What I take with me

My brother told me to always remember that there is someone out there who wants it more than you, will work harder than you, will fight harder than you.

My Dad told me never to look a gift horse in the mouth. And he taught me how to sing, “This is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.”

And my Mom told me not to let my ears start itching. (This is not in regard to bathing habits.)

That’s the most valuable advice I’ve gotten in my life and I carry it very close to my heart.

Sleeping with Prufrock

Life twists in unexpected ways so I feel as though my feet are already off the ground with one week left here in familiarity growing increasingly unintelligible.

One week till...London, four months till...home, less than that till...the rest of my life.

"And time yet for a hundred indecisions/ and for a hundred visions and revisions/ before the taking of toast and tea." The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

Where are those damnable mermaids and will they ever sing for me?

Flashback and explanation
I was a substitute teacher yesterday at my high-school - two 10th grade Bible classes and one freshman study hall.

It's somewhat strange for me to go back to First Baptist Academy. As it is always strange to return to one's past and roots. But important to look back and remember. I can't say enough good things about the teachers, both academically and personally, that I had at the Academy. And if you really want to understand where I come from - FBA would be a prime place to start.

Sometimes there's a pretty interesting dynamic in private religious schools. It's hard to explain...and it's very easy to laugh at. I guess one fair way to look at it is that it's essentially like every high school -with it's share of cliques and dramas and teenage angst, but then it's got this whole spiritual element to it that, to some extent, heightens all situations.

I don't often write on this blog about my personal faith. In fact this is probably the most I've ever written about anything related to Christianity. I also rarely volunteer to share either my personal testimony or a testimony of "how the Lord is working in my life" - in fact I can recall only one time that I have spoken up volunteerily in a group setting about how a particular event affected me. And I still consider it a story worth sharing and occasionally I tell it and the whole thing happened in remote Alaska - no kidding.

Most of that attitude stems from my experiences and observations from my high-school and my youth group involvement. For many kids in that type of setting, it is almost a contest to see who can share the most dramatic testimony or show that the Lord is clearly doing more work in their lives than anyone else's. Who can lead a prayer, who can lead a song. The hottest guys at summer camp are the ones that have felt called to the ministry. Testimonies that rely upon the emotional roller coaster that you can lead the audience through.

I have always eschewed arguments which rely upon emotion, simply because emotion comes and goes and is not so sturdy a thing as to build a life upon. And as for me, well, I've always been of the mind that my actions ought tell my faith and heart more accurately and eloquently than words. At times, my actions have miserably failed to speak of my faith - and this too is a testimony of my state.

And quite frankly, it also comes from the fact that I don't fancy public speaking and I tend to be a very guarded person. I don't wear my heart on my sleeve, particularly when it comes to my personal life. And that's at least one of the reasons why I don't write about my faith a whole lot on this blog.

I've written myself out. It's just an explanation, I guess. Doctrinally, my beliefs haven't changed that much over the years. But I've grown up a bit and seen more of life, and so my faith has grown up a bit as well. Funny how that works.

Sometimes I fear that I say too little of my faith, that I am too guarded with it, and too private about it. But it is deeply important to me, and I would say, the best thing in my life.

When I first met my editor at the Missourian she asked me about my family.

"Do you have any siblings?" she asked.

"A brother, about 13 years older," I said.

"Tell me about him," she said.

"Well. Everyday he's my hero," I told her. "Everyday."

And this is why.

"I could go on and on….Thinking of these things makes me realize that it “Rocks my face off” that I am such a good brother. "

Jimmy - my bro sent me an e-mail today. It read like this:

"Just read your Blog which you finally updated. It was ok, except for the fact that there was no mention of me. I think you should Blog about how good a brother I am. How I set the bar so amazingly low that you look good (probably better than you really are) by comparison and how I didn’t beat you for watching David Letterman in my bed while you ate crackers when you should have been asleep. Also…how I handled mom and dad having children 14 years apart (which was an alternative lifestyle then), and how I never did anything really bad to you even though you could be irritating when you were young (and will grow out of it soon, I hope).
Also…how I was a “Brother Reader” and read “Horton Hatches an Egg” to your kindergarten class. Also, How I didn’t beat you when you would wave at the people selling flowers at I-45 and 1960 and they would walk over to the car (back then, kids could sit in the front seat in their car-seats). Also…how I used to drive with the sunroof and windows open in the car because you liked it…even if it were 212 degrees. "

It's true - I did eat crackers in his bed. Although I don't know about the irritating bit. I still like to drive with the windows down and the sunroof open in the Texas heat. I no longer wave to the vagrants selling flowers on the highway - but if it pushed Jimmy's buttons I probably would if we were riding together.

