Veterans Day on a Creative Morning

Just when the last spark of hope seems to be surrendering to lack of oxygen, a few words can gently blow in through the ethernet, scrawled in shaky ink and offer a breathe that whispers the gray from it's surface and the heat glows visible for a moment. 

When I began writing blog posts I had no plan. I was just putting my thoughts on glass and sending them to the vague world of the internet. More people have read what I have written than I ever imagined. My post about my experience as a student in a class about the Vietnam War was published in a magazine called The Veteran. And just when I needed it most, the editor of that magazine sent me this note from a reader:

And on Veteran's Day, I attended a breakfast talk delivered by a co-worker at an event called Creative Mornings. She gave a powerful multimedia performance of imagery, acting, and speaking that moved a crowd of a few hundred. There is power in creating something. So the fact that I created something that meant enough to this man, who has lived such a long life, to take the time to write this note buoyed my spirit. Maybe I am creative in a way that can make a difference. 

Below, I have pasted some quotes from the posts that I have written so far. If they pique your interest, please click on them to see the context. Thank you to everyone who has supported me during this process of learning to blog, to write, and to share.

If I was born a blank slate, it did not take long for the world to write the word WAR uponme. 

This has been true since the beginning of time. We can be as one. It’s madness that only the prophets, the artists, and the poets seem to be able to see this.
  

Whenever one of the disciples would ask Jesus a very direct question about the nature of G-d or heaven, he would typically answer with a parable. Often the followers seemed frustrated by this. But Jesus understood that he could never explain the true nature of these concepts without the use of imagery. 

Still looking directly into my eyes, Dad firmly said,” You have to assert yourself.” He continued on with some tough love advice. “Have some self-confidence. They got your order wrong. Make them fix it.  You are going to have to standup for yourself for the rest of your life. You can start now.”

Then we saw the sign. “Public Welcome, Sunset Worship Service.” Then I noticed the 8’ tall wooden cross that had been planted like a beach umbrella in the sand.

The universe itself was about to pay tribute to our divine creator, so what did we need loud musicand amplifiers for?

I was still a lump of clay plopped on a scooter.  I could still become anything. The only thing is, I cannot think of a photo that captures that transformational moment for me. Maybe that moment hasn’t happened yet.  Maybe I’m just finding myself right now. 

Bigotry has a universal lexicon.

We have not been back to China. It’s been Ten years. We traveled there to bring home our beautiful, spirited daughter. I walked to a fruit stand to get some bananas and got more than I bargained for. A lesson and a gift. I got a lesson in generosity and honesty from a stranger. The gift came from the man who clutched at my shorts and begged for help. The gift came in the form of his unforgiving wails as I left him tumbling down steps and his tin cup that clang-clanged out with each bounce downward. Those sounds have haunted me. And I hope they always will. They are the sounds of humanity.

Under no circumstance within my near infinite imagination can I arrive at a scenario in which the officers ignore my wife and I end up dead. This, my friends, is white privilege. And it stinks.

It was unconventional. And if I am ever in a job interview and they ask me about a moment that I am proud of from my work experience, I will tell the story of Thomas. I’m proud that I was open-minded, that I recognized the strengths of everyone involved, and facilitated the series of decisions that allowed Thomas to keep knocking us out with his smile for a few more years.

Thomas later passed away from complications of HIV. I will never forget him.  May he rest in peace.

I learned not to judge people too quickly, as I had done with her when she barked at the class and gave me an F. Ms. White taught me how to be a better writer. But she also showed me why it was important to give my best effort. Earning a top grade was hard work. But more importantly I discovered that working hard and asking for help made me happy with the finished product. 

Happiness 

with a big circle around it. 

I was tethered to a boat, but alone. Everything else seemed to fall away. All that existed in the moment was me and the water. The hum of the engine seemed like distant white noise. I would lose myself in the joy of skating over a lake at 30 miles per hour.It felt like 60 miles per hour. At this speed, the water was as solid as it appeared.  I could trust it to hold me up. And I could push myself and test the limits of the surface tension to hold me as I made deeper and deeper turns back toward the center of the wake.

It feels like the earth is wobbling on its axis. The stars don’t line up in the sky quite the way they used to. I need to get to the ocean so I can look at the horizon and make sure it’s still there. Is there still a sharp line that separates the ocean from the sky? Or has the sea begun to leak into the atmosphere blurring the delineation between heaven and earth? I need evidence that our world is not tumbling off course. I need assurance that the sun is still holding fast to us, not letting us slip from the safety of its gravitational embrace. 

Maybe tomorrow the earth will right itself. The stars will take their normal positions. Maybe the sun will shine a reminder my way telling me that it is holding fast to us, that we are safe, and that my mother is just a phone call away.

my date and I made a quick exit out the backdoor, practically falling on one another. 

Laughing out loud.

Emotional soot lingering

Beneath the visible structure

I’m sinking.  I’m sinking right through the floor of that bus. 

But she was a livewire!  She grabbed at things and put things in her mouth like she wanted to take it all in, hold on fast, and ingest the whole world! Ha!  Failing to thrive?

The world is not fair.

The puppet master has incredible leverage.

Snaps are meant to disappear.

I didn’t start out in Terry’s class a tabula rasa. I had words and phrases. I had images. I had music. But his class didn’t just add new information to my slate. He taught met hat I was an ever expanding canvas. New space was being created all the time. Clean, white space to paint colorful new ideas. Blank space not just to record music but to recognize its power. I learned that ideologies were not meant to be permanent tattoos. I learned to find confidence in my voice. And that I could use my voice to speak up in the hope that there will be a day when we come into this world and it etches only the word LOVE on our slate. That our world will not even have a need for the word PEACE because it has no opposite.   

