connects artists to God.  Always be creating.  Of course.  It would make sense.  After all, wouldn’t God simply wither away if she ever for even a moment stopped creating? The creativity of God is astounding.

Also I got Mastering Skateboarding in the mail today, so I opened it up, read the brief words on balancing and feet positions and pushing the skateboard forward, and then went out and practiced.  It’s so much fun.

January 4

The second morning is always harder than the first.  It’s almost, but not quite, 3am right now.  I’m up to be to work by four.  I did the same thing yesterday.

As the days trudge along, I’m finding myself more and more discouraged and frustrated.  I graduated in May with hopes of moving onto a job I would enjoy doing, even if it had some great difficulties.  Instead, I had to move back home because I couldn’t find a job and then it took me four months to find a job and it ended up being sales support at Victoria’s Secret at a mall it takes me nearly two hours to get to by bus.  Over time, this job is beginning to wear me out.  Without work that has meaning, I feel my soul starting to wither and a feeling if despair beginning to creep in. And so, I think I might try a little something new.  I think I’m going to do a series of posts of what it’s like to struggle with faith and trust and the work of God in the midst of great frustration and confusion.  

This is not a moral-to-the-story-solution kind of writing.  It will just be me and my thoughts and feelings.  And maybe it will help me gain a little perspective.  With no great guides and mentors around these days, perspective is a little harder to come by.  

Time to continue preparing for work.  Until next time.