Yeah, as big brothers go, I'd say I got pretty lucky.

Summer Reading:
The books I’ve read:
Reading Lolita in Tehran – excellent, hard to fathom that it’s non-fiction
A Wrinkle in Time – Yet again, but it’s a great
A Wind in the Door – A wee book, but great ideas
Into Thin Air – About a doomed Mt. Everest expedition, grim but interesting
We Were the Mulvaneys – Biggest waste of time ever. Ever. Ever.
The World According to Garp – A little wacky, but definitely worth it.
A Widow for a Year – My least favorite John Irving that I’ve read- too far reaching and unbelievable.
Ten Minutes from Normal – Yes, this is Karen Hughes memoir. No, I don’t agree with everything she says – particularly about Bush. But, a really interesting read about a highly successful woman who tried to put her family first in everything she did.
The Poisonwood Bible – Really excellent, well written. Falls into one of my favorite books category.
Secret Garden, Secret Window – the novella by Stephen King that the movie Secret Window was taken from.

The books I’m still working on and hope to finish before London:
Absalom, Absalom – Beautiful.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves – Grammar beware.

The Flaming Lips said, “happiness makes you cry,” and I say that life is a series of adaptations.

Tonight is a night in which I will turn out my light and stare sleeplessly at my ceiling and rather than find satisfaction in the silence feel only the vapid sucking of time past my window.

I’m working up to a good cry – I can sense it like animals sense the atmospheric changes preceding a tornado.

Not a sad cry, or a mad cry – just a long-over-due-completely-irrational-making-sure-my-tear-ducts-are-working cry.

Ch-Ch-Changes…are coming my way in the form of a couple of plane tickets and a key to a flat. And all London really means to me tonight is a place on the far side of familiar.

Worry has been my struggle lately. Worry in the form of a rather nasal voice that belongs to the skinny, middle-aged librarian that works in the archives in the back of my mind and wears orthopedic shoes everyday.

She points her finger and says, “Everything bad that can happen, will happen, to the people you love while you are away across the ocean.”

“Shut up you old bag, your shoes are ugly, your face is pinched and you smell of moth balls and dust and stale cellar air,” I say.

Then she gets huffy and bustles off to reorganize a file cabinet. She’ll be back, I owe her a paycheck. Still. By that time, I may be on my way.

People say time flies, and I agree that happiness makes your face awfully wet.

Knickers in an Uproar
 
Last night I laughed so hard  that I had tears streaming down my face.  I guess that's what happens when you get my mom and I and my aunt and two cousins together.

Yesterday I got massive quantites of water up my nose doing underwater flips with my 11 year old cousin.  We also made amazing salsa.

The week before I was in Austin watching my 15/16 ish cousin play some wicked volleyball - she can take your head off.

In short, my family rocks my face off!   I'm so glad they're here.

 

Hello Blog, I've missed you.
I haven't written anything in a while - not a blog, not letters or e-mails, not even very many journal entries. I guess I'm still looking for words.

But I feel as though if I don't start writing again soon I'll just get flabby.

A while ago...

In eighth grade we had to memorize Emma Lazarus' "New Colossus." "Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

I wish I remembered it all. I realized last week that I was born with the American Dream in my tightly closed fist. That I have never had to look for it because I am a favored daughter of the lady with the lamp.

Last week I talked with a woman who lived in fear of her life for over 30 years all the time looking for her entrance to this free land. Land of the Pilgrim's pride, where my father's died, but not her's.

She, orphaned at 15. She, waiting for her chance and that of her family's. She, wearing now only to church the brightly colored sari's of Sri Lanka.

Land where I've never questioned my freedoms but worn them as peacock feathers in my cap.

"The first year I was here, I did not like the fireworks because of the sound," she said, miming the action of a machine gun with her arms.

She told me of a church and a bomb and a world where her family was singled out because of their faith. She told me this as we watched fireworks light the sky above the Wal-Mart Garden Center. She knowing that her two children and the rest of the family were watching the same fireworks - safe and sound. Later they would share the watermelon she took home with her.

"I like them now," she said, smiling as she saw the red and green and white explosions. "It is peaceful here."

And I looked in my hand and saw the dream and freedoms I have taken for my birthright. And I looked in her face and saw only gratitude for the life that was peaceful here.