I hope that you hear my mother’s voice. I hope she dials straight into your voting booth from her cell phone in heaven and reminds you to vote compassionately for social justice, for equality, for education, and religious freedom. She will remind you what a special person you are and how important your voice is. Let it be heard today.

My Mother and this Election

Hillary Clinton suffered a disadvantage over the last several months. It’s an advantage that Barack Obama enjoyed during both of his Presidential campaigns. My mother was here, on this earth, voicing her advocacy for her candidate. If you ever met my mother, you would know that having her in your corner was a competitive advantage that belied her petite stature. By this point my mother would have already voted. But had she been here among us who are still confined to this realm, she would have been spending the last several months reminding everyone how important it is to elect Hillary Clinton.

My mother was not a partisan loyalist. She always voted for the candidate that she felt was the nicest, had the best policies for families, and acted in a dignified manner.  And she was not always vocal about her choices. But as she grew older, and her family grew to include grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she began to speak out for the candidates she believed would help shape a better future and world for them. And she was determined that her will would be the voter’s will.

She did not shy from any topic. Although I am glad that she did not have to hear the so-called locker room banner spewed by a candidate that I cannot even bring myself to mention the name of in a sentence that also refers to my mother. But, she would have found a way to demonstrate her disgust regarding that as any self-respecting southern lady would.

My mother wielded her charm like a lasso, reeling you in, and not releasing you until you had heard every possible convincing argument she could make. You could not just walk away from her sweet and natural style. I am quite certain that there were people who had figuratively or actually been cornered by my mother and heard her out. And when they that cast their vote they heard her voice calmly, but firmly making a case for doing the right thing.

So if you are voting today, I hope that you hear my mother’s voice. I hope she dials straight into your voting booth from her cell phone in heaven and reminds you to vote compassionately for social justice, for equality, for education, and religious freedom. She will remind you what a special person you are and how important your voice is. Let it be heard today.

Freshman Comp or F= happiness

The assignment from my first day of Freshman Composition was so easy I couldn’t believe it. Ha! This was college? I thought college was supposed to be difficult. The teacher had said to write a paragraph. Paragraphs were my strength. Just write five or six sentences, throw in some big words, and maybe even get fancy with some poetic devices, instant B+. And even more unbelievable she had said we could write about any topic. In high school I had to fight tooth and nail with my teacher for her to allow me to write my research paper on American poets about Jim Morrison. 

I was so excited. College was way better than high school. I went back to my room and quickly dispatched with scrawling out several sentences comparing eighties heavy metal to protest songs from the sixties. I was writing about Rock and Roll and the professor was going to be blown away. Hell, since I would turn it in on time, it would be an easy A! I eagerly delivered it to her mailbox. Everyone had always said I was a good writer. All I had to do now was sit back and wait for the A to be written at the top of my college ruled paper.

As Ms. White handed the papers back to my classmates I smugly sat in my seat as student after student slackened in their seats, bowed their heads, or let out audible groans. And then there she was, towering over me with a surprisingly big frown on her face. She dropped the paper on my desk with an air of disgust. And there at the top of my brilliant, analytical paragraph which clearly demonstrated the powerful messages in the music of Iron Maiden and Ozzy Ozborne was a big, fat F! And it had a circle around it, like she took glee in presenting me with the honor of being flunked on my first college assignment! This woman was wicked. I waited after class to protest as she busily gathered her things. She flatly said, “If you have questions about your grade you will need to make an appointment to see me in my office. There is a sign-up sheet on the door.” 

Then she was gone in a puff of smoke. 

I found the sign-up sheet on her office door and scheduled a conference for the next day. I planned to argue my way up at least to a C. When I arrived for the conference, her office door was open. Ms. White greeted me with a welcoming smile. “Come in”, she said warmly. This caught me off guard. The wicked witch was gone and I had prepared for an all-out war of words. But she was saying nice things to me as I sat down at her desk. She said that she liked my idea of trying to show that deeper meaning could still be found in popular music. However, my paragraph lacked cohesion and did not provide support for my position. She asked me if I really believed what I had written. I gave a weak yes as a reply. Then she said, “Let’s see how we can make this paragraph better.” She spent an entire hour with me gently explaining how I could have structured my thoughts more clearly. She talked to me about appropriate use of descriptive language. She asked me for more examples that supported my thesis. Then she told me to re-write it and she would take another look at it.

Not only did she give me a second chance, she gave me specifics on how to improve. I used her input to re-write the paragraph. The new grade was a B. I was happy with that. Ms. White told the class that when she gives us an assignment that she would always have the schedule on her door and we could sign up for extra help so that we could turn in our best work. She expected us to give our best effort. When she said these things to the class, it came out sounding mean. She was stern in her delivery. But after my experience in her office, I understood that she was sincere in her desire for us to be the best writers we could be. She saw the promise in us, but also that we needed to be pushed. I returned to her office before starting the next assignment. She gave advice and I made my first college A. In fact, it may have been the first time that I had ever made an A. I repeated this pattern for the remainder of the semester. By the time winter break arrived, I was an improved writer. I still had a long way to go, but I at least I had an idea of what I was doing when I sat down to write.

I learned not to judge people too quickly, as I had done with her when she barked at the class and gave me an F. Ms. White taught me how to be a better writer. But she also showed me why it was important to give my best effort. Earning a top grade was hard work. But more importantly I discovered that working hard and asking for help made me happy with the finished product. 

Happiness 

with a big circle around it.