To see the fourth day of the seventh month through an immigrant's eyes is an experience which humbles.

"El sueno Americano es para todos," said President Bush, addressing the national council of La Raza. "The American Dream is for everyone."

Only when I looked at Philo. Only when I heard her story. Did I realize how true a statement that is. Only when I looked at Philo - who reached out and grabbed the dream.

...And the lesser light to govern the night.

The moon was beautiful tonight. Full and clean and very bright. And I was glad of it.

So much cooler than you

My friend Ann is officially, the coolest girl ever. She rocks, hardcore. She will rock your socks off and you won't know what hit you.

My phone's on vibrate for you, too.

Oh yeah, baby. Rufus Wainwright, performing live on my voicemail. I felt like I was there for just a second.

Ann - she's hot(tttt) with five t's.

More than a week ago I wrote that I was waiting to be sure of what I know. There’s been a lot of upheaval in the past several days. Little sleep and lots of bad coffee. And I am much closer to being “grown-up,” than I was before.

If I wait until I am sure of what I know then I will never write again. There must be some aspect of faith in one’s life. And sometimes that requires a step without knowing…

Knowing. Living. It all requires some amount of faith. A small amount of trust that the sun will also rise and you with it.

At six years old, a child may think that her heart is actually heart-shaped. And why not? The two people the child loves and trusts most in the world, the people she places her six year old faith in have named two semi-circles and a peak a heart.

It is sad to hear a six year old voice say, “I thought my heart was heart-shaped.” To know that her heart has become to her merely the lump of muscle that resides in her chest.

And for some children, this is the first small test of faith.

A child’s faith in a loved one’s words. What else could a heart be but that which we draw and color on scraps of paper? What does it mean if a heart is not actually two semi-circles and a peak? When one is six, the heart is for loving and believing and hoping. The heart, for a child, might be the principle organ of faith.

What is lost when a child’s heart becomes to them only a round, fist-sized organ?

It may take some years, but she may find the heart truly is something for wishes and dreams and faith. A force of strength that may guide according to the love it holds. What’s the old line…where your treasure is, there also your heart.

For some adults, this is both the test and the restoration of child-like faith. Belief which looks past the immediate and hopes for things unseen. A heart which trusts its treasure.

Of this I am sure. This I know.

Until further notice...
"Listen, to live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know."

"I may have to stop talking again, until I can be sure of what I know." ~ Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

I haven't updated in over week. It's not for lack of trying. So, gentle reader, rather then leave you in suspense, I'm just saying that productivity is down.

I'll continue to write, and when it's coherent - I'll put it up for your enjoyment (and your criticisms - which I tend to prefer). Let's just say I'm acquiring the words to the story. Stories.

And there are several rolling around up there - stories of elephants and mushrooms and other pieces of life crammed into dusty corners and gathering cobwebs.

Maybe I'm just waiting till I'm sure of what I know. Soon though. Soon.

"I love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candle-light." Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Posted by Hello

On a sunny Saturday, two young women – freshmen at the University of Missouri – sat at a kitchen table in a house in Barnhart, Missouri drinking coffee.

Glad to be away from classes for the weekend, the ladies relaxed in their pajamas in front of the kitchen window.

“Oh, do you see that little box of house down there,” said Jana, the one who had invited her roommate to come home with her. “The one just down there at the bottom of the hill?”

The white house at the bottom of the hill was beyond tiny. Just four walls enclosing four rooms. It had a gracious front porch that looked out to a garden that seemed almost bigger than the house itself.

Jana knew the family that lived there – the father had passed away the year before, when Jana and one of the boys had been seniors at Crystal City High. There were eight kids in all, and only two were still under the family roof. The mother was a tough old bird who worked long hours at Steak ‘n’ Shake to take care of her boy in college and her son still at home.

“Yes, I see it,” said her friend. She was from Raytown, the eldest of five children and the first in her family to attend college. The daughter of a TWA pilot and an Illinois farm girl, she was studying to be an elementary school teacher, but spent lots of time playing bridge and drinking coffee in the Union.

“Well those people can cram more people into that house for barbecues and get-togethers than you could ever imagine,” said Jana. “They practically pour out of the house and on to the porch and into the lawn.”

“But the house is so small – how could they possibly fit two people, much less ten or fifteen?” said her roommate.

“Oh, more than that. I say you wouldn’t believe it if you saw it – their family is large,” said Jana.

With that, they finished their coffee, and at the end of the weekend returned to their life in Columbia.

I suppose Jana’s roommate didn’t think much more of that weekend until she found herself, three years later as a senior in college, in the small house next to the man she loved.

She must have laughed remembering her first encounter with her husband’s family from Jana’s kitchen window.

Actually she’s still laughing about it. Both of my parents are still laughing about it.

37 years ago, today, Jim, who grew up in that box of a house, and Lynn, who was Jana’s roommate in Johnston Hall, got married in an evening ceremony at a Methodist Church in Kansas City, Missouri.

She carried a bouquet of daisies and yellow roses and her husband wore a daisy in the button hole of his jacket. And in every picture the joy on their faces seems to challenge the world to find something to bring them down. Hasn’t happened yet.

Here’s to them: 37 years and they love each other something fierce. They have a gift of laughter. They have a tremendous sense of adventure and curiosity. And they have given their children a vast appreciation of life and love and all that those two things entail.

Congratulations folks. And thanks.

This little piggy went to market, or
An open letter in response to the recent flurry of comments

To the one who posted the comment, "which gives me the right to free speech,":

The constitution also gives you the right to not speak - it's a lesser known right, but just as cool.

It's a little incomprehensible that you seemed to reiterate Jo's comment - but perhaps you were confused about what the first amendment is - that's the free speech one - which is actually what Jo was pointing out.

The right to free speech is wonderful - you're absolutely right. And it's that right that protects that marketplace of ideas of which you are so fond.

Why then, does it seem like just because Sam and Jo and me don't agree with you, you respond as though it is an attack on your right to free speech.

Do you really want to play in an open marketplace of ideas, or would you rather just bemoan the entire "liberal media," and follow your country unquestioningly because of your belief in the fundamental goodness and decency of your nation and the righteousness of your cause.

And by the way, the above paragraph isn't an attack on your right to free speech. Just a question of how open the marketplace of your ideas is - wouldn't it be kind of pointless if everyone agreed on everything - how horribly blasé.

Yeah, the first amendment rocks my face off - the right to speak or not speak, the right to worship or not to worship, the right to have a courageous and free press. The right to question your government.

You want to go to market? Great, come on, there's room for everyone - but let's not feel your speech is being subverted or attacked simply because people don't immediately see the "rightness," of your words. By posting your response to, “Penny for your thoughts, a flag for your troubles,” on a separate blog, you invited comments and responses to that. And I would say that most of those comments have been extremely kind and more generous than I am being right now, or am inclined to be.

Perhaps if your response had been grounded upon stronger evidentiary proof, the comments you have received would have been different. By basing a response upon your knee-jerk reaction rather than well documented occurrences, you have effectively closed the door on any truly open and reasoned discussion about your position.

It's a big market - and in this particular booth, there aren't any bullies trying to steal your lunch money, er, I mean your right to free speech.

Penny for your thoughts, a flag for your troubles

The vast majority of the bodies of American soldiers fly into Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Under the auspices of protecting the privacy of the soldier’s families, the Bush administration has enforced the policy used in the first Gulf War, which prohibits journalists or other citizens from witnessing the homecoming of these now quiet Americans.

While no press cameras are there, photographers from the Department of Defense are clicking away for record keeping purposes.

The public saw these pictures after Russ Kick, of Arizona, requested their release under the Freedom of Information Act. Kick requested the photos and was denied on the grounds that releasing the photos would result in an invasion into the privacy of the families. Kick finally won on an appeal, and received 288 photos of U.S. dead returning to Dover.

Not all the pictures are of soldiers killed in Iraq. Some are from Afghanistan, others from U.S. military operations in other parts of the world. But it is a reasonable assumption that most of the bodies are coming from combat actions in Iraq.

In Griswold v Connecticut, 1965, the Supreme Court held that there was indeed a right to privacy within the constitution. Justice Douglas wrote in the court’s opinion, “Specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras formed by emanations from those guarantees that give them life and substance.”

Thus, there are implied freedoms, without which the “specific guarantees,” would not stand.

Justice Douglas illustrated his point using the example of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. He wrote, “The right to freedom of speech and press includes not only the right to utter or to print, but the right to distribute, the right to receive, the right to read and freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom to teach…Without these peripheral rights, the specific rights would be less secure.”

Justice Douglas efficiently affirms both a right to privacy and a right to know.

The Restatement (Second) of Torts, an academic collection of laws, states that a charge of invasion of privacy must meet two requirements in order to have legal weight. The matter at hand, in this case, pictures of caskets, must be both highly offensive to a reasonable individual and not involve a matter of public concern.

Even if the subject is deemed offensive, it may still be released if it is a public concern, that is, if it is newsworthy.

From Iraq we have seen pictures of the dead bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein, towns a flame, and other violent pictures which might be called offensive.

But the pictures recently released show nothing of that sort. There is no blood, no anguished faces, no smoke or fire or terror.

Just an honor guard. Just a white hearse. Just the belly of a transport plane and rows of simple boxes covered with the stars and stripes.

So here are the soldiers who joined up to pay for college, or escape from their town, or to provide an income for their families. Here are those who went to a strange land to die.

And the American government refused to let you see them cloaked in red, white, and blue. Not because the pictures were gruesome or offending to delicate public sensibilities. But because, these pictures, more clearly than any chart or newspaper show the cost of the war.

The Vietnam War was called “the living room war,” because of the broadcasts that were shown on the evening news. The images returned from those jungles played a great role in turning the tide of opinion against that war.

Operation Iraqi Freedom is already an unpopular war. And it isn’t just about the dead Americans. It’s about the Japanese humanitarian workers taken hostage, the journalists who have died, 25 since 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the people of Iraq.

There are folks here in Columbia who stand on street corners holding signs asking people to “Honk for peace.” And several people sound their horns each time they pass, but whether the sound is heard in the hallways of the capitol has yet to be determined.

There have been numerous ceremonies here to read the names of the American dead. Still the appropriation of the names of the dead soldiers in an anti-war protest is arguably offensive. No one can say whether these soldiers would have added their voices to the vehement declarations against the war.

Either one of these actions may be thought offensive and ineffective in turning the tide of war.

But pictures of living soldiers helping their fallen compatriots to a final home?

This is not offensive. This is not invasive to their privacy. This is their last statement, neither affirming nor denying the justness of the war. These are their silent voices. And no one may say what these soldiers thought of the war except that they are dead because of their service.

They are no different from those silent Americans in Flander’s field, who, “short days ago…lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved…”

Regardless of one’s stance on the war there is no denying that there are costs to the action.

We hear that we are at war in order to protect our freedoms – this is a perennial justification for military action. Yet this most recent challenge to our freedom to view public records and the freedom of the press, came not at the gates of Baghdad, but from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And that ought to be offensive to any reasonable person.

Hi...surreal
Jenny is totally back in Columbia, and today she swung by Panera to say hey. It rocks my socks off that she's back. I envision some many good times and I can't wait to hang with her.

But, it is a bit strange to think that she was just in London, ordering from the Easter Star and riding the tube.

Welcome back, yo.

"I get by with a little help from my friends," The Beatles

My Saturday should have been terrible. It was rainy, I had to work an eight hour shift at the Mo-ian, during which I had to write three (count them, three) obituaries - that's three phone calls to three different grieving families, and then I got off at 8 p.m. and ate dinner by myself.

But, due to a variety of beautiful people in my life, this was probably the best Saturday I've had in a long time.

Thanks to:
My Dad for a lovely Saturday morning conversation.
Sammy D. for wanting to play Scrabble.
Mel and Jon for coming over.
Scrabble followed by Euchre followed by a trip to the diner with three of the best people in my life.

I wish you all such wonderful folks as these. Today picked me up in so many ways, and for the first time in awhile I don't feel a knot of tension between my shoulder blades.

"Why he left his home in the south to roam round the pole, God only knows," The Cremation of Sam McGee ~ Robert W. Service

It is my firm belief that all truly great writers are stronly connected to the place where they consider home. What is Faulkner without the South, Steinbeck with out California? Who would read Garcia-Marquez if his words did not carry a Colombian heat? And would Tom Robbins' characters be convincing out of their pacific-northwest home? Incidentally, Robert W. Service was the poet laureate of the Yukon.

People tease me about the south and Texas, and that's fine - I make most of the jokes myself. But I'm counting the days till I can get back to that place, because I need it. And my home is a much bigger part of me, than I will ever be of it.

I need the housewine of the South, amber in glass that flows from morning to night.

And the wisteria that hangs so heavy on it's branch that it drags the ground.

I need magnolias as big as dinner plates and Southern lilacs in every color you can think.

I need my Texas sky, and Texas bluebonnets, and Texas longhorns.

To sing "Just as I am," in the cool of a Southern Baptist Church.

Banana pudding, and fried green tomatos, and creamette salad.

The skyline of Dallas and the Red River.

More than anything I need my family who loves me and the familiar faces I grew up with in a place called Texas.